Louise Markus (Greenway, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Victorian bushfires royal commission has released its interim report, which includes recommendations for the 2009-10 fire season. With summer approaching it is timely to remind ourselves of the tragedy and damage to the environment caused by bushfires. It is also timely to thank the many thousands of men and women who work or volunteer in the various rural fire service organisations across the Hawkesbury and the Blue Mountains, protecting the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, the Wollemi Wilderness and other natural protected areas. These are extremely brave people who will spend the summer ready to respond to emergency calls and prepared to put their lives on the line to protect us, our property and animals and, of course, the environment. We need to ensure that they are properly equipped to do their job with minimal risk. Part of that resourcing is to ensure that they have modern communications equipment, that they are trained to the highest standard, that their equipment can be effective and that they have the strongest on-the-ground support. Let us hope and pray that this fire season will pass without any major disasters.

The Victorian bushfires earlier this year were a shocking reminder that we need to be emergency ready and prepared for the unexpected. The nation has followed with interest the findings from the inquiry into the Victorian bushfires, which cost lives, destroyed towns, damaged the environment and left a scar on the nation’s psyche. How could it not? Night after night we watched the news and prayed it would not get any worse. And, when the time came, this generous nation opened its heart and hands to help its people in times of tragedy. Next time we do not want to be caught unprepared. The lessons of the Victorian bushfires, the ACT fires and the Sydney fires over the past 10 years have been learnt at a terrible cost to human life, with loss of property and unrecoverable damage to the environment. Let us not repeat the same mistakes again.

It is with disappointment, then, that I draw the House’s attention to the paltry amount of funding put into the Disaster Resilience Program. The Labor government should be ashamed. The Disaster Resilience Program is a hybrid of the Bushfire Mitigation Program, the Natural Disaster Mitigation Program and the National Emergency Volunteer Support Fund, which were all programs funded and initiated under a coalition government. This year’s budget allocated $79.3 million over four years for the natural disaster resilience program. This amount of funding over four years, spread across six states and two territories, is to cover: works, measures and related activities to enable communities to withstand the effects of disasters and emergencies; support for volunteers for recruitment, retention and training; support for local government to assist them to effectively discharge their emergency management responsibilities; and encouraging partnerships with business and community groups to improve their ability to assist communities and be integrated in response and recovery activities and arrangements. How will approximately $20 million per year be allocated across all the states and territories? How can anyone believe that this will be enough to cover the ambitious plans for works, training, local council operations and partnership type programs with business and community groups?

The change from the range of natural disaster programs into one natural disaster resilience program was a cost-saving measure by a Labor government desperate to cope with its reckless spending and huge debt. But this short-sighted thinking is itself reckless. In the Daily Telegraph on 8 September I note that the government, as a result of the findings of the Victorian bushfires royal commission, has committed $50 million to establish a national warning system based on landline and mobile phones, but the same article said that the federal government has ‘all but conceded’ an emergency warning system based on mobile phone locations will not be in place before the bushfire season. That is simply not good enough and small comfort for the people living in high-risk areas remembering the communities of south-eastern Victoria. It is not good enough and small comfort for the men and women in our rural fire services. It is not good enough for Australian taxpayers, who would, I am sure, prefer to see their tax dollars spent minimising the risk. Time and again in Australia we have seen fires explode out of control, causing far greater damage and putting lives at risk. The rural fire services across the nation should have priority funding. (Time expired)