Ms BADGER question to MINISTER for POLICE, FIRE and EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, Mr ELLIS
Last summer, over 100,000 hectares of Tasmania’s national assets were burnt. Last term we asked the Premier to commit to making a review of the fire a public process and to ensure the final report was released to all Tasmanians. That Australian and New Zealand Council for Fire and Emergency Services (AFAC) report was expected to be on your desk in August regardless of the election interruption. With the statewide fire briefing today, there are many questions about the lessons learnt from last year that are held in that AFAC report.
There are also questions on Tasmania’s aerial firefighting capacity, with the additional winch needed in the now scrapped budget. We understand, that with the new era medical tender, Tasmania may be down several helicopters from the call when needed register.
Minister, when will you be releasing the AFAC review into last summer’s bushfires? Further, what are you doing to ensure our available aerial firefighting assets will be able to defend this island in the coming fire season?
ANSWER
Honourable Speaker, I thank the honourable member for Lyons for her question. I pay tribute to our incredible firefighters for the work they did over the summer. This was a very large‑scale event that occurred on the west coast with the west coast complex of bushfires, more than 100,000 hectares burnt and an extraordinary all‑in effort. We had our three fire agencies with the Tasmanian Fire Service, Sustainable Timber Tasmania, our incredible forest firefighters, and the Parks and Wildlife Service. We also had a national and international effort to address those fires. People came from all round the country to help out their mates in Tasmania, just as Tasmanians go interstate and internationally. There were also some New Zealand firefighters, our mates across the Tasman, who did extraordinary work. It was an excellent demonstration of the capability we have here in Tasmania. It was an extraordinary effort for a 100,000‑hectare bushfire to be managed as it was.
In any emergency, particularly of that scale, there are things to learn and we’re looking forward to that continuous improvement that comes from these reviews. AFAC has been working through that. We’re expecting that review to be released very soon and we’re looking forward to working through the lessons we can deliver from that. Parks has been the lead agency for these fires, given that 90 per cent of fires occurred on Parks and Wildlife Crown land, but there are opportunities for all of our fire agencies to continue to learn.
In terms of aerial capability, the aero‑medical tender is a separate issue to that one. We’re looking forward to welcoming the National Aerial Firefighting Centre fleet down this year, just as we did last year. I believe the success of the use of that capability and the way we were able to roll it out in some of the most remote and challenging parts of our state really showed the quantum leap that Tasmania has made in recent years – whether that comes from aerial bombing – water bombing, that is – or from our uplifted winch capability.
I know there were sceptics about the use of winch capability in some of these more remote areas. The briefing that I received from STT and Parks last week at the refresher day really demonstrated that the capability uplift from winching has meant that when we have large scale lightning strikes – like occurred on the west coast with a huge number of lightning strikes, thousands coming through – there are a number of starts that occur in remote areas, often inaccessible by road. We had about 14 key starts that with our winch capability we were able use the rapid weight of attack doctrine to put out at the source.
SUPPLEMENTARY QUESTION
Ms BADGER – A supplementary question, honourable Speaker?
The SPEAKER – I accept the supplementary question.
Ms BADGER – I appreciate that the report is coming soon, when it was supposed to be on your desk in August. I also appreciate the separation from the aeromedical tender. That’s because that process has gone from Emergency Services over to the Health department. Can you please explain what we’re actually doing in Tasmania with our current aerial firefighting here? Are you asking for extra to be flown in from the national fleet? What are we doing here on the island?
The SPEAKER – The last part of your question is really a new question. The first section of it –
Mr ELLIS – I’m always happy to update, particularly in this area. I really welcome the opportunity to brief the Greens on the National Aerial Firefighting Centre fleet. It is a highly successful part of our program. It is very separate to the aeromedical tender. That’s largely a small number of helicopters. It’s particularly a police capability, rather than fire. We’ll be expecting a significant number of aircraft coming through.
There is a bid process that we work through at a national level, because this capability moves around the country to address the different fire seasons that occur at different times around the nation. Typically as Queensland’s fire season is coming off and quietening down, Tasmania is ramping up. We work closely with our federal counterparts and our interstate jurisdictions to ensure that we have the right capability at the right time, just as we do every year. We’ve demonstrated the success of that through the extraordinary effort in response to the 100,000 hectare west coast complex bushfires. I update the House that all of our firefighters –
The SPEAKER – The honourable minister’s time for answering the question has expired.
