Bushfire crisis: fire chief’s city slicker claims not relevant, says Campbell Newman

Campbell Newman has blasted one of the nation’s prominent former fire chiefs for blaming intense bushfires on climate change.

Former Queensland Fire and Emergency Services commissioner Lee Johnson. Picture: Supplied

Former premier Campbell Newman has blasted a prominent former fire chief for blaming intense bushfires on climate change, saying Lee Johnson never raised the issue when he headed emergency services in Queensland.

“He had a solid two years where he could have come to me and ­expressed, one on one, these views that he’s now espousing. I have no recollection of him doing so,” Mr Newman said.

Mr Johnson, commissioner of Queensland Fire and Emergency Services when Mr Newman led the state, was one of the six former fire chiefs who accused Scott Morrison this week of abandoning bushfires raging across the country and offering “no moral leadership” on climate change.

As part of the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action group funded by Tim Flannery’s Climate Council and spearheaded by former NSW fire chief Greg Mullins, Mr Johnson said firefighters were seeing the effects of climate change “first-hand”.

He called for a national strategy to tackle extreme weather linked to climate change, saying the Brisbane River flooding he ­witnessed as fire chief in 2011 ­amounted to an “inland tsunami”.

“I can feel the tsunami of public opinion rolling on to Canberra,” Mr Johnson said.

Mr Newman, Queensland LNP premier from 2012-15, challenged Mr Johnson’s expertise on bushfires and climate change, saying he found it curious all his group “seem to be urban guys”.

“Mr Johnson’s career was particularly about urban firefighting,” Mr Newman said. “There is a world of difference between urban and rural firefighting. Urban firefighters are about spraying lots of water and chemical foams and stopping fires, whereas rural firefighters know they have to use fire as a tool, in terms of hazard-reduction burns and backburning.”

Mr Newman said he never recalled Mr Johnson saying, as fire commissioner, that the state was not doing enough hazard-­reduction burning or other land management. As premier, Mr Newman said, he was also very concerned about tensions between urban, unionised firefighters under Mr Johnson’s leadership and rural fire services.

“Behind the scenes, city-based firefighters were trying to exert control operationally, in a quite profound way, over the rural and volunteer fire services. They pushed back,” he said. “So here we have this schism between urban and rural firefighters, and Lee Johnson suddenly jumps into this area on bushfires … I would prefer to hear the views of experienced volunteer rural firefighters.”

He accused Mr Johnson of “hysterical nonsense” in calling Brisbane floods an inland tsunami when records showed much worse events. “When Lee Johnson starts talking about weather, he needs to do his homework,” he said.

Mr Newman said he felt compelled to “cry foul” because bushfires had resulted from poor land management, not climate change.

“I am sick and tired of people like Mr Johnson telling people from their positions of trust and respect in the community that things are unprecedented when they are not,” he said.

Emergency Leaders, which has grown to 29 former fire chiefs since its formation in April, says it will convene a national summit early next year to devise a bushfire strategy with strong emphasis on ­climate change. The former fire chiefs, almost all with distinguished careers involving urban brigades, want an immediate end to burning fossil fuels.

Mr Johnson left his Queensland fire chief’s position in December 2014 following a report on the “hostile” work environment for women in the service.

Report author Margaret Allison found evidence of sexual harassment and bullying, and “systematic problems” in dealing with them.