Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Fire is a friend and a foe. Of late, fire is being an absolute foe, destroying property, livestock, habitat and, most tragically, human lives. Decent Australians' thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families, those in the thick of it and the selfless frontline workers valiantly fighting the fires, seeking to protect lives, property and habitat.

We do face a bushfire emergency. Regrettably, it's nothing new in Australia. I recognise the commentary from Senator Keneally: yes, it is true that it is the first time ever that it's been labelled as 'catastrophic', the reason being that we've got a new fire level management system that has introduced the term 'catastrophic'. That was introduced in 2009. So let's get a sense of proportion and not seek to play politics with this. Let's understand that, in 2009, a new regime was introduced, which uses the term 'catastrophic'.

I'm not sure whether it was one million acres or one million hectares that the good senator referred to as having been burnt out. Undoubtedly, much, much more has been burnt out. A million acres—I did a rough calculation; I hope I'm right—is about 4,000 square kilometres. The Black Saturday fires in Victoria in 2009 burnt 4,500 square kilometres. Twenty-six years earlier, the Ash Wednesday fire in Victoria and South Australia burnt 5,200 square kilometres. Sixteen years before that, in my home state of Tasmania, 2,600 square kilometres were burnt out. Before that—by 28 years—in 1939, 20,000 square kilometres were burnt out. So you can go back in history, especially back to the 1850s, where huge fires devastated our country.

The royal commission into the Victorian bushfires in 1939 said:

For more than 20 years the state of Victoria had not seen its countryside and forests in such travail. Creeks and springs ceased to run.

This was in 1939, so 20 years prior means starting from 1919. We also know that, from 1895 to about 1903 or thereabout, there was the eight-year Federation Drought, which saw the mighty Murray stop running. We've got to understand that this is a country of droughts and flooding rains, as Dorothea Mackellar told us so poignantly in her poem 'My Country'. And so, as our fellow Australians fight fires, seeking to protect life, limb, property, livestock and native wildlife, let's just be mindful of the task they are facing, remember them in our thoughts and prayers and give them all the support that we possibly can in these most difficult times. Let's not seek in any way, shape or form to play a game that might be seen as taking an opportunistic approach to this very serious issue.

Fires are an absolute foe and menace to us in the Australian landscape, especially when fuel loads are allowed to build up and build up. We know that. That is a lesson that we learned from the Australian habitat. Our Indigenous people ensured that fuel loads were in fact relatively low around the countryside, but nevertheless massive landscape bushfires devastated my home state of Tasmania at about the time of white settlement. In 1967 there was a major fire, in 1934 there was a major fire—and so the list goes on. Let's not play politics with fire. Let's give every support to the men and women who are fighting them and fearing for their lives and their property. (Time expired)