Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans’ Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Bingo—bingo! The member for Nicholls is spot on, because these were the skilled workers in the bush with the equipment that we relied on to keep us safe. In an act of absolute political bastardry—ideology gone mad—the Labor-Greens in Victoria combined to shut down the native hardwood timber industry, and our communities are less safe as a direct result of that policy decision. So I call on the Victorian parliament—the Liberals and the Nationals, I wish you all the best in the lead-up to next election—if you get that opportunity, restore the native hardwood timber industry to help keep our communities safe.

Now, finally, I want to reflect just on one other point. I do admire locals who manage to maintain their passion and enthusiasm for practical environmental management, even in the face of all this hostility from the Labor-Greens in Melbourne. And one of those locals is a fellow by the name of John Mulligan. John is 94 and he's just launched his new book called Our Mismanaged Forests, which draws on his decades of experience of living and working in the bush. Now, John is a survivor of the 1939 Black Friday bushfires. He's seen, right throughout East Gippsland, all the major fire events which have impacted our community over the nine decades of his life. In his book he highlights again the consequences of accumulated fuel loads and the lack of consistent fuel management and fuel reduction burns in our community, and also the importance of adopting some of the practices of the Indigenous people who were here for thousands of years, long before whitefellas turned up, and who were using firestick technology to actually reduce the fuel loads. So John Mulligan advocates for communities to learn to live with good fire in the environment as a means of reducing the risk of these mega-fires which do so much damage.

In closing, I thank the volunteers. I thank those who've done so much to help our community recover. But I call on the Victorian government to please do more to reduce the fuel load on public land in Victoria.

See this speech in context