House of Representatives – Select Committee Report into the 2002-03 Australian bushfires.
During the Summer of 2003, a total of almost four million hectares in the Australian Capital Territory and across five Australian states, were severely burned from wildfire.
The Committee heard a consistent message right around Australia:-
1) There has been grossly inadequate hazard reduction burning on public lands for far too long;
2) Local knowledge and experience is being ignored by an increasingly top heavy bureaucracy;
3) When accessing the source of fires, volunteers are fed up with having their lives put at risk by fire trails that are blocked and left without maintenance;
4) There is a reluctance by state agencies to aggressively attack bushfires when they first start, thus enabling the fires to build in intensity and making them harder to control; and,
5) Better communications between and within relevant agencies is long overdue.
6) The report does not mention Global Warming as a cause of the 2002-03 fires. Sixteen years later, it is now trendy for Politicians, some Fire Commissioners, Radio Announcers, Actors, Singers, and Global Warming Zealots to blame Climate Change for the latest fires.
Link to the report:
http://royalcommission.vic.gov.au/getdoc/977714b4-4610-4705-b0fd-d14859c23642/EXH.160.0001.pdf