Fire Management Plans

The Hon. J.S.L. DAWKINS (15:23): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation a question regarding DEWNR prescribed burn management.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.S.L. DAWKINS: Late last month the minister tabled a response to a question I asked on the prescribed burn in the Warren Conservation Park, which got out of control in October last year, in which he stated:

Information about the burn was placed on the DEWNR website which ordinarily triggers information to be automatically transferred to the CFS website. It is not clear why the information did not transfer on this occasion and subsequent testing shows no fault in this system.

My question to the minister is: given that most people in country communities go straight to the CFS website and not to the DEWNR website to check the status of a fire, will the minister assure the council that all efforts have been taken by DEWNR and the CFS to ensure that such a situation does not occur again?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (15:24): I thank the Hon. Mr Dawkins for his important and intelligent question based, of course, on my answer, my important and intelligent answer, which I had given to him, which was on notice.

The Hon. J.S.L. Dawkins: That's a matter of opinion.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: Indeed, and the Hon. Mr Dawkins shares my opinion about both his question and my answer. The government is committed to its prescribed burning program, as we all know. It is a program that we have basically brought into being because the Liberal Party, when it was in government, had none and it was a significant failing of the Liberal Party in government. It is probably just an example of why they have not been able to get themselves elected for the last few years—because they have no plans and no policies, except for some vague black policy that says '2036' and no-one knows what that means.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: And no-one knows what it means, except that it says in there somewhere, 'Hi, I'm Steve. Please talk to me.' It says, 'Hi, I'm Steve. Please talk to me.' 'Please talk to me,' it says because that's his plaintive plea.

The Hon. J.S.L. DAWKINS: Point of order: that has nothing to do with the question I asked, sir. I would ask you to ask the minister to answer the question.

The PRESIDENT: Minister, can you answer the question please.

The Hon. G.E. Gago: It was a comprehensive answer.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: A very comprehensive answer. The honourable member did ask a very important question and I gave him a very important and proper and appropriate answer. It essentially said that DEWNR and the CFS work very closely, and they have an integrated website thing where they share information across those platforms. But for some inexplicable reason, which we don't have an answer for, in this particular instance it didn't share across the platforms. Subsequent instances where it does (I checked just today on my iPad on Facebook), there's a little connection across there and they are popping up right now about prescribed burnings that are happening this week.

When they did a rigorous systems analysis and check, they found no error that they could identify, so it was a glitch—an unfortunate glitch in this situation, and we apologise for that. We can't explain it. Testing of the platform and interconnectedness shows no error that we can see, and there is nothing to fix from that perspective. Clearly, there was a problem on the day; we don't know what that was. We will pay particular attention to this into the future.