Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Earlier this evening in adjournment, a speech was made by Senator Thorp regarding personal aspects of the bushfires in Tasmania. I wish to broaden the perspective more to a national concept and remind the chamber of a motion that I moved with Senator Humphries before we rose in November—and that was to recognise the 10th anniversary of the Canberra fires and, of course, to warn the community of the inevitability of what would happen during a normal summer bushfire season. I stand here this evening to reflect on that very fact.

I make the point that, of all the natural disasters, the only natural disaster over which we have some possibility of control is wildfires. We cannot prevent bushfires, but we can manage and limit the damage caused by wildfires. That is the comment that I wish to make this evening. We are not seeing the effects of global warming; what we are seeing, unfortunately, around Australia, and particularly in eastern Australia this year, is the long-term effects of ignorance and of the failure by governments—federal and, particularly, state and territory—to actually implement what are well-established and proven land management practices—and, of course, the refusal to accept some 40,000 years of experience of mosaic burning of the Australia bush as was practiced by the Aboriginal communities prior to European settlement.

I have made the comment before in this place that those of us involved in the bushfire and emergency services world regrettably refer to the dead cycle: that is a cycle of disaster, followed by inquiry and expenditure, followed inevitably by apathy and following the apathy, again, is disaster. We are doing little or nothing to break the cycle, and the only difference geographically around Australia between the first D and the last D is the local climates in the area—in the case of Tasmania, fortunately for them, many, many years. In my own state of Western Australia, where we have long, hot, dry summers every year, we have a pattern of bushfires far more frequently—but, interestingly, not wildfires. Southern Australia experiences, as I said, a Mediterranean-style climate of long, hot, dry summers in a eucalypt-dominated forest. That is how it is. It is not global warming; it is not something unusual to this year; it is part of a normal pattern.

What is interesting, of course, is that the early European settlers who came to this country did not understand fire. They did not understand fire as a friend; they saw it as a foe. Indeed, the early British foresters' policies in regard to the management of the eucalypt forests was such that they also focused on the fact that you could not use fire for safe burning purposes. Regrettably, in our own state of Western Australia, the best illustration of the failure of that policy was the 1961 devastating wildfires that completely destroyed several towns in and around Dwellingup in the Jarrah Forest of WA.

What people must understand is this: Australia's eucalypt forests accumulate dry matter at a higher rate than it decomposes. This, of course, is what burns. Speaking of our own Jarrah Forest, over which I have the most experience having been Chief Executive of the Bushfires Board of Western Australia, our forests accumulate about one tonne per hectare per year of fuel on the forest floor. So you need just simple mathematics to understand that in a seven- to 10-year period, you will have seven to 10 tonnes of fuel on the forest floor. Our foresters, over time, would regard somewhere between five and eight tonnes per hectare as the safe upper limit to put firefighters into an area to try and arrest fires. If I can reflect on the Black Saturday fires in Victoria in 2009—a comment I actually made in my maiden speech here some weeks afterwards—there were fuel levels of 50 to 80 tonnes per hectare on the forest floor, and we know what the inevitable outcome was.

We speak of the fire triangle. The triangle requires oxygen, it requires a fuel and it requires a source of ignition. We cannot do much about oxygen when it comes to controlling fire and neither, unfortunately, can we do an awful lot about the sources of ignition. Many of the fires up and down the east coast this year have been caused by lightning and, all too regrettably and all too frequently, fires have been caused by arsonists. This is something that is the subject for another discussion.

What we can do something about is fuel levels: the level of fuel that burns—and that is the point I want to make. We have only two options in the Mediterranean-style summer, dry-dominated forests of Australia. We can either have uncontrolled, high-summer, high-wind, low-humidity fires as we have seen in New South Wales and, to a lesser extent but equally, in Victoria and Tasmania, or we can have the other: that is, cool season, low-intensity, higher humidity, controlled burns. There are other means, of course, for getting rid of fuel on the forest floor and in bush areas—grazing works, slashing works—but only to a very small extent.

The focus that I wish to address is that of low-season fuel reduction burning. I make the observation that green groups and others who are opposed to fuel reduction strategies need to reflect on two things: the perverse impact of their position and the influence that they have had on government policies over the last few years. It is that that led me to make the observation about ignorance and failure to implement in my opening remarks. These current firestorms in eastern Australia have destroyed millions and millions of tonnes of eucalypt forest, along with fauna and flora, of course, which have been devastated in the path of these fires, not to mention the devastating impact on families who have lost lives, who have lost livelihoods and who have lost memories. Imagine the outcry if the logging industry were to attempt to take that same tonnage of eucalypt timber out of the forests. There would be a hue and cry, and perhaps there should be.

The second point that I wish to make is that of the release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that is caused by these wildfires. It was estimated in the 2009 Black Saturday fires that a resultant of some 160 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent was released into the atmosphere. It is likely that the fires that we have experienced since the beginning of this year in fact will contribute over a third of all of our greenhouse gas emissions in this current year.

If people do not believe the comments I am making, I give two examples. The first in the savannah type areas is that of the West Arnhem Land Fire Abatement scheme in the Northern Territory, which I am sure my colleague Senator Scullion would be entirely familiar with. This is a scheme that started in 2005. It is funded almost fully by ConocoPhillips, who contribute $1 million a year. The Aboriginal communities of West Arnhem Land are able to record a saving of some 100,000 tonnes—even now up to 130,000 tonnes—of CO2 equivalent annually, or some 35 per cent abatement. That is independently measured by CSIRO and others. So we have the strategies and they go back to the Aboriginal communities.

My second example in forested areas is that of management of the south-west Australian forests, because they are an international benchmark for the control of fuel level. The objective in Western Australia is to burn around eight per cent of jarrah forests annually. Unfortunately, we are only achieving five per cent. The eight per cent is because, based on a 12-year cycle, all areas will burn and those forest floor levels of fuel will be reduced. If I look to the eastern states, I know the average is less than two per cent of the areas burnt. In some areas, including the Blue Mountains, it is even less than that.

In 2010 we had a Senate inquiry and report to this chamber in which we made, I think, 15 recommendations towards limiting the sorts of events we have seen this summer. I only hope and wish that the chamber is able to have an influence with states and with territories to be able to limit, so we do not see the inevitability of wildfires next year and into the future.