Ms O’CONNOR – Thanks, minister. I’m going to ask the first question as the member for Hobart with a particular concern for the fire safety of this city, which sits in the foothills of the Wellington Park. As you know, Minister, the Wellington Park has a complex mosaic of management around it, coordinated through the trust, but as I understand it, Parks has a primary and core fire-management responsibility for the Wellington Park. I don’t know if you’ve had the opportunity to listen to a briefing from Professor David Bowman about the risk to Nipaluna/Hobart as a result of a catastrophic bushfire. What sort of work is Parks doing in the Wellington Park to mitigate fire risk to Hobart? In answering that, can you give us an indication of the level of resourcing that Parks is putting in to the Wellington Park at this point?
Mr DUIGAN – Thank you. I can say that in terms of the entire scope of Parks’ holdings, it is fire that gives me the most concern. I think we have seen in recent times, and whether that’s indicative of what we will see in the future or whether this is a period of time we’re going through, but we have some challenges in fire. I would thoroughly commend the work Parks has done preparing to meet that challenge, of embracing technology to meet that challenge, satellite imagery and mobile camera monitoring and all of those things.
The understanding that the only viable method of curtailing those fires is to get to them early and and fight them while they’re small fires. Because on the west coast when they get away, they’re away and there are obviously a number of landscapes there that are not adapted for fire. Fire in there would be a very big problem.
Mount Wellington, Hobart, as evidenced in 1967 is a fire prone place. It was then, it remains so. We like to live amongst the trees and it’s a great place to live, but it’s a challenging place to make safe from that particular risk. I have sat out in my boat off Opossum Bay on a 40° day and looked back at Hobart and you can see the oil shimmering off the gum trees and if ignition occurred, good luck with that.
CHAIR – Not good luck, bad luck.
Mr DUIGAN – With that said, I will ask Sophie to speak in more detail on how parks –
Ms O’CONNOR – Activities and resourcing in the Wellington Park specific to the fire risk mitigation imperative.
Mr DUIGAN – Indeed, because of the scope and scale of Parks, whether the resourcing is put where it’s needed and in terms of specific resources that stay in one place to meet one threat is not, as I understand it, the typical way. I will leave it to Sophie to speak to those things.
Ms O’CONNOR – Before we go to Sophie. Yes, and Hobart has been identified as one of the most bush fire prone cities in the world. It’s called a wildland urban interface which puts a special responsibility on the land managers in and around Hobart to properly resource and make sure you’re scientifically grounded in your fire mitigation activities.
Mr DUIGAN – Again, while we like to live amongst the gum trees, there will be risk.
Ms O’CONNOR – I understand that, and I agree with you on that, but as you would know minister, what the science is telling us, the national and state climate risk assessments, is that that bush fire risk has increased. That the bushfires are likely to be more frequent and more intense, and we’ll see things like a pyrocumulus potentially barrel over the top of Kunanyi and so what we’re trying to establish here is how seriously Parks takes its responsibility in the Wellington Range.
Mr DUIGAN – Absolutely. That is contemplated frequently.
Ms MULLER – Parks is participating in work that’s been led by the Wellington Park Trust. They have received funding last year to develop a fire management plan for the park. That work is being led by TFS in conjunction with the trust as part of a tenure blind bush fire management planning approach.
As part of that work, three strategic bush fire management plans have been developed and they each address bush fire impacts to different human settlement areas. Option for treatment include planned burns, fuel breaks and fire trails, both strategic and tactical.
The areas of focus were based on TFS risk mapping, which was predominantly around the urban areas with a variety of tenure arrangements. We’ve been participating in these discussions as part of this work as it’s unfolded with partner agencies including councils, STT and TFS. A key focus has been to ensure the vegetation mapping is accurate to inform management actions, including both the treatability and the feasibility of treatability of the land, which will then determine and inform priority actions in terms of burning and upgrade of fire trails.
Around the middle of this year, we were involved in a flight that was arranged by TFS to identify priority areas of treatment and are going to do that ground truthing of the mapping. We’re continuing to support this work, including the operationalisation of those plans that are under development.
In terms of sort of broader fire resources, there has been a strong investment in our resource capability across Parks – not specifically with regard to the trust itself necessarily, but certainly more broadly investing in technology to assist us to do early detection. We know that there’s increasing risk and threat with climate change, with dry lightning playing an increasing role in terms of fire emissions in the landscape. Ensuring we’re investing in that technology and that capability to do early detection and a rapid response is a key strategy and focus of ours.
Ms O’CONNOR – Thank you. Can I interrupt there to try to get to the bottom of activity in the Wellington Park? What I hear from Sophie is that at the moment there’s planning happening, there’s meetings, there’s conversation, there’s planes going up, there’s photographs being taken. In terms of actually doing that management treatment – and notwithstanding what you’ve said about waiting for vegetation mapping; there’s already a set of vegetation mapping through the TASVEG system. What work is actually happening on the ground in the park? Summer is a month away. What’s happening to make sure that community safety and bushfire risk in the Wellington Park is mitigated to the greatest extent possible at this time?
Ms MULLER – We maintain the East West fire trail, which is a key strategic fire trail in the area. We have been undertaking remediation works for that trail over the winter period. That is an example of an on-the-ground activity that we’ve had as part of our business as usual. There would be a range of business-as-usual activity that Parks do to address fire risk in addition to that broader sort of strategic review that’s being led by TFS.
Ms O’CONNOR – As you know, minister, the window for controlled burns is narrowing. We are seeing that happen around the world, and as a consequence, we can rely less, for example, on very large air tankers coming in from Oregon or California to help us. How much has it impacted on Parks in its fire management work, to have that burning window narrow to where it is now? It will continue to narrow. How much has that changed the way Parks deals with fire management issues?
Mr DUIGAN – We typically would see seasonality and year-on-year fluctuations in the window. It’s either an acceptable time to burn or it’s not. The relative humidity is either right or it’s not. Parks typically has a schedule of burns it would seek to do. Some years it gets a long way through its burns, other years it doesn’t. But the important thing is to keep filling that schedule.
How you go about burning Wellington Park is a challenge – close to a large population centre, and the risk that comes with that. Parks tends to do, obviously, those landscape scale burns further away from population centres. TFS does the ones more likely to be close to lots of people. It’s a job of work for the department, and we have great expertise in that area to do it.
I am an unambiguous supporter of planned burns and fuel reduction. It works. But, you know, there are divergent views there, so it’s not always popular. It’s not always what people want you to do, but in terms of how you go about doing it – Sophie, obviously you know more-
Ms O’CONNOR – I will just close off this batch of questions with this. As minister, do you understand the risk to the City of Hobart, the capital city, which is a wildland-urban interface city – where we’ve checked with emergency services, there’s no evacuation plan for Hobart, just so you know. Do you understand the risk, and that, as Parks minister, you have some capacity here to make sure that we’re as prepared as we can be and this population in the capital city and at the same template, obviously, for community safety all over the island, but you understand the nature of the risk because of Hobart’s location and the kind of city that it is.
Mr DUIGAN – Yes, I do.
Ms O’CONNOR – Parks has responsibility in the Wellington range.
Mr DUIGAN – That’s an interesting point. There is a need for a responsibility for people who live in Hobart, in this very fire-risky city, and where you live on a hill which is populated with houses and gum trees on a day where the fire-danger rating goes to catastrophic, there is a good case for people who live in those kind of places to go elsewhere.
Ms O’CONNOR – I hear you.
Mr DUIGAN – We can’t come in and clear the hillside.
Ms O’CONNOR – Of course not, but fire management is something that requires a legislative response, potentially a regulatory response, and resourcing, and so while people can take individual responsibility for their own circumstances and the Tasmanian Fire Service is able to do some work in the community on that.
Mr DUIGAN – All of our agencies work together.
Ms O’CONNOR – I am talking about in the city, urban environments. I know there will be other questions, and I have other questions, I just hope I trust that you recognise there’s a unique responsibility for Parks and its firefighting capacity and its land-management work to make sure that as much as possible in the Wellington range is done to mitigate fire risk.
Mr DUIGAN – I think that is true, and I’d be interested in your views, but I think the wider risk remains irrespective of that. You can be as prepared as you want to be, but on the right day, on the right circumstance, Hobart presents a very challenging circumstance.
Ms O’CONNOR – Professor David Bowman and his work is clear; there are things that you can do to lower the intensity of a catastrophic fire.
Mr DUIGAN – Yes, anything further to add there?
Ms MULLER – Probably the only thing I might add is that I think that the fire team have an exceptional approach in terms of adaptive management and connection with researchers such as David Bowman and others. I hold an annual forum where all practitioners come together with the research sector.
There is very much a kind of learning adaptive approach to fire management in particular, as you say those windows for fuel reduction burns and considering how we adapt and plan around that. As the minister mentioned, we kind of do that through having a large number of fuel reduction plans ready to go at any one time and pivot to where that opportunity is in terms of the right conditions.
I would say that, from observation in the role in the last two years, the teams are exceptional at connecting with peers more broadly as well, across a range of jurisdictions and coming together and learning and adapting.
Mr DUIGAN – Yes, there is a great level of collaboration among our services. It’s often recognised by people who come and fight fires with us, and it’s a point that they raise often. In terms of resourcing, and that’s an important point that you raise, and I wouldn’t mind it put on the record in terms of Parks’ resource and capability in terms of fire.
Ms O’CONNOR – What resourcing is in the Wellington range?
Mr DUIGAN – If there’s a fire there, as much as we can get.
Ms MULLER – We have 160 personnel, who are trained to fight fires in remote areas, so that’s our arduous firefighters, and as well as our moderate firefighters. These numbers include the seasonal firefighters that have recruited to best numbers for the fire season to assist with planned burning. In addition, we’ve got 60 people who are trained to undertake roles in the incident management teams.
CHAIR – Just on that, obviously with the impacts of climate change, we’re seeing areas of the state like the west coast, places that are dryer than you’d normally expect. We’ve got some very important heritage assets in that area. People are important, yes. So are these for our tourism, for a whole heap of other reasons. We’ve seen fire get into these areas. We saw Queenstown under threat. It’s amazing how close that came, that fire, to houses in town.
When you talk about resourcing, obviously if you want to resource it so you could deal with every problem that happened, you’d have hundreds of workers. Minister, do you feel confident you’ve got enough to deal with the changes? West coast is isolated, you would have to have a lot more arduous – that was an interesting word – firefighters. I know some of these people, they’re very amazing. Taking into account the impact we’re seeing because of climate change, does it need reviewing? Do we need to have another look at it, or are you confident we’ve got the resources that we need to respond?
Mr DUIGAN – Look, I would say that I’m confident that we have the resources we need, whether they be the resources we hold in the state or whether they be resources that come from elsewhere and, of course, those resource-sharing arrangements that are in place for personnel, for aircraft, for a whole range of things.
These are things – circumstances that tend to happen in the Northern Hemisphere in one part of the year and in the Southern Hemisphere in another part of the year. I understand that. Tasmania often plays a role – through the course of this year, we’ve sent our firefighters to the Northern Hemisphere repeatedly and have seen that in the recent west coast fires.
The resourcing piece I think is pretty well‑coordinated. I don’t think we’ve gone begging for resources to this point. In terms of looking and protecting some of the values – and we were talking about LIST map before and seeing someone adroit at managing LIST map. If you go into one of those incident control centres where the firefighting is happening in real time, being monitored by remote cameras or satellites or whatever, and there is overlay of threatened –
CHAIR – Vegetation, et cetera.
Mr DUIGAN – Vegetation types and important heritage areas. You can lay down – if you’ve got a big water bomber you. This year we did put retardant into the TWWAH. No one does that –
Ms O’CONNOR – It’s full of BcBs, isn’t it?
Mr DUIGAN – No-one does that –
CHAIR – Unless there’s no other option.
Mr DUIGAN – – for their own entertainment. These are things that call for pretty decisive measures.
Yes, I’m confident, but we don’t just sit back and say, ‘That was good. We’re all happy with how that went.’ Obviously, we review these things and their own learnings out of that. The AFAC review spoke highly of Parks particularly.
Sophie, you might have something to say around how we’re situated and what the learnings out of something like that are.
Ms MULLER – I guess the AFAC was a really thorough, external process that assessed the response to the west coast fire complex, both in terms of preparedness and also their response undertaken throughout that fire campaign. While there are a number of recommendations in that, it was very positive in lots of ways in terms of recognising the work of the coordination across the three agencies, but also particularly a lot of the work that Parks has done. We haven’t talked about which crews, for example, on the important role they played in terms of being able to respond early to – I think there were 24 admissions on that day of the lightning strike. As a result of our capacity to get those arduous firefighters on the ground quickly, they were able to put out those fires pretty quickly and respond rapidly. I think that that review, while it had some recommendations that we are working through, it certainly is complementary in terms of the work of the Parks service in fire responses.
Ms O’CONNOR – I’m interested – some years ago, I think it was the 2016 fires that ripped through the TWWAH as well, we were provided with a briefing. We went into the incident control room and then we got a briefing from Parks. One of the things that was shared with us at the time was mapping that Parks had done on the frequency of dry lightning strikes over, I think it was 50 years, maybe, at that time; is that data still available and could it be shared again? I mean, I’m happy for you to take that on notice, minister. I wouldn’t have thought it was particularly sensitive, but in terms of understanding the picture of the increased risk it was very telling.
Mr DUIGAN – Certainly, on that day where we had those ignitions on the west coast, I’ve seen data for that particular day where there are thousands of dry lightning strikes across the landscape.
CHAIR – They also land on metal sometimes –
Mr DUIGAN – Yes.
CHAIR – like metal in the rock, it sends sparks everywhere.
Ms O’CONNOR – So happy if we just put in a request for that data for the committee?
Mr DUIGAN – Sure. Yes.
CHAIR – How often is that updated, that sort of data?
Mr DUIGAN – I don’t know where that data lives, and I’m not sure that anybody in the room would necessarily know that, but we can have a look.
