NSW seeks answers on bushfire causes
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian will announce an independent inquiry into the bushfires which ravaged large sections of the state.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian will announce an independent inquiry into the catastrophic bushfires that ravaged large sections of the state, killed nearly two dozen residents, and left thousands of people homeless.
The inquiry will be headed by former NSW Police deputy commissioner Dave Owens and professor Mary O’Kane, chairman of the Independent Planning Commission and former NSW chief scientist. They have been given six months to investigate a substantial list of factors that cover the causes of the fires, the preparation and planning, the community’s response, the available science, as well as the resourcing, co-ordination and communication systems that were operating during the fires.
The inquiry will also canvass the suitability of current laws and, not least of all, the politically charged issues of weather, drought, climate change, fuel loads, hazard reduction and human activity, all issues that have driven the debate on how to respond to future crises.
Mr Owens and Professor O’Kane are expected to visit bushfire regions to take evidence from first responders and victims. Their inquiry will run in tandem with a Victorian inquiry.
“Professor O’Kane and Mr Owens have an extraordinary breadth and depth of experience into the matters they will be examining. I am confident their inquiry will be comprehensive and robust,” Ms Berejiklian said, adding submissions from the public would be accepted within days.
Compared with similar bushfire inquiries and considering the scope of the damage caused, the time frame provided is brief.
An independent review of the Bega Valley fires of March 2018, which burned through 1250ha and destroyed 65 homes, took 183 submissions from members of the public and stakeholders. No lives were lost during those fires.
By comparison, the fire events being examined during this inquiry have caused or contributed to 21 deaths, destroyed or damaged more than 2000 homes, and have burned millions of hectares of land. The time frame is short because of a need to implement the inquiry’s recommendations ahead of the next bushfire season.
The announcement of the inquiry comes as the NSW Rural Fire Service confirmed it had contained the fatal Green Wattle Creek Fire, which killed RFS volunteers Geoffrey Keaton and Andrew O’Dwyer on December 19 last year.
It also comes a day after the Morrison government flagged a strengthening of constitutional and legal powers to allow prime ministers to declare national disasters and call in the defence force during a crisis, rather than waiting for the states to ask for help.
Ms Berejiklian would not comment on the announcement, but her Victorian counterpart, Daniel Andrews, said constitutional changes were not required, particularly when his state embraced defence force assistance earlier this month .
“This does not require constitutional change — just co-operation between the states and the commonwealth,” a spokesman for Mr Andrews said.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk echoed those remarks. “If there are ways things could be improved, we’re all ears,” a spokesman for Ms Palaszczuk said. “But Queensland has a really good track record when it comes to dealing with natural disasters. We already work very, very closely with defence forces.”
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