The irony is that in the process of cost saving on government land they have shifted the costs to the suppression industry and created a monster that I fear, like in the USA, is unstoppable.
Unless government land managers are made responsible for all suppression costs on their land then there is absolutely no incentive to undertake management that will reduce the hazards and make suppression cheaper and easier. The volunteers are caught up in this mess and are quite cynically used to avoid criticism of government actions.
After five million hectares of Australia were incinerated in 2003, including the alpine megafires that eventually caused devastation in Canberra, a Parliamentary Select Committee of Inquiry heard a consistent message right around Australia. Chairman Gary Nairn reported that "there has been grossly inadequate hazard reduction burning on public lands for far too long; local knowledge and experience is being ignored by an increasingly top heavy bureaucracy".
In NSW, RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons has been in charge of this unstoppable monster for the last 12 years, while sustainable land management has been not only neglected, but prevented. The RFS has been increasingly rewarded for the inevitable failure of emergency response to unstoppable megafires, They receive more funding after every disaster. The measure of success has become minimal loss of human life. Fitzsimmons has been responsible for a massive expansion of the RFS airforce. Hugely expensive and ineffective water bombing operations during disasters have become the norm. This has been at the expense of cheap, efficient and safe, aerial delivery of sustaining fire to maintain healthy landscapes and prevent disasters.
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Premier Gladys Berejiklian has announced that Fitzsimmons will become our Commissioner of Resilience. This is a sad indictment of the state of the government, but a triumph of Orwellian Newspeak!
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