Judith Troeth (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak tonight on the woefully inadequate response to the Victorian Black Saturday bushfires in February this year by the Brumby government. That day was a national tragedy, one that was caused by a number of factors, many of which were beyond the control of humans. And let us never forget the Country Fire Authority and the Department of Sustainability and Environment firefighters who risked their own lives to protect others; we will be forever in their debt. However, what is clear now is that the hardship endured by the communities and the firefighters could have been lessened—and not just in hindsight.

Broadly speaking, Australia has always been a country prone to large, intense bushfires to the extent that it is part of the ecology. We have learnt through bitter tears over many years that we must be more vigilant and take more precautions to prevent tragedy. In Victoria we have suffered numerous fires from 1851 to the 1939 Black Friday fires to Ash Wednesday in 1983 to the present day. And we know there will be more fires. However, the more important and relevant issue is what warnings were ignored, what recommendations were disregarded and which people lacked the appropriate judgment because as sure and night follows day there will be more Black Saturdays. I want to highlight the failures of the Brumby government to take preventative steps, and I also want to look at the actions of some individuals who were in charge that day and pose a question about responsibility and judgment.

Firstly, lack of preparedness. In John Brumby and the Labor government’s time in office—now some 10 years—there have been no less than 25 warnings in 17 reports that were ignored or not implemented. These include the failure to update the standard emergency warning signal that interrupts radio and TV broadcasts. Despite being warned in 2003 that this warning needed upgrading, it never was, and was not used at all during Black Saturday. The government refused the request of electricity companies to put their cables underground. There were warnings in April this year that the 000 system could not cope with a major disaster. A Labor controlled parliamentary committee recommended massive increases in prescribed burning in August last year. This was only accepted in principle in December—far too late to do anything for the last current year of bushfires. The government had already failed to meet the already low prescribed burning target in nine out of the last 10 years—a 90 per cent failure rate. There were warnings to the government that the police radio network would be unsupported and could not operate because the metro network is digital while the rural network is analogue. There had been warnings to the government from the 2005-06 fire season that the Victorian bushfire information line needed to be able to increase its capacity in major disasters, a warning that was repeated in the review of the April 2008 windstorm report by the Emergency Services Commissioner. On Black Saturday 82 per cent of calls went unanswered.

There were warnings to the government in 2006 and 2007 that the CFA and DSE websites were not up to scratch and needed to be improved. Problems included discrepancies between the two websites, old information at the top of the page, the inability to determine where the warnings related to, and difficulty in determining which website users needed to look at, depending on whether the land was privately owned or publicly owned. As well, the Brumby government cut $20 million from the CFA last year. The Integrated Fire Management Planning Framework, used to assess fire risk, was accepted in September 2006 but was not implemented. There is a catalogue of inaction and incompetence if ever there was one.

Secondly, I should state that I have the highest possible regard for the CFA and DSE firefighters who risked their lives, but the actions and competence of the senior managers must be questioned. More to the point, John Brumby’s decision to reappoint the CFA chief, Mr Russell Rees, before the inquiry had brought down its findings is absurd given Mr Brumby’s own statements about not pre-empting the final report. I do not make these remarks with the intention of singling out Mr Rees, who has assured us he tried his best, but it highlights a complete lack of judgment and the desperate politicisation of the decision by the government to reappoint the man who carried foremost responsibility for the conduct of our response on the day.

The commission points to a lack of authority and lines of communication, but, reading between the lines, we also see very clearly that there was a lack of initiative and leadership on several fronts. Firstly, there is the issue of the now missing, presumed lost, predictive fire maps that showed where the fires were heading. Surely the predictive maps would have been a critical element when deciding to issue warnings to communities about the direction and extent of any fires—a point also observed by the royal commission.

Mr Rees and the CFA state duty officer both state that they never saw the maps. The DSE state duty officer states that he saw the maps, that the CFA state duty officer was at a meeting that specifically discussed the Kinglake predictive map and that these maps were widely disseminated. Is it not logical to assume the CFA senior officers talk to each other about predictive maps of bushfires heading to townships? Is it not logical to assume that these senior officers, if they had not seen one, would ask for one—especially when they were considering what actions and what resources might need to be deployed? If not, why not?

The DSE does not get off the hook here either, though, because the state duty officer said he did not check to see whether any of the warnings were going out and whether they were clear enough to highlight the immense risk facing people in these communities. Again, the lack of information is astounding. Why was information not demanded by these officers?

The DSE said they never checked the warnings because they assumed the CFA issued them. The CFA did not issue them because they did not see any maps, even though they attended meetings where the maps were discussed. Nobody takes charge; nobody takes responsibility. Mr Rees claims he did not have enough authority as defined by legislation.

Ominously, even after the interim report was issued, while John Brumby was saying that Mr Rees would be solely responsible in future bushfires, Mr Rees said—after this statement but on the same day—that the decision about who would be ultimately responsible was yet to be determined by Mr Simon Overland, the police commissioner. The interim report was critical of Mr Rees for not getting involved in the management of the bushfires on Black Saturday. Apparently Mr Rees and the DSE’s Ewan Waller did not even consider the implications of the forecast wind change until after it had occurred.

So we can go on. Mr Rees claimed early on that the system had worked ‘very, very well,’ but the fact that the maps are now missing—critical evidence that, in any other circumstance, would be recorded and obtained—is, frankly, beyond belief. The commission’s recommendations are all very sound ones, and I do not seek to question them, but many of them are not new. They are pretty well established facts and many of them are conventional wisdom. So what?

The issue is whether this Labor government in Victoria will actually deliver on any of them. I could go on and on. Of the 2,000 homes destroyed, only five homes have been rebuilt. John Brumby decided to reappoint Mr Rees before the royal commission delivered its report and, naturally, Mr Rees has a great deal of criticism to answer. It shows what shockingly bad judgment this Labor government has: 173 people died and there was enormous damage—both physical and emotional—yet nobody has lost their job and there is no real criticism of the government’s policies and actions. That is not believable.

Mr Brumby has said that all Victorians must take responsibility for Black Saturday. That is a breathtaking misreading of the facts. The facts are that government left the state unprepared for a fire event such as this, an event that occurs regularly in Victoria but which has never before resulted in such a catastrophic loss of life. Despite advances in technology and understanding of fire behaviour, at many levels the people involved in the administration were not good enough, starting with the Premier— (Time expired)