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A History of the Prepare, Stay and Defend Or Leave Early Policy in Victoria

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A History of the Prepare, Stay and Defend Or Leave Early Policy in Victoria A History of the Prepare, Stay and Defend or Leave Early Policy in Victoria A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Benjamin Thomas Reynolds Master of Arts (History) Bachelor of Arts (History) School of Management College of Business RMIT University February 2017 1 Declaration I certify that except where due acknowledgement has been made, the work is that of the author alone; the work has not been submitted previously, in whole or in part, to qualify for any other academic award; the content of the thesis is the result of work which has been carried out since the official commencement date of the approved research program; any editorial work, paid or unpaid, carried out by a third party is acknowledged; and, ethics procedures and guidelines have been followed. Benjamin Thomas Reynolds February 2017 i Acknowledgements This PhD was made possible due to the support of my family, friends and supervisors and the guidance and encouragement I received from each. I would like to thank my parents in particular for again supporting me in my studies, and my supervisors Professor Peter Fairbrother, Dr Bernard Mees, and Dr Meagan Tyler and other colleagues in the School of Management for their reassurances, time, and advice. I would also like to thank the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre for their generous financial support for the project, and in particular Annette Allen and Lyndsey Wright for their encouragement along the way. I would also like to acknowledge the support of John Schauble of Emergency Management Victoria, without whose support the thesis would not have been possible. ii Table of Contents Glossary of Abbreviations p.iv Abstract p.v Chapter 1: Introduction p.1 Chapter 2: Theoretical Framework p.25 Chapter 3:Early Brigades c.1850-1944 p.32 Chapter 4: The Foundation and Development of the CFA p.93 Chapter 5: Responses to Redefining Disaster p.126 Chapter 6: Stay and Defend: A Turning Point p.142 Chapter 7: The Foundation for Stay or Go p.172 Chapter 8: Conclusion p.222 Chapter 9: Bibliography p.233 Appendix I: Partial Transcript of a 28 February 2012 p.304 Online Bushfire Information Session iii Glossary of Abbreviations ACF Advocacy Coalition Framework AFAC Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council AWW The Australian Women’s Weekly CFA Country Fire Authority CFS Country Fire Service COAG Council of Australian Governments CRB Country Roads’ Board CRCS Centre for Risk and Community Safety, RMIT CSIRO Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation FCV Forests Commission of Victoria MFB Metropolitan Fire Brigade MS Multiple Streams Approach NDO Natural Disaster Organisation PCA Productivity Commission of the Australian Federal Government PET Punctuated Equilibrium Theory Stay or Go Prepare, Stay and Defend or Leave Early UFUA United Firefighters Union Australia UN United Nations VAD Voluntary Aid Detachments VDC Volunteer Defence Corps VSD Volunteer Service Detachments iv Abstract This thesis comprises an historical examination of the ‘Stay or Go’ policy of bushfire safety in Australia, with a particular focus on the state of Victoria, Australia. The bushfire management strategy practised in Victoria is unusual, in that public safety advice recommends residents take responsibility for deciding their response to a threatening fire. This approach is based on the belief that it is the most effective way to prevent losses. At one time it was heralded by the United Nations for saving lives and property, and empowering those at risk. In the 1990s, the Victorian Country Fire Authority (CFA) formalised this model into a variety of community training and education programs. It went on to become the national policy position, with the Australasian Fire Authorities Council (AFAC) advising residents to choose whether to ‘Prepare, Stay and Defend’ their house from fires, or to ‘Prepare and Leave Early’, before the fire threatens. This approach, colloquially known as ‘Stay or Go’, stands against public safety strategies in other national contexts where residents are ordered or encouraged to evacuate from fire-grounds, and/or fire-fighting is viewed as the responsibility of the state. This thesis demonstrates that the selection of Stay or Go as policy cannot be properly understood without considering how it emerged historically from a number of different developmental pathways. The importance of such historical analysis is often overlooked in bushfire research in Australia, which has tended to take an individualist, community or psychological focus. This thesis aims to address this narrow focus by providing a thorough background to the development of the Stay or Go policy in the context of Victoria. Understanding the historical development of the Stay or Go policy is particularly pertinent at this time, as it was brought into question after the significant loss of life in the 2009 ‘Black Saturday’ bushfires in Victoria. A Royal Commission into these fires acknowledged weaknesses in the policy’s application, but ultimately found that the evidence and theory underpinning Stay or Go was sound and recommended revision, rather than repeal, of Stay or Go. The Royal Commission’s assessment provides the endpoint of the analysis. The thesis provides a critical analysis of the existing evidence base for Stay or Go, concluding that it is largely unconvincing. Indeed, the argument made in the thesis is that much of the evidence was produced after Stay or Go was adopted as a policy approach. The thesis method is based on the historical narrative and developmental pathways techniques associated with an historical sociological approach. These narratives and pathways are used to present ‘stories’ of the development of Victoria’s fire services and the wider community. These stories help explain how Victoria’s fire problem, fire services and community combine to create favourable conditions for the selection of Stay or Go as public safety policy. These primary pathways are considered alongside other antecedent pathways, v such as major disasters, and unique socio-economic, demographic cultural, technological and political change, and socially-constructed knowledge of bushfire management. Key conjunctural events between these pathways are used to explain Stay or Go’s development, refinement and eventual selection as policy. The historical narrative approach allowed the research to present these pathways as periodised stories that allowed for the argument to be sensitive to the importance of the chronology of events, with this periodization occasionally eschewed in favour of a more thematic representation of the argument. These stories were combined with theories of public policymaking to show that major bushfire-related policy change followed from a ‘fast’ paced chain of linked events. The pace and consequences of these events drew the fire problem – or at least a particular frame or understanding of the fire problem – to prominence, and that the policy ideas considered as solutions were constrained by socially-constructed knowledge and understanding of bushfires, and politics. The stories of Victoria’s fire services and community are told up to the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires, which were identified as the crucial event that led to the formalisation of Stay or Go as Victoria’s public safety policy . At this point the thesis shifts its analytical focus to public policymaking, within the structure of Kingdon’s ([1984] 2013) Multiple Streams (MS) framework for policymaking. Kingdon’s framework explains major policy change as resulting from the coupling of three largely independent streams by policy entrepreneurs exploiting opportunities for change. These are the problem, policy and politics streams, referring to the problems (or definitions/frames of problems) that capture the attention of the public and/or policymakers; the policies qua ideas, solutions and alternatives that are developed in policy communities; and the constraints to policymaking created by the ideological nature of the national government, public opinion, and the feasibility of the policy. The stories provide the background information necessary to understand the streams in Victoria at the time of Ash Wednesday, and thus to explain how Stay or Go comes to prominence in the governmental agenda after the fires. The thesis concludes that the selection of Stay or Go’ as policy reflects the coupling of the dominant frame attached to the Victorian bushfire problem, which was one of asset protection rather than hazard/vulnerability reduction, with militaristic policy ideas, or ‘knowledge’, generated by Victoria’s militarised emergency services and disaster agencies. This knowledge rendered Victoria’s fire services receptive to a Civil Defence-based approach to public safety. Acceptable policy ideas and problem frames were shaped by a politics stream influenced by economic rationalism and individualism, but also expecting state-provided protection from disasters and a long-trend of outmigration to exurban areas that both financially and politically prevented effective vulnerability-reduction programs. In this context, the Stay or Go approach to fires represented a viable coupling of the streams, and was thus selected as Victoria’s public safety strategy in the early-1990s. This finding is in contrast to the representation of Stay or Go as a purely logical and intuitive reading of the evidence, as has been commonly claimed by other researchers and policymakers. vi Chapter 1: Introduction It
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