Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction) Share this | Hansard source

It is a great privilege for me to stand up and back this motion by the member for Casey on the Black Saturday bushfires. It was a day that those of us who were in Victoria will always remember—the worst conditions that you could possibly imagine. And we were warned, but I don't think anyone could have quite anticipated how bad conditions were going to get on Black Saturday. We saw that play out, and it played out in particular around the north and north-east of the state with horrific consequences.

We heard the member for Casey detail what was done and in particular the heroic efforts of our CFA volunteers to try and protect communities. But, sadly, there was significant loss of life and significant damage to property and to livestock. Many of those scars we are still overcoming today. I drove through Alexandra recently, and once again it has been the heart of another devastating fire, which, sadly is part and parcel of living in regional and rural Victoria. That is why it is so important we're doing everything we can to back and support our wonderful CFA volunteers.

What I'd like to do today is put a little bit of focus on one other fire that occurred in my electorate on Black Saturday and just commend everyone who was involved in putting that fire out. There was a fire in Pomborneit in my electorate, and the local CFA did an extraordinary job there. But the fire at Coleraine on Black Saturday was also a significant fire. It burnt about 700 acres. One home and significant livestock were lost and, sadly, one individual was severely burned. For that individual, the scars of that day continue up until this very day. But, if it weren't for the absolute heroic efforts from all the volunteers on that day, that Coleraine fire could have been significantly worse. As a matter of fact, what we saw in the north and north-east of the state very much could have played out in the west of the state of Victoria. It didn't because of the ability of local volunteers but also farmers who were able to bring their own firefighting apparatuses. Many farmers in western Victoria now have their own trucks and their own ability to fight fires. They fund that themselves. This is not a debate where we want to go into politics, but funding our volunteer CFA has never been more important in Victoria. It's something that we need to see happen more and more. What they did on Black Saturday in 2009 was quite extraordinary.

To the east of Coleraine, you have the town of Hamilton, with a population 8,000. South—and it's a fair way south—you hit Heywood and Portland. North, you run into other population bases. So this fire had the potential, if it got out of control, to do enormous damage. Yet the way that the local CFA volunteers were able to hit that fire, protect the community of Coleraine, with a population between 1,500 and 2,000, and also make sure that there wasn't the damage that there potentially could have been was extraordinary.

One of the things with the Black Saturday royal commission that the communities on the west fought for was to make sure there was recognition of what had occurred in the west of the state and, in the end, to be able to point out—because it was a fault with one of the Powercor pieces of infrastructure that led to the fire—the need for us to continue to upgrade our power infrastructure to ensure that these types of fires don't happen again.

The Black Saturday bushfires royal commission handed down important recommendations. One of the things that they pointed to was the need for controlled burning to occur where it can every single year, and yet that has failed to happen. It also pointed to making sure that our CFA volunteers have the fighting equipment that they need, and sadly that is deteriorating too.

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