BY BILL TULLY
CANBERRA — One of the Canberra Sunday Times supplements of August 24 was a 16-page pictorial panorama, "Recovery: Canberra's journey from the ashes of January 18". At the beginning of August, however, the official "Inquiry into the Operational Response to the January 16 response to the January 2003 Bushfires in the ACT" was not so celebratory.
That report soberly looked at an event which killed four people and destroyed more than 500 homes and official buildings. In 276 pages, it assessed what went wrong, what could have been done to lessen the impact of the disaster and what should be done to minimise any future fires.
The inquiry team, headed by Ron McLeod, was set up on February 20 by the ACT chief minister Jon Stanhope. It found planning deficiencies in ACT statutory bodies set up to meet such emergencies, outdated legislation, inadequate staffing, poor (or no) coordination of police, emergency, forestry and community bodies at ACT, NSW and federal levels and an ignoring of recommendations of many earlier reports.
The inquiry, which had 61 recommendations, got a mixed response in the columns and letters of the Canberra Times. More perceptive writers saw the need for better and more urgent planning, others who lost property were not impressed by the paltry compensation offered by the ACT government and some were annoyed at what they saw as slurs on the bravery and courage of all involved in fighting the fires.
Months earlier, at a February 4 public meeting titled, "Fire, Forests and Community Safety" hosted by the Socialist Alliance, Pat Brewer took up some of the issues later avoided by the inquiry. While praising the commendable public spirit of the Canberra community, and its emergency services, she suggested that national drought and rural neglect were not being properly addressed by the federal government.
The need to curb greenhouse emissions worldwide through the Kyoto protocols has not been accepted by Prime Minister John Howard. The January fires in Australia and the August ones in Spain, Portugal and France in August further stress the urgency of adopting these.
Predicting the short term recommendations of the inquiry, Brewer saw the policies of both ALP and Coalition governments at ACT and federal level — cost cutting, staff shedding, deregulation and community sidelining — as the real culprits in the disaster of January 18.
A participant in that meeting also pointed out that it was unlikely that the Stanhope government would decrease its corporatisation of public housing or force the insurers, developers and real estate lobbies in Canberra to help the victims of the fires. The artificially high housing prices in Canberra clearly indicate where these businesses see their priorities.
Brewer also argued that the monetary priorities of loggers and foresters factored higher than community safety when the "safety" of tree clearing was being assessed.
If future disastrous fires are to be prevented, a more democratic decision-making process must be put in place.
[Bill Tully is a member of the Socialist Alliance.]
From Green Left Weekly, August 27, 2003.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.