Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Justice and Public Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In Australia, summer brings the start of the holiday season. Around our nation, families pack the car and head for the beaches or go camping in the bush. Throughout Australia there is the smell of sausages sizzling on the barbeque, sparking happy memories for many. However, for some, summer does not bring joy but fear, as it signals the start of the bushfire season. Last February marked 25 years since the catastrophic Ash Wednesday bushfires swept across South Australia and Victoria, tragically killing 75 people and destroying thousands of homes. Cockatoo, Belgrave Heights and Upper Beaconsfield, in my electorate of La Trobe, were the hardest hit areas, accounting for more than a third of all fatalities, with 27 people perishing in the intense blaze.

The Ash Wednesday fires left an indelible mark on the community of the Dandenong Ranges. For many in summer, the smell of smoke or the crackle of fire evokes terror in their hearts. You can imagine the fear many felt when they learned of the Bureau of Meteorology’s grim warning that the Dandenong Ranges is at extreme fire risk this summer. The hills are experiencing their worst fire conditions in over 15 years—worse than the conditions of January 1997, when, tragically, three people were killed in Ferny Creek and more than 40 homes were destroyed in the Dandenong Ranges.

The extreme dryness caused by the drought has made the hills a ticking time bomb—one spark could set them alight, with devastating consequences. Sadly, it appears that nearly every year we have some idiot going around the hills trying to deliberately start fires. Water storages have dropped in Melbourne from 40 per cent this time last year to 33 per cent now. For these reasons, it is essential that aerial firefighting helicopters known as the Erickson Air-Cranes be made available to the Dandenong Ranges. The Erickson sky cranes are the most effective tool in aerial firefighting, being able to draw water from water sources as shallow as 45 centimetres deep, able to refill in less than 45 seconds and able to carry as much as 10,000 litres of water per load. They are essential to the CFA’s firefighting efforts this summer.

La Trobe is protected by some 27 CFA brigades. I am going to name them because they all do a magnificent job. They include Boronia, The Basin, Belgrave, Belgrave Heights and South, Beaconsfield, Upper Beaconsfield, Berwick, Cockatoo, Ferntree Gully, Upper Ferntree Gully, Upwey, Clematis, Selby, Sassafras and Ferny Creek, Olinda, Macclesfield, Emerald, Gembrook, Kalorama and Mount Dandenong, Menzies Creek, Narre Warren East, Narre Warren North, Kallista-The Patch, Officer, Pakenham, Pakenham Upper and Toomuc Valley. These brigades not only have fought fires in La Trobe but have also assisted with many fires right across the state of Victoria.

I would briefly like to mention two dedicated local CFA volunteer members: Peter Marke, who incredibly is in his 50th year of service with the CFA and recently retired as captain of the Upwey brigade after 35 years of service; and John McLeod, who is in his 54th year of service with the Boronia CFA and received in 1990 the Australian Fire Service Medal for his dedication to the volunteer brigade. I congratulate them both on their commitment to fighting fires in the Dandenong Ranges.

The dedication of our local CFA brigades has protected La Trobe for many years on many occasions. Many of our local brigades could not survive without the loyal volunteers who balance their commitments to volunteer firefighting with full-time jobs and family commitments. We must provide our CFA brigades with as much support as they need to fight bushfires.

Each year, the Australian government leases several Erickson sky cranes such as Elvis and the Incredible Hulk from the United States to assist with firefighting. The sky cranes do an amazing job, and this year the Australian government has leased five sky cranes and I congratulate it for that. Two of those will be allocated to Victoria. What I am asking the government to do is to make one specifically available on stand-by for the Dandenong Ranges. The simple reason for that is that the Dandenong Ranges come second only to California as the most fire-prone area in the world. So, again, I call on the government to make a sky crane available on stand-by for the Dandenong Ranges.