Bushfire review spells out need for veg changes
Last year in the immediate aftermath of the Queensland fires I visited the Miriam Vale evacuation centre. The people I met there had just lost land, property and pets. Their understandable frustration spilled over and almost every person raised with me that if only they had been able to do more cool burns, or clear fire breaks, this would not be as bad.
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We took those views back to Canberra and established a Parliamentary inquiry. Eventually, the state government also established a review by their Inspector-General. The Inspector-General's report has vindicated the concerns of Miriam Vale landowners and others across Queensland. It recommended that "the framework of legislation relating to vegetation management ... be re-assessed."
The Queensland government is ignoring the views of rural Queenslanders by not accepting this recommendation in full. The Labor Party has claimed that instead, all they need to do is to run an education campaign on the existing vegetation management arrangements. That flies completely in the face of the Inspector-General's report, which said "several landholders" had stated that "the legislation relating to land clearing was too prohibitive for individuals to meet its requirements."
But Labor is not listening to these perspectives. The Labor view seems to be that farmers are just too silly, they don't understand the law and a new call centre, staffed with people who probably have never visited a farm, will re-educate farmers on how they are doing it all wrong.
Back in the real world, we know that Labor's draconian vegetation management laws have left many landholders too cowed to reduce fuel loads on their properties. The Queensland government has created a culture of trepidation on the land, making it too difficult for farmers to make the right decisions to protect and manage their own land. That is shown in the Inspector-General's report too. The number of cool burns conducted in Queensland has halved from two years ago.
There is a clear need to reassess the vegetation management framework in light of last year's devastating fires. Why won't the Labor government agree to a simple review? What have they got to hide?
It's not surprising that Labor is hiding the deals they have had to do with the Greens to remain in power - one of which is more control over vegetation management.
The Labor party seems willing to expose Queensland farmers and their families to a higher degree of fire risk simply to pick up a few votes in inner city Brisbane. We must stop this trade-off form of politics. Let's just make the right decisions and review the vegetation management act immediately.
- Senator Matt Canavan, Minister for Resources and Northern Australia
Seven months on - are we ready for bushfires?
I call on the Queensland government to detail the measures that will be taken to prevent the disastrous bushfires that threatened farming businesses in the Mackay/Plane Creek areas last year, on the back of the Queensland Bushfire Review recently released.
Since there are no preventative measures recommended in the report, I call on Queensland Fire and Emergency Services Minister Craig Crawford to detail his efforts to prevent a repeat of the bushfires in Finch-Hatton, Bloomsbury, Blue Mountain, Carmila, Koumala and elsewhere last year when 1016 hectares of productive cane land at an estimated cost of nearly $1.4 million to the industry, was devastated by fire.
The government's limited-in-scope 2018 Queensland Bushfire Review assessed the response to the bushfires. Canegrowers Mackay was among the more than 40 organisations that participated. We were among a number of agricultural organisations, farmers and rural firefighters that had sought regulatory changes in the aftermath of the fires because of evidence of grey areas in the interpretation and application of Queensland vegetation management legislation, which had hampered fuel reduction efforts and effective firefighting.
In particular, we asked for a change to increase the width of the setback for fuel reduction on either side of fencing. The current narrow 10-metre-wide fire breaks are impossible to defend in fire conditions. The width should be increased to 200-250 metres (ie 100-125 metres either side of the fence or, where the fence borders crops, a 250 metre setback on the timbered side of the fence). We also sought greater flexibility to reduce fuel loads on our own farming land and an increase in government resourcing to manage adequately the fuel loads in national parks and on state land.
Neither the recent state budget nor the recommendations released today have allayed fears that the problems of managing fuel burdens to prevent bushfires have been addressed. While we welcome news of additional firefighters, vehicles and communications officers, this is tackling the problem from the viewpoint of disaster management rather than prevention.
This month will mark seven months since the official fire danger rating reached catastrophic for the first time in Queensland's history. While recent rainfall in the Mackay/Plane Creek districts may have created a feeling of complacency, the latest weather forecasts from the Bureau of Meteorology and the Northern Australia Seasonal Bushfire Outlook for the next three months warn of similar climatic conditions to last year.
The Queensland government needs to show some leadership and develop and implement a coordinated strategy in our region, involving collaborative effort by all land managers (including the state government) to prevent a repeat of last year's catastrophic fire season.
- Kerry Latter, CEO, Canegrowers Mackay