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Legislative Council - 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. G.A. KANDELAARS (16:18): I move:

That the report of the Natural Resources Committee on Bushfire Tour 2012 Case Study, Mitcham Hills on 17 February 2012, be noted.

An elderly man stands in front of his home wearing shorts and a 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 from watching a horrific video of raw footage from the Canberra 2003 fires. The 45-minute video entitled 'Canberra Australia Firestorm 2003' is available on YouTube and was shot by Channel 9 newsman Richard Moran, riding with the ACT fire brigade district officer, Darrell Thornthwaite.

Members viewed this video as part of the Natural Resources Committee tour of the high bushfire risk area in the Adelaide Hills on 17 February 2012. It was a shocking wake-up call for all of us, even those members with experience in firefighting 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 outmarched by a large fire on an extreme fire danger day. The death toll from the Canberra 2003 fires 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. Most of us have forgotten what happened and many of us were not even around at the 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 of bushfires like Ash Wednesday.

The Belair CFS took us on a tour of the Mitcham Hills and Upper Sturt. 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 a bushfire since 1955. The lack of preparedness of residents in the Hills is exacerbated by the confusion about what to do when a fire siren is sounded; confusion about whether to go early or to 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.

I come back to the issue about staying and defending. The issue that we saw is that in reality, from the video we were shown, the fire takes hold at such a rate that it is impossible for people to evacuate, if they decide to evacuate at the time the fire starts. It is actually very dangerous if they attempt to evacuate at that point. It is a really difficult issue to get across to people about the very nature of bushfires and the dangers they present when they are in full flight.

This tour was arranged as a follow-up to the Natural Resources Committee November 2009 interim report, the 37th report, and the July 2011 58th report on bushfires. This report includes a number of recommendations that require funding for their implementation. The minister has agreed to review disaster funding arrangements in partnership with the Local Government Association, with a view to developing new arrangements that are more consistent with the national disaster funding arrangements with the states and territories.

The President of the Local Government Association has written to the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition and the federal and shadow ministers, as well as to all 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 funds to enable recommendations such as those suggested in this report to be implemented. I wish to thank the CFS for hosting the fact finding tour, in particular Dale Thompson, Sturt CFS group officer, and Ray Jackson, CFS regional prevention officer.

I commend the members of the committee—Presiding Member, the Hon. Steph Key MP, 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 and the Hon. John Dawkins MLC—for their contribution to this report. In addition, I thank the Hon. Iain Evans, the member for Davenport, and Chris Burford, adviser to minister Rankine, who accompanied the committee on the tour. Finally, I thank the committee staff for their assistance. I commend this report to the house.

The Hon. J.S.L. DAWKINS (16:25): I rise to endorse the remarks made by the Hon. Gerry Kandelaars in relation to this report on the committee's tour of the Mitcham Hills earlier this year on the initiative of the member for Davenport, Iain Evans. Certainly, no-one in this parliament would be surprised about the concern the member for Davenport, along with a number of people familiar with that part of Adelaide, has had about the potential massive fire risk in the future.

It was good to take that significant bus tour in and around the area described by the Hon. Mr Kandelaars and to see the traps, I suppose, that are quite scary if you translate them to a day of great heat and great strength of wind, and many of us would well remember days like that in the past. That tour of the Mitcham Hills reminded me very much of the experiences I had in 1980 and 1983 in the Ash Wednesday fires of both years.

While 1980 pales into some insignificance in respect to the extent of 1983, I very much remember being up in the depth of the Adelaide Hills as a flat country firefighter in a brigade that had been brought up from the Adelaide plains to help fight fires. It is certainly a different kettle of fish to fight a fire in the hills and gullies in that area compared to the flat country I grew up in. There was one particular episode in that 1980 fire where my colleagues and I, in a very old Ford 500 fire unit, were very lucky to escape the fire that came towards us following a sudden change in wind direction.

I very much support the efforts the Hon. Mr Evans in another place has made over a long period of time. I acknowledge the fact that he brought forward a recommendation to our committee, and I think to the House of Assembly on an earlier occasion, for this parliament to have a standing committee on bushfires.

His evidence to our committee was taken on board. In our report of 6 July 2011, as noted by the Hon. Mr Kandelaars, the committee noted as follows:

The Committee strongly supports Iain Evans' call for a Standing Committee on Bushfires recommending that it may be opportunistically broadened to consider all Natural Disasters, including bushfires, floods, earthquakes, riverbank collapse, tsunamis, extreme weather events, hazardous material and pollution emergencies, pest plagues and agriculture diseases.

I think that the Hon. Mr Evans took note of our recommendation that his proposed standing committee be broadened, and as a result he introduced the Parliamentary Committees (Natural Disasters Committee) Amendment Bill into the House of Assembly on 29 September 2011. It took some period of time because of the way in which the House of Assembly operates its private members' business—which I have never understood; it certainly does take some time for those matters to be dealt with—and, while there were some contributions, it finally came to a vote on 12 July this year.

Unfortunately, the bill failed to gain support from the ALP caucus, despite the recommendation of the committee being supported unanimously by the Natural Resources Committee. As a result of the lack of support from the Labor caucus, the bill was defeated 20 votes to 16 on 12 July. That is a shame, but I hope that, in future, governments of whatever flavour will look more closely at the potential for natural disasters. Certainly, any of us who have made a trip up into the Adelaide Hills (as the committee did that day) have seen the potential for enormous disaster on a bad fire day in that area (particularly with, I think the much greater population than was there in 1980 or 1983), and we need to examine the potential for us to look closer into those matters as a matter of urgency.

I would hope that my colleagues in the Labor Party actually will push on again to see whether they can change the mind of caucus in relation to that. Having said that, as my colleague has done, I would like to thank Dale Thomson, the Sturt CFS Group Officer, and Ray Jackson, the CFS Regional Prevention Officer, for the time they gave us in that area. Their local knowledge was, I think, particularly valuable along with that of the member for Davenport.

I would like to thank the Hon. Steph Key for her chairmanship and also for sharing her own personal experiences of fire and the results of major fires. I also thank the other members and staff of the committee, and I commend the report to the Legislative Council.

The Hon. G.A. KANDELAARS (16:33): In closing, I thank the Hon. John Dawkins for his comments. The reality is that bushfires are a factor in our environment—they can be extremely destructive—not that any of us wish that to occur. The other reality is that, because of the increased number of people living in the Adelaide Hills, if we had a major tragedy (like Ash Wednesday) again there is a strong potential for loss of life again, which would be most unfortunate. I commend the noting of this report to the council.

Motion carried.

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