Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to join this debate by extending the very heartfelt sympathies of the people of New England, and of course many other parts of Australia, in relation to the tragedy that has occurred in Victoria in recent days. Listening to the various speeches—and I do particularly compliment the member for McMillan on the picture that he painted yesterday given the real pain that he felt for his constituents and others who were affected by the fires—I think there has been a real coming together in parliament on this particular issue. I think the community will reflect on that and hopefully that will mean some degree of unity on some of the other critical issues that are out there.

At the risk of bringing politics into this debate, I note that obviously there are some very significant issues on which the nation does need some degree of unity: global climate change, the economic crisis and those things that are impacting on us. In a sense, we cannot do a lot about them just on our own but we can do a lot, as we have shown with the fires crisis, if we can find a common path that we can agree on. So hopefully out of tragedy there will be lessons learnt—particularly in relation to the fires—not only about what we should do in future but also about the way in which the political process carries on as to some of these issues where real leadership is being asked for by the broader community.

This is an opportunity to say some things that really do need to be said about how we come out of this particularly tragedy. Obviously, there will be an enormous effort put in by governments of all persuasions and by the community right across Australia to make sure that the people who are impacted are looked after. That will, hopefully, assist those people. But there are some policy initiatives that really do need to be looked at for the future, and I will now take the opportunity to raise a few of the issues which relate to what has happened in recent days. Various reports and documents have been written over many decades about the consequences of wildfire and what it means, potentially, to various communities. The electorate of New England is probably one of the most diverse electorates in this parliament. It extends from the Liverpool Plains—which were originally vast expanses of very high plains grass not all that dissimilar to the prairie grass that dominated parts of the United States, so massive fires would take place there from time to time—to the hilly areas and into the gorge country towards the coast, where there have been many wildfires in the past. In my view there will be many more in the future, and they will probably be far worse than those that have occurred in the past, because management practices have changed, particularly in the last decade.

I note that in the north of Australia, in the carbon debate that is currently taking place, there are debates about the practices of the Aboriginal population and their chequerboard burning policies. Some of these things really do need to be looked at. Aborigines are not—and were not—doing that just because they think it is nice to light a fire. There are a number of issues there that we really have to have a very close look at. I think there are some lessons to be learnt from the past about where people live and how we conduct ourselves in protecting people in those areas.

There is going to be a lot of soul-searching after this event, and I think we should take advantage of some of the knowledge that is already out there. I will refer to a document that was put to the Victorian parliament about five years ago, after the Gippsland fires occurred, by the Independent state member for Gippsland East, Craig Ingram. Craig presented a document entitled East Gippsland: burned at the political stake, which I would like to table. It is not a political document; it is in fact a document in which Craig looks at many of the things that happened during those very bad fires in Gippsland, some of the reasons for those fires and, more importantly, some of the constructive ways that communities can recognise the problem and put in place some policies for the future. I raise it because, with a royal commission being touted in Victoria, documents such as the one that Craig put forward really do need to be looked at very seriously. Craig refers to the 1939 fires in Victoria, after which a royal commission was carried out. Some of the recommendations of that royal commission have only been put in place in the last 10 to 15 years. Some of those recommendations, which apply as much today as they did in 1939, have not been put in place—particularly those in relation to some land management practices and to the responsibility of neighbours to look after land that is adjacent to other people. With the continued trend of people wanting to live in the urban-bush interface and with our great love of trees and nature, we really have to revisit some of these issues.

I am not suggesting people should not live there, but maybe in that interface area there should be a policy of prescribed burning. Some states—New South Wales, for instance—have almost retreated from that. It is seen as polluting the atmosphere if you protect land in that way in New South Wales. I was on a bushfire inquiry committee when I was in the New South Wales state parliament about 10 or 12 years ago. A lot of these issues were raised then and really very little has occurred. We have gone through the Canberra fires. There were a whole range of issues raised there, and many of them have been brushed aside. That is not to suggest that this is the fault of government. I would be the last to say that, but I think the community really has to recognise that a wildfire will occur if you do nothing to stop it. And when it does occur on an occasion like that vicious day when the Canberra fires occurred—and there were similar conditions in Victoria the other day—those sorts of conditions will make it far worse, so that you cannot stop it. I think we have got to design policy that takes the basic premise that you will not stop it unless you have put in preventative practices sometime before.

The Victorians have done a little bit of homework on prescribed burning practices in recent years. The government there has, I am told, moved towards more prescribed burning than, perhaps, the previous government had. But it is still not enough. The rolling targets that were apparently to be put in place under the arrangements in Victoria have not been picked up for future years. By ‘rolling targets’ I mean that, if the target is 100,000 hectares of prescribed burning in a year to protect an area—a chequerboard burn, in imitation of what the Aborigine did—and if the 100,000 hectares is not reached in a particular year because the conditions might not be there during the winter months to carry out the burn effectively, that should roll into the next year and the funding should roll as well. To my knowledge, that is not happening in a lot of the places where these massive wildfires occur.

I am sure Craig Ingram will put in a document to the royal commission. He does not blame anybody, but he makes the plea, I think, that communities really have to learn that, if you do nothing, these tragedies will occur again and again. As I said, I remember 10 or 15 years ago when I was in the state parliament and we carried out an inquiry into bushfires. There are others in this building who would remember that quite well. The Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, for instance, have highly destructive fuel loads sitting there, and nothing is really being done to prevent a similar circumstance. It will happen. It has to happen, because that is the natural way. If you do not have a chequerboard-burning landscape control policy and you allow these very large fuel loads to build up, it is just a mathematical calculation—tonnes per hectare times temperature times humidity times a few other things plus some wind and the correct circumstances, and then you get what we saw in Canberra, what we saw on Ash Wednesday, what we saw in Tasmania some years back and what we have seen again recently. Those tragic circumstances will repeat themselves. In terms of the urban-bush interface, we really have to start not to learn—because most of the documentation has been put in place before—but actually apply some of the solutions that have been identified, some as far back as 1939.

There are some other issues that I will briefly raise. I think most people recognise the speed of the fires. I have fought fires. I live on the land and I know what fires are like, but I do not know what a fire is like in that circumstance, where the trees are absolutely exploding in front of you—the intensity of that heat. The fires I have been involved in have essentially been grassfires with some trees. I would not be able to comprehend the fear that people would have faced in terms of the enormity of that particular event.

One of the things that seems to be coming through about applied policy that might make a difference in the survival of people where all else has failed is bunkers. A wombat survives in a wildfire because he goes down a hole. Many other animals do as well. In fact, I noticed on television the other day that a woman and some others crowded into a wombat hole and protected themselves with blankets and the fire went over the top of them. Part of the 1939 Victorian royal commission recommendations was that there be community bunkers. We did it in wartime. Most of that has disappeared as some of these communities have grown and people have become more blase. They say: ‘Oh no, we’ve got fire trucks. They’ll turn up and save the day.’ Personally, I think there has been far too much preoccupation with putting vehicles in streets, building sheds to house them and taking photographs with politicians in front of them rather than actually concentrating on some of these issues. A fire truck is absolutely useless in a fire of that magnitude. I am not decrying the efforts of the firefighters; they are needed. But in those circumstances, we need to do something about that urban-bush interface. The towns that are in those communities—and they are right throughout Australia—really need to have a close look at what could have been done to save these people. In the main, those who had bunkers were saved. They are very inexpensive, even if people went to the extent of stocking emergency oxygen bottles in the cavity in case there are low amounts of oxygen inside. So I suggest we learn a little bit from the past and look at the concept of bunkers. They are inexpensive. A backhoe can do them. People can put them in of their own volition. They could be the very thing that saves lives.

There are a couple of other issues that I would like to raise. I am told by Victorians that certain recommendations—I think it was two or three years ago now; I might be a little bit out on the timing—were made and unanimously agreed to in the Victorian parliament, including that a 300 per cent prescribed burn-off would take place. I do not think that has occurred yet. Maybe it has not had time to occur. But I think there was recognition from left, right and indifferent, Green and right-wing, that there was a common pathway for prescribed burns and not enough was being done.

I reiterate the point: the community has to recognise that you cannot expect to be protected from a wildfire in certain circumstances under the normal arrangements. This has occurred on the doorstep of Melbourne—although it should have had some impact on the doorstep of Canberra as well—and, because it is occurring near a major metropolitan area, maybe more of the community will recognise now that there is a community responsibility. Time and time again, we have seen it in Sydney—and I think all members of parliament have seen this—that when the authorities go in to do a controlled burn on the outskirts of Sydney or wherever, all hell breaks loose about smoke in the sky and people say, ‘This is tragic,’ and, ‘We saw a kangaroo in trouble,’ and, ‘It is all very unfortunate,’ and, ‘Why do you have to do that? We came here to live in the bush.’

There are many people who came to live in that bush who are not living anymore. I think there is a community responsibility to make sure that people who, because of their histories, probably do not understand are protected in some way. Obviously the prescribed burns around communities will have an impact. They will not stop fires, but they will decrease the magnitude of a massive wildfire, because it all works on fuel load. I encourage the Commonwealth, Victorian and, in particular—before a massive tragedy occurs in that area west of Sydney—the New South Wales governments to look at some of the implications of what is happening.

I would also like to commend the member for Mallee, John Forrest. John made some important points yesterday about practical issues, such as the removal of wooden crossbars from power poles. A lot of fires start with electricity shorting out. There is no doubt that that happens. How many start that way and whether such changes would have made a difference here no-one will ever know. But, if we are looking for real solutions, that is definitely one of the things that we should start to look at. Obviously the bunker arrangement is something else that we need to look at, along with prescribed burns, as I mentioned earlier. I commend the member for Mallee for his particular suggestion. I am sure there will be many more.

Many years ago—and I am told that similar things applied in Gippsland—there used to be a clearway on the edge of roads. I agree with this for other reasons, as well as for burn-off access. Most roads through timbered areas now have timber right up to the road. I have argued that many accidents occur because a car only needs to get 10 yards off the road before it runs into a tree. In a fire, as we saw time and time again on the television screens, all there was was a track through trees. Obviously, when the first tree falls over, there is no more track. In parts of Gippsland, other parts of Victoria and parts of New England, once one tree falls over there is no access—no way in and no way out. Surely we have to examine some of those issues. I know they are very difficult issues for the community—if the community is against it, the political process goes slowly; it puts dust on top of the royal commission report—but we have to take advantage of what has happened, in a sense, and say to the community, ‘You cannot expect to exist in these sorts of environments unless certain things happen to make sure that your living area is as safe as possible.’ Otherwise, all of these deaths will have been for nothing.

The other issue I would like to raise—and I realise that I am going on a bit—is that what we will see, in my view, is what we have seen in the past. This is a natural disaster. We have seen a range of disasters occurring: the Wollongong mudslides, the cyclone in Darwin, Cyclone Larry in Queensland and the Newcastle earthquake. We see a range of political responses to those disasters. You can see a difference between the response mechanisms for the Queensland floods and the Victorian fires even in these early days. We also see issues from time to time in how the insurance companies deal with these issues—whether the water came up as a flood or came down as rain—and the debate that takes place. They are both tragedies, but the legalities of insurance documents can treat them somewhat differently. If the political response moves in or it is not too interested, different results will occur. I have suggested for probably 10 or 15 years now that what we need in this country is a national natural disaster fund, where money is set aside annually for tragedies—irrespective of whether it be a Sydney hailstorm or a Wollongong mudslide.

Trying to determine those insurance payouts went on for years. It did not matter who caused the disasters; they were not caused by the people who lived in the houses. In Coffs Harbour there was a similar situation. We see it time and time again, with different responses depending on the political cycle, the marginality of the seat, the generosity of the government, the balance sheet of the bank or whatever. Surely it is time to tackle this. One of the great things we have done in the last few days is take the politics out of the issue. Surely it is time to continue that and put in place a fund that can be drawn upon when these sorts of circumstances occur. There is no doubt in my mind that, whether Victorians are insured or not, they will have their houses replaced. That is going to send messages in different directions to different people. Maybe, to deal with these tragedies that occur, we should have a fund set up where all of those people affected, irrespective of their economic background, are looked after.

Some people would say, ‘Oh, that’s socialism,’ or whatever else, but in the last week or two I have been told in this building that neoliberalism is dead. Maybe we have to look at how the community can come together, raise a massive amount of money and have it in place for when tragedy occurs. I will give you an idea of how simple that is. One dollar a week from every Australian raises a billion dollars in a year. When I did some work on this some years back, there had been, I think, only one tragedy in Australia that had cost over a billion dollars. Normally natural disasters are in the range of $200 million to $300 million a year. You get the odd one. I do not know the numbers on Cyclone Larry—these numbers were done with the assistance of the Insurance Council of Australia a few years back. Twenty to 30 cents a week protects any of us from an unfortunate event which could happen to any of us—a hailstorm, an earthquake or any other tragic disaster. I ask the government, when this royal commission appears, to at least have a look at the way in which a fund could be put in place so that we depoliticise the process and treat everybody impacted by a tragedy in the same way.

The last issue I would like to raise is the climate change debate. No doubt everybody will have their views about climate change, but in this nation at this time there is more water in Queensland, which climate scientists tell us was going to be a consequence of global warming, and drier times in southern Australia, which climate scientists tell us is going to be a feature of the future. I think we will all be dead and gone when we know who was right and who was wrong, but at some stage, if we are looking at protecting the southern part of Australia—the Murray-Darling system et cetera—we must look at transferring some of the water that is going to be created in the north of Australia through human-induced climate change, using it to replace the depleted amount in the Murray-Darling system.

We are told that, because of climate change, there will be a 30 per cent reduction in runoff into the Murray-Darling system. That is human induced. It is not overallocation of licences or all the other stuff that is mentioned. At some stage, maybe we have to equalise the chequebook with those two areas. We see 60 per cent of Queensland under water now. Whether it is climate change induced or not I do not know, but there is a lot of wasted water there. We see the tragedy that is occurring in the Murray-Darling system, which could be ameliorated with an inflow of water from Northern Queensland or other parts of Australia. I thank the House and extend the sympathy of all New Englanders to those people in Victoria who have been affected.

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