Bushfire probe calls for complete rethink

An independent report into the Black Summer bushfires will recommend a revision of hazard reduction methods, land clearing laws and long-term investments.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian. Picture: Gaye Gerard

An independent report into the Black Summer bushfires will be released on Tuesday recommending a revision of hazard reduction methods, land clearing laws and long-term investments in bushfire behaviour after the NSW government endorsed all 76 of its recommendations.

The report, which runs to 450 pages, was handed to the NSW Premier last month and has been the subject of ongoing discussions between various ministerial offices because of its findings, which cross ideological boundaries and call for a rethink of firefighting strategies.

Among the dozens of recommendations is an advising to the government for greater investments in long-term modelling and forecasts of climate extremes, along with studies that track the effects of drought on the intensity and frequency of bushfires in Australia.

“This will include, among other things, tracking and trying to forecast what is happening to ecosystems over decades under projected changes to climate extremes, including fire regime change,” leaked sections of the report state.

It also recommends commissioning “experiments and feasibility studies” for ecosystem adaptation, which would see “high conservation-value rainforest vegetation communities” shifted south “as climatic conditions change”.

Similar recommendations are made to establish NSW “as a major world centre of bushfire research”, and for the creation of a bushfire technology fund to rapidly develop technology and services to assist with fighting fires. The fund, it says, should be modelled along the lines of the Medical Devices Fund, administered by NSW Health.

The report goes further to advise the government to commission research into “extreme fire behaviour”, and to build up “the training capacity in this field”.

“This will improve our ability to understand, model and predict the likelihood of extreme fire behaviour in the landscape and enable targeting of firefighting resources to areas where fires are likely to become most damaging,” the report says.

Arguably its most controversial recommendation, revealed by The Australian earlier this month, is for a rewriting of hazard reduction burning protocols. It recommends that hazard reduction burning be targeted closer to at-risk towns, at times to specific locations, and to ease the current burden on homeowners who want to clear land.

The inquiry was led by former NSW police deputy commissioner Dave Owens and former NSW chief scientist Mary O’Kane.