Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) Share this | Hansard source

You might not be interested, but the CSIRO Pyrotron will help us avoid disasters like this in the future. It will usher in a new era of bushfire research in Australia. Up until now, researchers have been obliged to study bushfire behaviour by lighting fires in the open. The problem with that, of course, is that they can only do it in mild weather, making it difficult to draw conclusions about how the fires might behave in extreme conditions. Field experiments are also hard to control, and impossible to repeat precisely.

The CSIRO Pyrotron will help us to overcome all of these limitations. It fights fire with fire. The Pyrotron is a 25 metre long wind tunnel in which researchers can create and observe fires. It will enable scientists to simulate the behaviour of fires, study the mechanisms by which they spread and understand the chemistry of combustion. This will give fire authorities the practical information they need to suppress fires more effectively and with fewer risks to firefighters on the front line. It will also help save lives and protect— (Time expired)