Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Attorney-General. What is the government doing to address the scourge of arson?

Robert McClelland (Barton, Australian Labor Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. I know of and acknowledge the suffering of many people in his electorate, and I commend him and all representatives in this House who have really shown leadership on behalf of their electorates, including most recently today the member for McEwen.

Naturally, my comments are not directed to matters before the courts—I indicate that at the outset—but clearly this inexplicable, most un-Australian and reprehensible of crimes remains a threat to the Australian community in terms of both lives lost and property destroyed. In fact, a recent report by the Australian Institute of Criminology released a matter of weeks before the Victorian disaster, entitled Using crime prevention to reduce deliberate bushfires in Australia, outlined how extensive that problem was. It established that some 13 per cent of bushfires are deliberately lit. It is suspected that up to 50 per cent—half of the fires in Australia—are deliberately lit. The report also indicated, concerningly, that an additional seven per cent are probably attributable to people discarding cigarettes from their car windows—also preventable and a matter that we are looking at. It is estimated that the cost of bushfires to the Australian community each and every year, even before the Victorian tragedy, is about $1.6 billion. I know members of both sides have been concerned about this. Penalties for arson vary from state to state but they can include life in prison. We would think that that is appropriate given the death and destruction that, quite evidently, these crimes can cause.

Clearly, arson is a complex crime that requires a multifaceted and cooperative approach to addressing it. A number of good ideas were highlighted in the Australian Institute of Criminology report. These included greater cooperation between firefighting and law enforcement agencies aimed at crime prevention, reducing access to fuel at hotspots, developing effective neighbourhood watch programs in these areas and pursuing education programs to ensure that young people appreciate the tremendous devastation that their actions, if they commit this sort of conduct, can cause their own communities. All of these are worthy recommendations. Around Australia, as you would expect, a number of very successful programs have been implemented which we can draw upon.

I can announce today that next month, in March, I will chair a meeting of state and territory firefighting and police agencies, including representations from the Australian Institute of Criminology and the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre and other experts from each jurisdiction to bring together expertise in this matter. We will certainly seek to identify immediate measures that can be implemented to prevent arson, and in the coming months we will work at developing and sharing best practice in respect of prevention, education and law enforcement capability in response. I look forward to working with my state and territory colleagues to tackle the scourge of arson that takes such a devastating toll on our community.