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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-09-05 Daily Xml
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NATURAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE: BUSHFIRE TOUR 2012 CASE STUDY, MITCHAM HILLS

The Hon. S.W. KEY (Ashford) (11:41): I move:

That the 65th report of the committee, entitled Bushfire Tour 2012 Case Study, Mitcham Hills, be noted.

An elderly man stands in front of his home wearing shorts and polo shirt. He is holding an empty aluminium saucepan. Behind him is his home and behind that a wall of flames about to engulf it. Thick smoke obscures the sun. The man appears fortunate to be spotted and picked up by fire brigade district officer Thornthwaite as he speeds through the fire front in his four wheel drive vehicle. This is the scene that remains etched in my memory after watching an horrific video of the raw footage from the Canberra 2003 fires.

The 45 minute video entitled Canberra Fire Storm 18 January 2003, and available on YouTube, was shot by Channel 9 news cameraperson, Richard Moran, riding with ACT fire brigade district officer, Darrell Thornthwaite. Members viewed this video as part of the Natural Resources Committee tour of high bushfire risk areas in the Adelaide Hills on 17 February this year.

It was a shocking wake-up call to all of us, even for those members with experience in fighting fires while serving as CFS volunteers. It brought home to us the reality of how unprepared people are for bushfires and how easily an emergency response can be overrun and outmatched by a large fire on an extreme fire danger day. The death toll from the Canberra fires in 2003 was four lives lost, and when you watch the video it is amazing that it was not much worse.

In South Australia we know how devastating bushfires in urban areas can be; however, it is now nearly 30 years since the Ash Wednesday fires of 1983. This dreadful event saw my husband's house burnt and my mother acting as a counsellor for the survivors of the fire. Most of us have forgotten what happened and many of us were not even around at that time. The committee heard from the CFS that most of the firefighters from that time have since retired. The current CFS volunteers are well trained and dedicated but they do not have the experience with bushfires like Ash Wednesday.

The Belair CFS took us on a tour of the Mitcham Hills and Upper Sturt. We saw cars parked illegally on narrow streets, gutters overflowing with leaves, overgrown gardens, and cul de sac subdivisions surrounded by dense bushland that have not seen a fire since 1955.

The lack of preparedness of residents in the hills was exacerbated by confusion about what to do when a fire siren is sounded, confusion about whether to 'go early or stay and defend', confusion about safe areas, confusion about what school students should do, and a road network that will go into gridlock almost at the drop of a hat. It is really a disaster waiting to happen. This tour was arranged as a follow-up to the Natural Resources Committee's November 2009 Interim Report (37th report) and the July 2011 (58th report) on bushfires.

This report includes a number of recommendations that will require funding for the implementation. During the estimates committee hearings on 25 June this year, I asked the Minister for State/Local Government Relations about the current arrangements for the Local Government Disaster Fund. Members may be aware that the fund was created in 1990 to help councils remediate damage caused by natural disasters, including bushfires. The government introduced a special levy of 0.005 per cent, a then existing state tax, the financial institutions duty, to provide the revenue for the fund.

As part of the national taxation reforms in the early 2000s, which included the introduction of the GST, the financial institutions duty was abolished from 1 July 2001. The minister informed me that as yet there had been no expenditure of the disaster fund, although it continued to earn interest on funds collected prior to 30 June 2001.

The minister has agreed to review the disaster funding arrangements in partnership with the local government associations with a view to developing new arrangements more consistent with the national disaster fund arrangements with states and territories.

The president of the LGA has written to the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and relevant federal and shadow ministers, as well as South Australian federal members of parliament, raising concerns about South Australia's ability to access the proposed flood levy. I am confident that these negotiations will assist in providing funding to enable recommendations such as those suggested in our report to be implemented.

I wish to thank the CFS for hosting this fact-finding tour and, in particular, Dale Thompson, the CFS group officer, and Ray Jackson, the CFS regional prevention officer. I commend the members of the committee, Mr Geoff Brock MP, Mrs Robyn Geraghty MP, Mr Lee Odenwalder MP, Mr Don Pegler MP, Mr Dan van Holst Pellekaan MP, the Hon. Robert Brokenshire MLC, the Hon. John Dawkins MLC and the Hon. Gerry Kandelaars MLC, for their contribution to this report. I would especially like to thank the Hon. Iain Evans (member for Davenport) and Chris Burford, adviser to minister Rankine, who accompanied the committee on the tour. As always, I thank the staff for their excellent assistance. I commend the report to the house.

The Hon. I.F. EVANS (Davenport) (11:47): I thank the committee for producing an excellent report. I thank the committee members for touring the Mitcham Hills in general—which included parts of my electorate—and the sincere way in which they approached the issue with an open mind to learn more about the fire dangers that exist within the area that I, and indeed other members, represent throughout the Adelaide Hills and the Mitcham Hills in general.

As the house knows, I have attempted to get a committee established to deal with not only bushfires but other natural disasters, and I have been unsuccessful on two occasions. However, as the multiparty committee recommends the establishment of such a committee, I intend to attempt for the third time to bring back a bill to establish a natural disasters committee of the parliament.

If the parliament needs any more convincing about the issue, I will simply read the paragraph that the chair of the committee just read, but I just want to read it a bit more slowly. These are not my words: these are the words of the seven or eight members of the committee who went and looked at what I have been talking about for some years now. This is what the committee said:

We saw cars parked illegally in narrow streets, gutters overflowing with leaves, overgrown gardens, and cul de sac subdivisions surrounded by dense bushland that has not seen fire since 1955.

All of those issues, if I break there, present various difficulties for the residents and the services in the event of a fire, but the crux of the issue is in the next paragraph:

The lack of preparedness of residents in the Hills is exacerbated by confusion about what to do when a fire siren is sounded, confusion about whether to 'go early or stay and defend', confusion about safe areas, confusion about what school students should do, and a road network that will go into gridlock at almost the drop of a hat.

And the committee says:

It really is a disaster waiting to happen.

As the local member, I cannot argue with that and I have advocated that in this house for many years. If you look at the history of fire in the Hills, one comes along every 25 to 30 years. There were bad fires in the 1930s, there were bad fires in the 1950s and there were bad fires in the 1980s.

This issue is now well known to the parliament. It is now well known to the government of any colour and I think we simply have a duty to act, because I do not want to be the MP moving condolence motions after the next fire saying, 'We told you so.' That is not my motive. My motive is to try to head it off, to try to reduce the damage and reduce the risk. We know a committee is not going to stop a fire, but a committee can help better prepare the community, better prepare the services and put pressure on for better road infrastructure or better training or whatever the issue may be.

The committee recommends that the parliament be invited to view the video of the Channel 9 footage of the Canberra fires. I will arrange that as the local member and invite members who are interested to come along, because it is 2 o'clock in the afternoon and it may as well have been midnight as far as the visibility went. All the vehicles had their lights on and it may as well have been midnight.

I think it is really important and I really am pleased that the committee came up. I cannot be more sincere in saying how pleased I am that the committee came up and actually had a look because you could almost hear the pennies dropping as the video was being shown and as they drove around the district looking at what we face. You could virtually see the ducks lining up to a similar view within the committee about the issues that needed to be addressed.

I do not for a minute suggest that the solutions are quick or easy, but unless we start addressing them, then I think we are leaving more people exposed than we need to. I commend the committee on its report. I thank the chair most sincerely for bringing the committee to the Hills. The previous chair, of course, John Rau, did his own tour with me to get his head around the issue, so I know the Attorney is fully across these particular issues. I could go down the path of saying that there are recommendations from the previous report that the government has never responded to. I am not going to go down that path; I am not interested in the political pointscoring; I am simply interested in the right outcome. I thank the committee for the report.

Mr PEGLER (Mount Gambier) (11:53): I also rise to support this report. I might say that I have been in the CFS for, I think, 30 years and I have fought in many bushfires. I was just astounded when we went on this trip into the Hills. I have never seen an area so ill-prepared for a bad day.

A lot of those people just do not realise that if there is even a moderate fire day, but particularly if there is a bad fire day and a fire starts, they will have less than seven minutes to get anywhere and it will probably take them 20 minutes, so they will have to stay in their homes. Their homes are so poorly prepared, and it would not matter, as a state, how many fire trucks we made available, they just would not be able to get in there. I have never seen an area that has such potential for disaster.

I certainly commend the member for Davenport in asking our committee to go up there. It was a great education for me. I think we have to get the message out to a lot of those people. We do not like to scaremonger but we have to get the message out to those people that, if they do not do something within their own area and with their own properties, they will put their own lives and all their properties at risk.

The thought of forming a natural disasters committee of parliament is, I think, a tremendous initiative and I feel that it is something that should be done so that that committee can make recommendations on how we can address the road infrastructure in those areas so that fire trucks can get through, how we can make sure that people are not illegally parked when there may be a fire, and to make sure that people look after their properties. The way I saw it, it is just a disaster waiting to happen, and I hope to never see it happen.

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (11:55): I was most interested in this report. As most members know, I was the presiding member of the CFS for a number of years, and the great fear we had was that the Adelaide Hills would go up again. Fortunately, it did not happen while I was in that position and I hope it never does but, unfortunately, it will—that is the sad reality of it. I am delighted that the committee went up there but, unfortunately, there is not enough action being taken either by private landowners or, indeed, any government authorities. As an example of that, the Department of Environment does do small burns—and talks about the wonderful job it has done—but it does not actually listen to the local people.

As an example of that, let me talk about the Deep Creek Conservation Park where, earlier this year in March, the department decided to have a prescribed burn. The department spoke to the adjoining neighbours and they all said, 'No, most unwise; don't do it on that day. It's the wrong day to do it; wait and do it on another day.' They did not consult the CFS locally at all—never consulted them at all. The fire got away and for three days the CFS people (volunteers) were out there assisting in the management.

My understanding is that the cost of that fire was about $500,000. I find that absolutely ludicrous. I put in a freedom of information request about that which I got back a week or two ago, refusing to give me the cost of that fire and I think that is outrageous. I am going to make a public issue of it because I think hiding behind this smokescreen, so to speak—probably the wrong words—of going ahead and burning despite the comments from the neighbours and not consulting the CFS is not good enough.

However, in relation to the member for Ashford's committee report, I applaud the report and I am very pleased that they went up there because I want to be able to stand in this place, when it does go up (if I am still here)—and, hopefully, it will not go up while I am here or, indeed, afterwards—with a clear conscience that they have been told again and again to do something, whether it be private landholders or government authorities. It is not good enough.

We have an increasing urban push by people wanting to live in the hills or somewhere else who have absolutely no idea of how the bush burns, no idea of the climate and no idea about winds. When they get up there and it happens—and God forbid that it does—I can see what happened in Victoria happening over here. That is what is going to happen. You only need to have an appallingly bad day—even yesterday, in the first week of September, we had a fire out of control just near Adelaide. I heard that on the radio last night but I do not have the details.

It is time to act. It is time to take dramatic action in relation to potential threats. It is time to educate people as best we can. You cannot tell everybody everything and you cannot get fools to listen, quite frankly. I have been to enough fires. I have raked a dead body out of a caravan, someone who was burnt to death, when I was 17—that was not a good experience. I have been to a multitude of fires in my lifetime in national parks and on private lands, as indeed have other members in this place. I think the member for Mount Gambier referred to that. It is not a fun time, let me tell you.

If someone does not take some dramatic action, it is going to go ahead up in the Hills, and woe betide anyone who is in a position of authority that day. I have spoken to senior police officers and CFS personnel, whether they be volunteers or paid officers, and they are all worried about it, and I am dreadfully concerned. So, member for Ashford, well done!

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. R.B. Such.

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