John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

My final question at this stage, Minister, refers to those bushfires and the emissions that you are saying are excluded from human behaviour. Bushfires in the country have around 50 tonnes per hectare of fuel levels on the ground, and, if we look at bushfires such as those of Black Saturday in Victoria this year, I believe 450,000 hectares burnt. That was some 90 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Around 200 tonnes per hectare is what the scientists believe is a result of bushfires. You mentioned land management. Surely it would be in the interests of everyone to actually manage that land properly, especially national parks, and to take actions to reduce the fuel levels in preparation for the prevention of severe bushfires?

I come back to the point that so much of Australia is now locked up in national parks but is not managed. We are now seeing the threat that people in the New South Wales national parks service—some 200 people—will be put out of work. Surely a serious argument to reduce carbon dioxide emissions around Australia would include those bushfires and looking to take appropriate action to reduce fuel levels. In much of our country—hundreds of thousands of hectares—there is simply a fire bomb waiting to happen because a lot of that land is locked up and left. Hence we face huge amounts of carbon dioxide being put into the atmosphere. Surely this must be a priority for your government.