BROWN, Mr Ian, Member, Independent Bushfire Group

LUSCOMBE, Mr Geoffrey Bruce, Member, Independent Bushfire Group

SHIELDS, Mr William, Member, Independent Bushfire Group

[12:15]

CHAIR: I now welcome representatives of the Independent Bushfire Group. Are you in a position to give us a short opening statement, and I'm open to more than one of you doing that. You've got a comprehensive submission and then some other attached papers. It's a big body of work there. I wondered if you might take us to some of the key highlights of that. Secondly, is there any difference in the work that you've produced from the other sources that we've received information from? I'm not looking for arguments; in the differences is where we're going to learn about the different approaches. I'll open to whichever of you has been deputised to start.

Mr I Brown : I'll start. I'll just give a brief background to who the group is, then we'll introduce ourselves, and Geoff will run through some of our key points, as you've suggested.

The Independent Bushfire Group came together after the 2019 and 2020 fires around the concern that there could have been better outcomes, we feel, for communities, the environment and firefighters during those fires, and also because we feel there is a lack of independent voices to speak on these sorts of issues. People in agencies don't speak publicly about this stuff; they basically can't, and there are very few other people out there that will speak on these matters. We have a combined experience of over 400 years in bushfire and land management, and we advocate for improvements to fire management based on science and evidence—and that's practical improvements to fire management.

I'm an environmental consultant. I spent 20 years with the national parks in national park management, during which time I was involved with over a hundred fires in roles from swinging a rake hoe to instant controller, mainly remote fires. And I was also involved in planning for mitigation programs and fire planning across the region. I worked mainly in the Blue Mountains.

Mr Shields : I'm an orchardist in Bilpin. I've lived there since I was five or six. I went to my first fire when I was about 10. I've been in the Rural Fire Service probably close to 60 years, 30 years as a captain and 16 years as a group officer. I've been the fire ground manager and divisional officer in Bilpin for pretty well every major fire during the 30 year period. As well as that, I've taken strike teams and worked as divisional officer on fires elsewhere, and I implemented a significant number of large back burns and hazard reductions during that period as well.

Mr Luscombe : I've got to say Bill is modest, because he's also a leader in developing community fire planning and education. Before it was a thing, Bill was doing it.

I'll introduce myself. I was 30 years with the park service, 23 years as regional manager, most of those in the Blue Mountains. Throughout that time, I spent a considerable amount of time doing fire management in pretty much every role you can think of from, as Ian said, swinging a rake hoe through to incident controller. I was incident controller for most of the major fires from 1994 through to 2016. I also had a significant role in creating the parks service's policy framework, particularly after the Ku-ring-gai disaster—basically a root-and-branch change to the policy frameworks. I also led a pretty major hazard reduction program, one of the biggest in New South Wales. That's it about me. I'll now move on to the work that we did.

We analysed 11 fires from the 2019 fires—weather analysis, daily fire progression analysis. We looked at the actions to suppress those fires. We then integrated that with our own experience and we interviewed some people that would talk to us, quite often on a confidential basis, about what actually happened on the ground. As Ian said, we wanted to understand what worked and what didn't and why that was the case as a starting point for future fires to reduce the impact of fires, basically under the premise that the best way to reduce the impact is to make them smaller or keep them smaller. We formally responded to the royal commission, to the New South Wales inquiry, to the current inquiry and to several other forums. We've also published our work on the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action website.

As to the principles that underpin our findings, whilst these are New South Wales things and we were particularly operational in the way we went about looking at the fires—looking at what actually happened and what could have gone better and what worked, drawing conclusions from, I guess, an on-ground point of view—many of the principles that underpin that would apply more generally. But I guess we've got to caution that our expertise for all of our members and our research was New South Wales based.

So what did we find? There were seven key findings. We think our 11 case studies are only the start. There's still plenty to learn from the 2019 fires by looking at all the fires across the whole fire season in detail. Secondly, and this is a more routine thing, is to adopt a culture of inclusive and blame-free reviews after all fires and also to establish some sort of oversight role—an inspector-general role that exists in some other states. On initial attack, we would like to see an expanded capacity to rapidly detect and extinguish remote area fires. We think that should be a dedicated, quarantined force just for that purpose. We'd like to see a changed mix of fire suppression strategies when fires get away. We'd like to see incident management be pushed closer to the fireground, using smaller and more locally expert incident management teams. On hazard reduction, we're kind of in furious agreement with just about all the other inquiries: move the emphasis closer to the urban interface. That came up in the last speaker's presentations as well. Better prepared communities was discussed just a moment ago, but it is with the objective that communities understand and put into practice how to make their properties more resistant to fire when it occurs. Then lastly, of course, is more research to diversify and encourage looking into new ideas, particularly around fire suppression—there's not a lot of research on fire suppression techniques—and also to look at some of the existing paradigms and to test them. That's our introduction. I will hand back to you, Chair.

CHAIR: Thanks, Mr Luscombe. I do have a couple of questions. Firstly, on the research point, funding for the National Bushfire and Natural Hazard Cooperative Research Centre was in doubt until some months ago and is now recovered. There's an obvious answer to this question but I wonder if you could flesh it out a bit. Given the scale of the problem and the increasing intensity of these bushfire events, is there enough bushfire research? What would lifting the amount of bushfire research look like? What kinds of institutions would be engaged? What kind of science would be engaged in that kind of work?

Mr I Brown : The bushfire CRC obviously does a lot of good research and so on; there's a lot of good stuff happening. One of our concerns is that many researchers feel that the money would be better spent going direct to researchers. This is what we've heard directly from our discussions with people. The CRC and other groups act as sort of a clearing house. Also, they're fairly tightly under the under the influence, I suppose, of fire agencies. We see it would be an advantage to expand that. For instance, why is there not much research in Australia on suppression? There's virtually none. Why is that the case? We'd like to see that sort of expanded. That's a key area we'd see for expanded research because there's not enough analysis of what things are done to put fires out and control fires—what worked, what didn't work, what made the difference, what conditions do certain strategies work in what they what they work in—those sorts of things. So we would see that as a key research opportunity.

CHAIR: What kinds of research institutions and scientists do that work? What needs to happen in order to secure more research? From what you're saying, there are more competing voices in that field of activity.

Mr I Brown : It's a bit hard to suggest something there because I'm not an expert on research. Do you want to comment on it, Geoff or Bill?

Mr Luscombe : In many ways, our conclusions were not so much around doing more research. We were more interested, I guess, and heard more that there should be greater diversity in the topics. We saw gaps in fire suppression.

CHAIR: Can you tell me what you mean by fire suppression?

Mr Shields : For instance, nobody's ever analysed the efficacy of VLATs and dropping retardant. I mean, there were 24 million litres of retardant dropped. We can't get a figure but it was probably between $50 and $20 a litre. One has to question how effective it is, when the Victorians said some years ago it's a waste of time dropping it on thick forests; it's fairly ineffective. For the amount of retardant that I saw dropped at Bilpin, its impact was negligible in terms of the fire coming through. The federal government is funding a lot of this stuff and it seems to me that there needs to be careful analysis of how that money is spent, because we believe a lot of it was wasted. For instance, I will submit to you a couple of pictures, if I may, and speak to them. This is the Green Wattle Creek fire. These images were taken from the national parks helicopter the morning after the lightning strike. We believe that $100,000 dollars spent then on medium helicopters, ag tractors and light aircraft to suppress that fire initially, and six or eight people winched in on the ground would have had that fire out and been home for dinner. So if you compare that to the overall cost of the Green Wattle Creek fire—the loss of houses, the insurance losses—it's a fraction of the amount.

CHAIR: That was going to be my next question. So when you say 'fire suppression', do you mean activities from when the fire starts that are about reducing the severity of the fire as opposed to direct fire fighting?

Mr Shields : It can be even before the fire starts. If you look at the third document in that lot, it's a clip from flight radar on Monday afternoon. The Parks and Wildlife Service in Western Australia has the largest collection of American 8GCBC aircraft anywhere in the world. They are 50-year old aircraft that are currently being renewed all the time. There are three of them in the air just spotting fires. You can have all of the satellite imagery and all of the radar you want but you need to have someone who knows a bit about fire in an aircraft who can direct resources to it immediately. We're not saying this is the answer but we're saying we need to look laterally at the way we deal with fires in different environments.

CHAIR: It's certainly been the prevailing view that fires in country that is hard to access, that are small fires away from settlements, have been left to burn. That's been the prevailing wisdom up to now.

Mr I Brown : Well, they are not quite left to burn. If I can go back to your first question and clarify what suppression means, it's perhaps not an ideal term but it's a widely used term. It means anything you do to put the fire out or manage it or control it or reduce it or whatever. So it does go back right to the start of initial attack as well; it includes that. It is everything you do to try and put it out. To your question, I don't think fires have been left to burn; in fact, a lot of remote fires are put out. Even in that terrible season, the most remote fires were put out—the ones we knew about. The ones that we didn't know about became big fires.

CHAIR: So it is about satellite work, aerial technology and an aerial fire fighter?

Mr Shields : Yes. But, as well as that, some of those fires were running for days before they were declared. That can't happen. There needs to be the resources dedicated to make sure that doesn't happen again. There are lots of options with this that should be considered. The other article there is an article about Greece; they've got their own dedicated air force. Now I'm not saying that we need to do that here. If you read the article or read anything about them, it's immediate suppression. It's much more cost effective to put an ag tractor or a Dromader onto a fire in the first hour than it is to fly VLAT over it.

Senator RICE: I will go to the your recommendations about community fire planning. Your recommendation 2 says:

The Federal Government should work with the states to greatly boost community fire planning and resilience-building, using ground-up methods as much as possible.

Could you just go into that? When you say 'greatly boost', what sort of extra resources are we going to need if we're going to have the type of community fire planning and resilience building that's required?

Mr Shields : I was involved in a process of community fire planning right back in the nineties. It was something we did at a local level. We were briefing communities at a local level way before it became a thing. As well as that, we both developed the software and established the data so that we could link every property on a spatial database in Bilpin to identify who lived there, if they had any special needs et cetera. Unfortunately, we didn't get a lot of support from the RFS.

Mr Luscombe : The question, though, is about how much is it going to cost? I was greatly encouraged in your chats with the council people, because the very first component of that is to look at it as local solutions to local problems. I appreciate that the scope of your inquiry is Australia wide. But in fact, local government is the right body to lead it. I was also thinking and hearing how the other people answered that question. It's kind of a 'how long is a piece of string' question. The answer to that one is it's a really long piece of string. It really could be quite expensive. Quite often, when we look at resilience, we look at recovery and what people do post event. Without putting a figure on it, you could put your emphasis on planning, preparation and all of the things you do ahead of the fire and help local governments lead that process. It's the process of hardening up houses so that they're more resistant to fire and helping people manage their yards so their yards aren't as flammable. On the bushland around that, how do local government or various land management agencies manage? We've spoken about the hazard reduction work and bringing that closer to those houses. It's the whole integrated process of planning and preparation. I think, once you've done that, you've reduced a lot of your costs around recovery and the community health aspects. Obviously, we haven't got the expertise to come up with a number. But I also think that the number depends on how you approach solving the problem and trying to bring as much of your emphasis into the planning and preparation space as you can. There'll be smarter people who'll tell you how much it costs.

Mr Shields : To be honest with you, I don't think it needs to be that expensive, because a lot of the data is there. We've got all the mapping. We've got all the cadastres, the properties. We've got council data which links to those properties. Then you need to survey people and identify where there are aged or infirm people. There are also models to assess risk as well. We identified in the process 10 houses that were at above average risk. Once you identify them, it's not a case of saying, 'You're going to burn down.' You then look at advising people on how they can change that. They can reduce that risk.

Mr I Brown : Also, there's the longstanding problem, which has been recognised in many inquiries, that we spend a lot of money on response—we don't know what the final expenses of the fires of that season were; we haven't heard a number yet—and not enough on mitigation and preparation. So it's a question of perhaps shifting resources rather than costing a lot more.

Senator RICE: Yes. Do you agree that the task is more than just sending out surveys to people? It's actively engaging communities to be well prepared and well educated, understanding all of the various issues regarding fire management as well as fire response?

Mr I Brown : That's right, yes. There's always been the problem that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. How many communities are going to be prepared to put the effort in? I guess the last season put the wind up a lot of people, so maybe there are more communities now that are willing to put the effort in and which see themselves as exposed. But maybe other communities need to be educated about their exposure to understand they should commit their own personal resources to contributing to community fire planning and so on.

Mr Luscombe : I think local government is the right level of government to lead the implementation and delivery of it, but it shouldn't be yet another thing dumped on local government—'Here's a list of bushfire resilience things to do.' That won't work. They themselves need to be supported and need the expertise to be able to deliver it well.

CHAIR: Yes, all those things are true. You're right. It's the level of government with the least capacity to get the resources to do the work. So there is a significant role for the Commonwealth and the states.

Mr I Brown : Although local governments have the basics of it, they haven't been doing this. The New South Wales RFS has been doing community engagement and so on. So local government's a bit behind the eight ball if we expect them to lift their game on it.

CHAIR: Thank you very much not just for today's discussion. We've got your detailed submission. It's going to be very helpful for us. But also thank you for all of the work that you've done in the field and together on this project.

Mr Shields : If I can, I'd like to hand over this report. This was done on the Kangaroo Island fires. It's the lessons learnt from the island.

CHAIR: Thank you.

Mr Shields : As yet, we've seen no reports in New South Wales of any significance about the fires and lessons learnt. While every report has its deficiencies, we believe that more should be done in that area.

CHAIR: That goes to my question. It is not just scientific research you need. It's that evaluation and learning. And I think I detected some slightly different views about some issues within your organisation. That's the kind of learning we need in order to build better resilience and capacity.

Mr I Brown : Absolutely. We want to see a lot more discussion and debate in the community. You can compare this with the COVID situation we are in: every man, and his dog, is out there commenting on whether the vaccine program is appropriate or not—and many of them are very expert voices. But there is very little of that in terms of bushfires.

Mr Shields : Someone once said that, after a fire, there is a lot of smoke but not much light.

CHAIR: Thanks, Mr Shields. It's always dangerous to say, 'If you've got another thing to say, you can say it'! I think we got off lightly! Thank you to all three of you.