Bushfires demand answers to tough questions

The 2009 Victorian bushfires have been a horrendous tragedy, taking at least 210 lives, injuring many other people, and destroying property, wildlife and vast areas of our beautiful bushland. Yet there is a further danger in the aftermath of the fires that an unflinching look at their causes and the government's response will be hampered by false charges of political opportunism. It is easy to make such charges as an emotive tactic to evade the hard questions, at the potential cost of future bushfire prevention.

Yesterday, The Age ran an online story by David Rood and Paul Austin in which the Victorian Emergency Services Minister, Bob Cameron, criticised the Opposition regarding its allegation that the government failed to do enough with the early warnings it received about extreme fire conditions.

In advance of any public hearings of the royal commission, the same report included a seemingly supportive comment by the chair of the bushfires inquiry, Bernard Teague, about the government's warnings. My letter in response to the article is published in today's print and online editions (see 'Tough questions on a horrific day'):

It seems a bit rich for Emergency Services Minister Bob Cameron to tell the Opposition to 'get out of the way of the royal commission' regarding its public comments on bushfire warnings when we have the head of the commission, Bernard Teague, seemingly cheerleading those warnings in advance of any public hearings.

In what context did Mr Teague describe the warnings as 'impressive'? Surely it would be more appropriate to await all the evidence before issuing such pronouncements?

No fan of the Victorian Opposition, I nevertheless defend its right to test the Government's actions before and during the fires. Let the Government answer tough questions about whether it did enough with the early warnings it clearly received.

That the media is reporting that government departments will have joint legal representation during the commission is also a worrying sign that the Government is trying to stage-manage the findings at the possible expense of future fire prevention.

Did the Victorian Government do enough? Let the royal commission decide, but let it do so upon a searching examination of the facts and the free testimony of all witnesses, including those from the various government departments involved.

One thing seems clear, comments by the Premier of an expected 'ugly day' are quite possibly even less effective than the vague text messages sent out indiscriminately to Victorians when the worst of the fires had passed.

If you'd like to ask the chair of the royal commission about his comment regarding the warnings, you can send the commission an email. In accordance with the comments policy of this blog, Commissioner Teague is also most welcome to respond directly here.

More coverage of the 2009 Victorian bushfires.

Bushfire text alerts off the mark

Sitting at home in inner-suburban Northcote last night, well clear of any bushfire danger, I received a text message from Victoria Police. The message read as follows:

Extreme weather in Vic expected Monday night & Tues. High wind & fire risk. Listen to ABC Local Radio for emergency updates. Do not reply to this msg.

There was no specific area warning because the messages were apparently not targeted to areas experiencing heightened risk of bushfire. In some cases, this caused alarm unnecessarily; in others, the vagueness of the message might have underplayed the risk in particular local areas where fire was a more immediate danger.

More than three weeks after Black Saturday, and with a targeted national fire warning system apparently stalled by bureaucratic red-tape, the communication of fire danger is still inadequate.

My immediate thought on receiving the text last night was why authorities couldn't use proximity to phone towers in areas of risk as a way of targeting the messages. This indeed is a proposed feature of the national alert system, together with targeting by address through the Telstra-managed national telephone database.

It is also worth asking if there were any warning calls to landlines last night. If not, that signifies a big gap in the coverage. With the message vague and indiscriminately sent, warning the safe and potentially missing those at risk, we need to do better. The fire season is still with us - improvement cannot wait for the long-winded process of a Royal Commission.

More coverage of the 2009 Victorian bushfires

Bushfire Royal Commission must address climate

Releasing the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into the 2009 Victorian bushfires, Premier John Brumby captured the essential purpose of the inquiry - to identify ‘any steps that can be taken to prevent this from ever happening again’.

At first sight, the terms appear adequately broad. They refer to preparation and planning for bushfires by governments - plural - presumably enabling the Commissioners to examine the role of the state and federal governments in the disaster. They also include an examination of current laws and policies that bear on the prevention of ‘bushfire threats and risks’.

Beyond that, as reported by David Rood in The Age, there is ‘a catch-all reference allowing Commissioner Bernard Teague to examine "any matters that you deem appropriate in relation to the 2009 bushfires"’.

Undoubtedly these terms will enable the investigation of a broad range of issues crucial to the prevention of future bushfires - fire-response strategies, communication, forest management and building standards among them. Yet if ‘preparation’, ‘planning’ and ‘prevention’ are narrowly interpreted, the significant factor of climate change - and, in particular, the federal government’s climate policies - will not receive appropriate scrutiny in the search for truth about this disaster.

No doubt it will be argued that the ‘catch-all’ included in the terms is broad enough to bring climate into consideration without it being named. The question is then whether such an important factor in the fires should be left to the discretion of the Commission when, along with other factors, it might have easily been explicitly identified in the terms of reference.

Until recently there has been little searching consideration of climate and the bushfires in the media. Senator Bob Brown made an early statement reported by the ABC about the implications of climate for bushfire risk. Peter Marshall, the National Secretary of the United Firefighters’ Union, wrote an open letter to the prime minister - republished and reported in the media - that called for action on climate to avoid placing firefighters in greater future jeopardy.

Now the Climate Institute has spoken out, presenting strong evidence linking climate change to the fires.

Yet the paucity of immediate coverage from the climate perspective followed comments before the fires by federal climate change minister, Penny Wong, who stated that the unprecedented heatwave conditions experienced in south-east Australia were connected to climate change.

As the fires still raged, the ABC’s Lateline program broadcast an interview with Professor David Karoly, the head of the Victorian government’s own climate change reference group. Professor Karoly said that climate change was ‘loading the dice’ in favour of more frequent and more devastating bushfires in Australia.

In the heart-rending aftermath of the fires, there has been an understandable impulse to avoid the so-called ‘blame game’ in favour of the immediate needs of the victims. Speculations about the causes of the fires - beyond the atrocities of arson and the possible role of powerlines - have tended to be seen as an opportunity to advance political agendas.

It was perhaps this impulse that recently led Shaun Carney, writing in The Age, to lump together as ‘bone-headed’ the ill-informed recriminations against ‘greenies’ for their claimed locking up of forests and accumulation of fuel for the infernos, and anyone daring to suggest that climate played a role in this tragedy.

While he was on the money regarding the lynch-mob mentality towards conservationists being pushed in some media quarters, Carney’s dismissal of the climate perspective was based on a shallow analysis of how climate contributed to these fires.

By the admission of the federal climate change minister and Premier Brumby himself, and the considered views of experts such as Professor Karoly, global warming helped set the conditions for the fires. Yet few suggest that the Australian government bears direct responsibility for these specific fires because of its current climate stance. Attacking this immoderate climate position, Carney misses the central climate point.

For it can indeed be said that Australia’s grossly inadequate targets for carbon emissions, and its broader climate policies, betray a position entirely consistent with more of the same - more frequent and ferocious fires, more devastating loss of human life, property, bushland and wildlife.

The question for Prime Minister Rudd, and for all Australian leaders, is whether such a climate position is morally sustainable given that we have an opportunity to influence and even lead the negotiations for the next international climate agreement, and so to lessen severe global warming impacts over time.

Can we continue to approve new coal mines and coal-fired power stations, value roads over public transport, and line the pockets of the big polluters through a weak emissions trading scheme when the inexorable result will be, among many other catastrophic impacts, more deadly fires?

With increasing reports that the rate of global warming is escalating, Victoria’s bushfires show that the lag between the build-up of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere and the hellish consequences is becoming tragically reduced.

For the Royal Commission into the bushfires to focus squarely on prevention, the terms of reference must allow climate change policies to be fully considered. Premier Brumby claims everyone who has a view will have a chance to put it forward. If so, the vagueness of the terms of reference about climate should not prevent the Commission hearing the evidence-based views of Australia’s eminent climate scientists. The proof, however, will be in the pudding.

Let's hope the Climate Institute, which has already signalled its intention to participate, will be joined by other authoritative voices seeking to engage the inquiry on the urgent question of climate action. The Royal Commission will then be better informed in making recommendations to governments to address bushfire prevention in the broadest sense.

Far from the partisan call of an opportunistic political agenda, the demand for an unflinching investigation of climate change in this Commission is one way we can honour the injured and the dead.

Are political donations driving Victorian development?

As recently reported in The Melbourne Times ('State squashes planning right in bid to save jobs', 11/2/09), the Brumby government is set on 'fast-tracking' major developments by taking them out of the hands of local councils where there is a claimed 'net community benefit', including the creation of jobs in the building industry. A lot rides on how that benefit is (or isn't) defined.

One problem is that, according to a recent report by Royce Millar in The Age based on Australian Electoral Commission figures, the Victorian ALP is a major beneficiary of political donations from big developers. If it's not on for local councillors to vote on developments by developers who have given them political donations, do we really want an ALP flush with developers' cash steamrolling local democratic processes and community concerns? Here's the unedited version of my letter published in today's edition of TMT.

Greg Barber's letter about Greens contributions in Parliament offers an interesting lens through which to examine the Northcote Bowl development.

Barber writes that a private member's Bill he introduced last year aimed to prevent councillors voting on any development where they had received election donations from the developer. Now we have the Brumby State Government giving the green light to the Northcote Bowl development, sidelining a refreshingly feisty council in an undemocratic process.

Yet on 3 February, Royce Millar reported in The Age that, according to Australian Electoral Commission figures, 'corporate donations to Labor are predominantly from firms with lucrative public contracts or planning approvals, or those seeking them'. Millar identified a number of large donations from big developers bankrolling the Victorian ALP. That is to say, development decisions are being taken out of council hands by a government swimming in developers' cash.

While I am not claiming that the developers of the Northcote Bowl are among the ALP's donors, the scale of developer donations to the ALP amounts to inappropriate political influence in favour of bulldozing developments through despite valid community opposition - hardly a 'net community benefit'.

I agree with comments by Rucker Ward Councillor Trent McCarthy reported in TMT that the financial downturn is being used as a pretext to 'push through developments that deserve more scrutiny' (11/2, 'Ire as Brumby bowls residents over'). I look forward to the outcome of Councillor McCarthy's discussions with other Darebin councillors regarding his proposed public meeting on the Northcote Bowl development.

Political tears will not quell fires in a warming globe

With their toll set to exceed 200 lives, Victoria's tragic bushfires challenge politicians not only to mitigate the dangerous global warming that is already locked in, but also to prevent it worsening and making fires and other extreme events ever more likely.

Yet the Royal Commission recently announced by Victorian State Premier, John Brumby, to investigate the fires appears set to focus solely on mitigation, with an admittedly necessary review of fire response strategies and planning laws. This narrow approach fails to acknowledge what could be done to prevent further global temperature increases that will otherwise stoke even more devastating infernos.

Commenting before the fires, Australia's federal climate change minister Penny Wong acknowledged that recent record temperatures reflected climate change. Now Premier Brumby has invoked it as a factor in the disaster. On Monday night, the head of Victoria's climate change reference group, Professor David Karoly, told ABC Lateline that climate change is 'loading the dice' in favour of more frequent extreme conditions. Yet the inadequate climate policies of our leaders are loading the dice in favour of climate change itself.

When Australian governments value cars over public transport, approve new coal mines and coal-fired power stations, when they refuse to harness renewables, and especially when our nation takes to the international bargaining table emissions targets that undermine international action, this undeniably creates the policy conditions for the extreme weather that leads to such monstrous fires.

Without effective climate policy, our leaders may as well cry their political tears on the flames for all the good they will do. We need climate action.

Victorian bushfire spin distracts a traumatised state

I wonder if anyone noticed a trend in evening television advertising in Victoria as the state was first gripped by the disastrous widespread bushfires. With the fires already raging, there came the sudden appearance of the 'fireready' website ad, which I'd never seen before the fires started. Last night, I noticed, on Victoria's channel 9, an increased screening of the government ad urging personal action on climate change (the black balloon ad), but also the ad for the terrorism hotline ('Have you seen anything unusual?' etc.).

In light of Penny Wong's recent comments that record summer temperatures are consistent with climate change, the question is whether this pattern of advertising is genuinely for the purpose of public information, or to manage the potential public perception that part of the blame for the devastation of the fires lies with the Australian and state and territory governments for their inaction on climate (approval of new coal mines, coal-fired power stations, inadequate targets etc.), and their failure to adequately prepare for bushfires given their knowledge of the likelihood of extreme fire conditions.

In this regard, it would be very interesting to examine when the ads in question were booked, and how the pattern of government advertising in this disaster period compares with the normal schedule for such advertising across the major metropolitan and regional television stations.

Though it is indeed expected that our leaders involve themselves in the efforts to address such disasters, the personal involvements of Premier Brumby and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd have been very much in the forefront of the media coverage, with Kevin Rudd quoted this morning as likening the deliberate lighting of fires to mass murder (which is, of course, tragically accurate).

Nevertheless, are the Federal and Victorian State governments using spin in the mass media to distract the public from their own culpability in this tragedy, rather than informing us about what needs to happen to minimise further harm from the fires? This question is all the more urgent given the foreshadowed review of the 'leave early, or stay and defend' strategy following the escalating death toll from the fires. When government communication is overloaded with spin, maybe the real and potentially life-saving messages suffer - with fatal consequences.

Blame personal inaction on climate change, highlight the role of arsonists, and even insinuate terrorism, but turn scrutiny away from government complicity in bringing about the conditions that led to these fires, and may well lead to future ones. That just might be the hidden rationale of the current television advertising campaign, and, if so, it's wrong.

Hamas rockets no licence for Israeli overkill

With the full extent of the damage in Gaza now becoming clear - including more than 1000 deaths of men, women and children - Israel needs to ask itself some serious moral questions about the demonstrable overkill in its campaign responding to the rockets Hamas has fired into its territory.

Today The Age published my letter commenting on another letter ('One man's terrorist is another man's...' by Charles Meo, 22/1) and responding to an opinion piece by Mark Leibler, national chairman of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council in Wednesday's edition of the paper.

Meo took a relativistic view of the definition of terrorism, which I point out is not necessary to disagree with Leibler's defence of Israel's disproportionate and deadly response to Hamas rockets, which have killed a very small fraction of the number killed by Israel's military action.

Here's the letter as published, and then as submitted. My version is probably a bit long for the paper, but I include it here for completeness and interest. First, The Age:

Moral relativism

ONE can disagree with Mark Leibler's defence of Israel (Comment & Debate, 21/1) without descending to Charles Meo's moral relativism in defining terrorism (Letters, 22/1). Terrorists can never be right simply because they win. Al-Qaeda will never be right, even if it ultimately succeeds; the German officers who plotted to kill Hitler were right, despite their failure.

Instead, we can judge actions to be terrorism based on moral reasoning. The firing of rockets into Israel by Hamas is terrorism. Yet that does not give Israel the licence Leibler appears to think it has in launching indiscriminate attacks on Gaza.

Leibler argues that Israel's military action need only be proportional to the objective to be achieved. Yet such action should be proportional to the threat to be averted, and should be directed at combatants. That those combatants are entwined with an innocent Gazan population does not give Israel the right to kill innocents.

Leibler's reasoning that "terrorists cause terrorism, not policies that terrorists dislike" is also flawed. It could well be argued that Israel's oppression of Gazans contributes to terrorism, without ever justifying it.

Now, as submitted:

One can disagree with Mark Leibler's defence of Israel (Opinion, 21/1) without descending to Charles Meo's moral relativism in defining terrorism (Letters, 22/1). Terrorists can never be right simply because they win. Al Qaeda will never be right, even if it ultimately succeeds; the German officers who plotted to kill Hitler were right, despite their failure.

Instead, we can judge actions to be terrorism based on moral reasoning. The firing of rockets into Israel by Hamas is terrorism. Yet that does not give Israel the licence Leibler appears to think it has in launching indiscriminate attacks on Gaza that, by media reports, have killed more than a thousand men, women and children - many of them, and every dead child, innocent.

Leibler argues that Israel's military action need only be proportional to the objective to be achieved. Yet such action should be proportional to the threat to be averted, and should be directed at combatants. That those combatants are entwined with an innocent Gazan population does not give Israel the right to kill innocents - especially when the death toll from Hamas rockets fired at Israel is such a small number relative to those Israel has killed in its current campaign.

Leibler's reasoning that 'Terrorists cause terrorism, not policies that terrorists dislike' is also flawed. It could well be argued that Israel's oppression of Gazans contributes to terrorism, without ever justifying it.

Following the Holocaust, Israel had a widely acknowledged moral authority in its highly targeted pursuit of Nazi war criminals. Its present actions in Gaza are squandering that authority. Had Israel destroyed entire residential buildings housing innocent bystanders to get the monster Eichmann, its pursuit of him would have met with a far different international reception. How can Israel engage in such indiscriminate atrocities to eliminate terrorists living among the civilian population in Gaza?

The analogy with the pursuit of Eichmann is not perfect - elements within the country in which he was hiding (Argentina) were not firing rockets at Israel, yet the point about proportionality and non-combatant immunity should be clear.

I'd been submitting a few letters on this topic, when I came across this interesting post on Margaret Simons' Crikey blog, The Content Makers. The post and comments set a useful context for the Leibler opinion piece, in that they illustrate the lobbying efforts of Jewish community leaders with the editor of The Age, Paul Ramadge.

My two comments on the post set out my views on that. I have nothing against lobbying as such, except to say that potential influences on editorial content ought to be transparent to the paper's broader readership. I also believe that the key issue on which the lobbying occurred - publication by The Age of a poor critical piece about Israel - was a distraction from what should be the primary focus - the atrocities perpetrated by Israel in Gaza.