COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA Official Committee Hansard HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE RECENT AUSTRALIAN BUSHFIRES Reference: The recent Australian bushfires TUESDAY, 15 JULY 2003 CANBERRA BY AUTHORITY OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES INTERNET The Proof and Official Hansard transcripts of Senate committee hearings, some House of Representatives committee hearings and some joint com- mittee hearings are available on the Internet. Some House of Representa- tives committees and some joint committees make available only Official Hansard transcripts. The Internet address is: http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard To search the parliamentary database, go to: http://search.aph.gov.au HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE RECENT AUSTRALIAN BUSHFIRES Tuesday, 15 July 2003 Members: Mr Nairn (Chair), Mr Adams (Deputy Chair), Mr Bartlett, Mr Causley, Ms Ellis, Mrs Gash, Mr Gibbons, Mr Hawker, Mr McArthur, Mr Mossfield, Mr Gavan O’Connor, Mr Organ, Ms Panopoulos and Mr Schultz. Members in attendance: Mr Bartlett, Ms Ellis, Mr Gibbons, Mr McArthur, Mr Mossfield and Mr Nairn Terms of reference for the inquiry: The Select Committee on the recent Australian Bushfires seeks to identify measures that can be implemented by governments, industry and the community to minimise the incidence of, and impact of bushfires on, life, property and the environment with specific regard to the following. (a) the extent and impact of the bushfires on the environment, private and public assets and local communities; (b) the causes of and risk factors contributing to the impact and severity of the bushfires, including land management practices and policies in national parks, state forests, other Crown land and private property; (c) the adequacy and economic and environmental impact of hazard reduction and other strategies for bushfire prevention, suppression and control; (d) appropriate land management policies and practices to mitigate the damage caused by bushfires to the environment, property, community facilities and infrastructure and the potential environmental impact of such policies and practices; (e) any alternative or developmental bushfire mitigation and prevention approaches, and the appropriate direction of research into bushfire mitigation; (f) the appropriateness of existing planning and building codes, particularly with respect to urban design and land use planning, in protecting life and property from bushfires; (g) the adequacy of current response arrangements for firefighting; (h) the adequacy of deployment of firefighting resources, including an examination of the efficiency and effectiveness of resource sharing between agencies and jurisdictions; (i) liability, insurance coverage and related matters; (j) the roles and contributions of volunteers, including current management practices and future trends, taking into account changing social and economic factors. WITNESSES ADAMS, Mr Harold John Parker, President, Australian Capital Territory Rural Lessees Association.........................................................................................................................................................78 ANDERSON, Mr Michael James (Private capacity).....................................................................................40 ANGUS, Mr Stephen James, Committee Member, Australian Capital Territory Rural Lessees Association.........................................................................................................................................................78 BATES, Mr Thomas William (Private capacity)...........................................................................................40 BOYLE, Mr Michael Dorrington (Private capacity).....................................................................................52 DIETRICH, Captain Edwin Stewart David, Director, Joint Operations, Department of Defence...........93 DOUGLAS, Mr Mark Ralph (Private capacity)............................................................................................52 GARRETT, Mr Paul Robert Francis (Private capacity) ..............................................................................52 GRIFFIN, Dr Tony, Vice-President, Australian Capital Territory Rural Lessees Association................78 HAY, Mr Geoffrey Charles, Acting Director-General, Regions and Bases, National Operations Division, Corporate Services and Infrastructure, Department of Defence .................................................93 HYLES, Mr Geoffrey, Honorary Secretary, Australian Capital Territory Rural Lessees Association.........................................................................................................................................................78 JEFFERY, Mr Valentine Max (Private capacity) .........................................................................................66 KAVANAGH, Mrs Donna (Private capacity)................................................................................................40 LAWLER, Sir Peter (Private capacity) ............................................................................................................1 MENZEL, Mr David Leslie (Private capacity)..............................................................................................26 MURPHY, Ms Donna (Private capacity)........................................................................................................40 SMITH, Mr Peter Anthony (Private capacity) ................................................................................................8 SMYTH, Major Garry Bede, Staff Officer Grade 2 Operations, Corporate Services and Infrastructure-Sydney Centre, Department of Defence................................................................................93 TEMPLEMAN, Mr David, Director-General, Emergency Management Australia ..................................93 Tuesday, 15 July 2003 REPS BUSHFIRES 1 Committee met at 9.02 a.m. LAWLER, Sir Peter (Private capacity) CHAIR—I declare open this public hearing of the House of Representatives Select Committee on the Recent Australian Bushfires. Today’s hearing is the sixth of the inquiry, and it follows the hearing we held yesterday here in Canberra and hearings last week in Nowra, Katoomba, Richmond and Cooma. Before the hearing started yesterday, I placed on the record our thanks to those who were involved in the committee’s inspections on Friday. For the benefit of anyone who was not present yesterday, I would like to reiterate the committee’s appreciation of that assistance. Welcome. Would you care to make an initial comment? Sir Peter Lawler—I come as one whose Duffy home and contents, along with two motor vehicles, were completely destroyed in the January 2003 bushfires. My recovery task force number is DUFF/699. CHAIR—Although the committee does not require you to give evidence under oath, I should advise you that these hearings are formal proceedings of the parliament and consequently they warrant the same respect as proceedings of the House itself. It is customary to remind witnesses that giving false or misleading evidence is a serious matter and may be regarded as contempt of parliament. We do not have a formal submission from you, but you have provided a copy of a submission you made to another inquiry. We thank you for that. Would you like to make some opening remarks? I will then give the committee an opportunity to ask questions. Sir Peter Lawler—I am grateful to have been invited to appear before your committee and I salute your remit, as I feel that it is an extremely important one. Mr Chairman, you have mentioned that you have a copy of my submission. It is a submission to the McLeod inquiry, the ACT government inquiry into the operational response to the bushfires. But, because of the degree of commonality of subject matter, I thought it proper to send copies of that submission for information and record to your committee and to the ACT coronial inquiry, and I have done so. My submission to the McLeod inquiry concerns the Canberra scene and principally the failure of responsible authority to provide on 18 January a timely and effectively delivered response and warning to households likely to be threatened by the oncoming bushfires—a warning to be ready to evacuate. I have recognised other wider issues, but I have not attempted to canvass them. Some of them are amongst the matters that are very much the concern of your committee. I mentioned those wider issues on the first page of my submission to the McLeod inquiry and I refer to them again on its final page. You will see that I have summarised how 18 January played out for my wife and me and our overseas guest at No. 32 Eucumbene Drive, Duffy. I have done this in order to illustrate how, until the very last minutes, we remained in the dark about the level of threat to our lives and property. In the light of that, I pose a series of questions seeking an understanding of exactly how this failure to warn occurred and what might be done to strengthen administration and governance, with regard to bushfires or any other area of basic community care, to avoid a repetition of a melancholy sequence such as wrought havoc in our lives in January. BUSHFIRES BUSHFIRES 2 REPS Tuesday, 15 July 2003 I await with interest the findings of the McLeod inquiry, of your committee, of the coronial inquiry and of other inquiries that are concerning themselves with this whole issue. If you wish me to elaborate on any aspect of my submission, I am willing to respond