Fires A Case Of Government Negligence - Isherwood

Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release  11th of February 2009
 

Isherwood: Government greenies & cost-cutters killed more on ‘Black Saturday’ than arsonists

“The long-term effects of greenie and economic rationalist policies killed more than 180 people in the Victorian bushfires on ‘Black Saturday’, and the perpetrators of those policies in government must be held accountable,” Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood declared today.

“This is a case of criminal government negligence, or worse,” Mr Isherwood said.

“The issue is fuel reduction burning—the Victorian government has been repeatedly and stridently warned, by scientists and forestry professionals of the highest expertise who are only now getting the media attention they deserve, that its failure to manage the fuel load in Victoria’s forests will lead to disaster—and it has.”

Mr Isherwood attacked Prime Minister Rudd’s public seizing on the arson issue, and Premier Brumby’s promise of a Royal Commission, as a smokescreen.

“The issue is government policy, and they know it.

“Victoria doesn’t need a Royal Commission; it has had two Royal Commissions, by Judge Stretton, into the Victorian bushfire disasters of 1939 and 1944, and the result was crystal clear: the bushfire disasters then, as now, were caused by what the Judge called ‘ridiculously inadequate’ prescribed burning of the forests, and he mandated ‘fire prevention must be the paramount consideration of the forester’.

“For forty years, fuel reduction burning was practised as a scientific forestry management measure, until the intervention of, first, radical greenies in the Cain/Kirner Labor Government, and then, radical economic rationalists in the Kennett Government.

“Environmental concerns for ‘biodiversity’ etc. were increasingly cited to stop fuel reduction burns in the Cain/Kirner years, and then Kennett slashed the Department’s budget and staff, and gutted its ability to do prescribed burns.

“In 1992 the Auditor-General found that the Department of Conservation and Environment [now Sustainability and Environment] had cut expenditure on fire prevention by 23 per cent over five years, and in 2003 the Auditor-General found that the amount of prescribed burning had never met the Department’s targets.”

Mr Isherwood explained, “Prescribed burning doesn’t stop bushfires, but it dramatically reduces the intensity of the type of wildfires that erupt on extreme fire danger days like Saturday.

“Without prescribed burning, to encourage people to make their own decision to ‘leave early or stay’, implies they have a chance that they don’t really have, and condemns them to death.

“I am appalled by the loss of life in this unprecedented tragedy, and my heart goes out to those affected,” Mr Isherwood concluded, “But the victims and survivors alike will only be honoured if we ensure this can never happen again.

“The only inquiry needed, is into the government leaders and department heads who ignored the repeated warnings of the experts, that their negligence would lead to this disaster.”

ends

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