John Barilaro calls for volunteer fireys to be paid during mega-blazes
The government must adopt a different approach to bushfire management following this year’s hellish Black Summer, says Deputy Premier John Barilaro, including ordering people to abandon their properties. TELL US WHAT YOU THINK.
NSW
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Volunteer firefighters should be compensated during future mega-bushfires and residents told to abandon threatened homes rather than stay and fight, according to NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro.
The state government must “take lessons away” from the catastrophic Black Summer and adopt a different approach, Mr Barilaro said, after 25 people lost their lives in NSW and thousands of properties were destroyed.
“We need to think about what advice government gives to residents about staying or leaving their homes,” Mr Barilaro, the minister responsible for disaster recovery, said.
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“The fires which burnt through this state last summer were unprecedented mega-fires, different from anything we’ve seen before.
“These fires were ferocious and uncontained, and there are ways in which we should anticipate and manage mega-fires differently.”
Mr Barilaro said reimbursing NSW Rural Fire Service volunteer firefighters, unable to work as they battled blazes for months on end, should also be on the table.
“Our volunteer firefighters were fighting these fires for not days or weeks but for months, so we need to look at how they should be compensated,” he said.
“If you’re asking individuals to give up running their businesses or work for two or three months, you can’t expect them to as volunteers.”
Mr Barilaro, who leads bushfire recovery efforts, said the state government must consider how people could better prepare and manage their own properties, to protect themselves.
“It’s often said that the worst neighbour you can have is a national park — we need to learn about how to manage land better, no matter its tenure,” he said.
The state government is expected to respond to the findings of an independent inquiry into the Black Summer bushfires by the end of the month.
The inquiry, led by former NSW Police deputy commissioner Dave Owens and former NSW chief scientist Mary O’Kane, has made 76 recommendations after investigating the causes of the fires, and the state’s preparation and response.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian was handed the report two weeks ago and tasked Police and Emergency Services Minister David Elliott with overseeing the response.
Mr Barilaro said: “What I don’t want to see at the end of this is that we just get these recommendations and as typical governments will just go ‘noted, noted, noted, noted’ and put it on a list of things to address over the next year, two, three, 10 years — that’s not going to be accepted.
“The whole east coast, from the bottom of Victoria to the top of Queensland, was always on fire and I think the Australian public are saying we want you to manage land better.”