Black Saturday

In Grantham and beyond, they searched for bodies in battered houses and hot, swampy fields. Clearing debris from footpaths, roads and yards. Eighteen months before, they’d fought the inferno in southern and central Victoria, fighting fires, saving lives, and making endless cups of tea.

They’re Australian volunteers - thousands of them - who left jobs and families to lend a hand to the natural disaster recovery efforts that swept across our eastern states in the past three years.

Their work saved lives and homes. Comforted hearts, and made towns livable again. Actions fit for a reward of huge proportions. But here’s what they got instead. A muddled up medal with serious eligibility issues and a confusing criteria that ignored the efforts of thousands of others. And a bungled up awards ceremony. Seem unfair to you? Well, here’s how it happened.

Continue reading "A muddled medal: Our volunteers deserve more" »

Sometimes it takes a disaster to shake the complacency out of us. To rethink the attitude of ‘she’ll be right’ when clearly things are not right.

So isn’t it time to develop a national masterplan to help guide future planning and development in this country to try and stop the increasing loss of life and damage that the natural forces around Australia unleash?

If you look at the past decade there have many natural disasters, both fire and flood, which have destroyed so many homes. We have seen the fires in Victoria which swept through the hill communities of Flowerdale, Kinglake and Marysville in 2009 destroying over 2,000 homes and taking 173 lives. Back in 1983 Ash Wednesday fires in South Australia destroyed 2,400 homes.

Continue reading "We need a masterplan to deal with worsening disasters" »

Christine Nixon’s testimony in front of the bushfire Royal Commission today could well spell the end of her role chair of the Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction taskforce, and stain a successful career in the police force.

Nixon’s testimony today has drawn a thundering afternoon editorial from Melbourne’s Herald Sun demanding that Ms Nixon be sacked.

The paper pointed out that Nixon has admitted (amongst other things) today that she did not use her phone at all between 6pm and 9pm that evening, did not speak to Assistant Commissioner Kieran Walshe once despite previously saying she had and had not told anyone she had gone to dinner.

Continue reading "We won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore" »

Whatever you make of the revelations that have emerged of Christine Nixon’s actions during the Black Saturday bushfires, she deserves respect for the apology made this morning in Victoria’s Herald Sun newspaper.

Admitting that you are wrong is difficult for people of any profession and given the tumultuous scale of grief and loss of the Black Saturday disaster, her position and decision to make admissions and forthcoming apology is an unenviable one.

As she wrote herself, no-one could have known or prepared for the disasters that ensued on that horrible Saturday a year ago, but her willingness to “report” back on her own actions in such a difficult situation shows not only a deep respect for the Victorian people but a willingness to support them and push through into the future by their side.

Continue reading "Christine Nixon deserves respect amid the firestorm" »

As we observe the first anniversary if the horrific firestorms that ravaged whole communities on Black Saturday, a typically scorching summer has again gripped much of Australia, providing a stark reminder that such dangers are a constant threat for those living in a sunburnt country.

Yet despite an ongoing Royal Commission, a flurry of catastrophic warnings and a flood of big-ticket resources which go right up to a water-bombing jumbo jet, little attention has thus far been given to the vital role that sustainable forestry traditionally played in essential aspects of fire management.

In recent decades, as politicians clamoured to placate the noisy environmental movement, they blissfully ignored the long-standing efforts of a sustainable forestry industry in managing forests, reducing fuel loads, building and maintaining access routes and fighting fires.

Continue reading "Renewable forestry vital to defend against bushfires" »

Our flag flutters from letterboxes, fenceposts and trees along our roads – an enduring and binding tribute to the resilience of our communities in the 12 months since that fateful February day we now call Black Saturday.

Their resilience was tested like never before on February 7, 2009. And it has been severely challenged many times since as they struggle to slowly rebuild lives, homes and entire towns.

The progress has been slow, painfully so, for many communities. A year on Kinglake is still without a petrol station, Marysville still waits for a school and new shops. And people in each community have had to battle ever increasing bureaucracy and building permits based on new building standards that still can’t deliver the required roofing and window materials.

Continue reading "Bureaucracy adds to pain of Black Saturday recovery" »

While I’m not a huge fan of public grieving there are some events that demand a collective emotional response, and it can be very healing.

Public memorial services after the Bali bombings were amazing for their outpouring of emotion while also remaining very dignified and respectful.

The 173 people killed in the Black Saturday bushfires are still being grieved by the whole nation. That’s why I’m uncomfortable the death from Chlamydia of Sam the Koala is being tagged a national tragedy.

Continue reading "Perspective on Sam the Koala" »

The Red Cross does some of the most important work people can dedicate their lives to.

After the Black Saturday bushfires its role in collecting and distributing millions of dollars in aid was extraordinary so they’re a group more than entitled to voice an opinion about its cause.

In a statement this week the organization linked the Black Saturday fires to the now popular notion that it was all the fault of climate change.

The media release promoting the report was headlined: “Be Prepared says Red Cross as climate change boosts world disaster toll” and included the Victorian fires as part of its evidence for this.

This was accompanied the publication of the World Disasters Report and found that in 2008 and astonishing 225,842 people died in natural disasters. Cyclone Nargis in Burma and the Sichuan earthquake in China accounted for 93% of deaths worldwide killing 138,000 and 87,000 people respectively.

But by putting climate change front and centre of the Black Saturday fires Michael Raper, Red Cross director of services and international operations, runs the risk of being intellectually dishonest about the multiple causes of the fires.

Continue reading "It’s no help to link Black Saturday to climate change" »

I like Cate’s economic thinking here:

She ... mentioned the loss of agricultural and tourism industry jobs, adding: “We have the ability to kick start the low carbon economies of the future right when we need to, and that’s now.”

Changing the traditional drivers of economic production is something that I reckon will be fundamental to bringing about serious reductions in carbon emissions across the economy. Agriculture and heavy industry cannot continue in their current form, but making anything happen is going to take enormous will from politicians and consumers, open-mindedness from workers on new opportunities from innovation, and also support from government for workers making a transition between jobs.

On the other hand, I can’t say I agree with Cate on this:

Continue reading "Cate Blanchett is right and wrong on climate change" »