On the Kangaroo Island Council public meeting of 2013.02.13, eight bushfire safety motions, aiming for more community input, improved communication, a more responsible Council and improved fire safety, were all voted down. Despite clear expert opinion indicating it would be very risky to continue not doing anything effective.
This totally negative outcome for logical and well thought of motions is somewhat bizarre, all the more so considering that two years earlier, on 2011.02.09, a motion by councillors Walkom and Denholm directing the CEO to tackle these same fire issues, was carried, thus becoming legal and binding on Council to implement. It stipulated:
“KI Council to liaise with the Country Fire Service, the Bushfire Management Committee, the Native Vegetation Council as a priority to clarify and define the responsibilities for each body so that safe precinct classifications are achieved for all communities, [and] that all parties be advised that KI Council needs clear guidelines at an early date to allow budgeting for any expenditure in the 2011/12 financial year.”
It is worth noting though that this resolution appears never to have been complied with, despite the injunction “as a priority“.
On the matter of these bushfire safe precincts, it is also worth noting that on 2011.03.08, then Emergency Minister Kevin Foley (MP) had written to me that
“On the matter of Last Resort Refuges, it is planned that they will be identified through the erection of signs, which will provide instructions and advice for those who seek shelter there. These signs will be provided to council once they have been fabricated.”
Copy of this letter had been forwarded to Council, hoping this would help. To no avail. Perhaps the Kangaroo Island Bushfire Management Committee (KIBMC) does not see itself as having to comply with a minister’s instructions.
Nothing having been done along these lines, and following the obvious confusion during the last so-called “Catastrophic” (CFS danger classification scheme and terminology) fire-danger day on Kangaroo Island (2013.01.04), one can only conclude that neither clarification nor awareness are a high priority of either council or the CFS.
Why so much inertia, why so blatant failure to address fire issues, a matter of life and death? Is it because Council and CFS seem to be attached, mind and body, to an inflexible and little understood plan, called the Kangaroo Island Bushfire Management Plan (KIBMP 2009-2014)? A type of plan only Kangaroo Island Council has thought worthy of adopting, in the whole of South Australia…
What is the use of a plan that is fatally flawed (it implicitely gives a value of zero to human life), which is underfunded and which, after three years, has brought no material improvement in bushfire risk, prevention and mitigation for sixteen “extreme”, “very high”, and “high” risk communities scattered across this island?
The clock is ticking. Years have been lost, and by the manner this last council session went, it looks we’ll have a couple more years lost. At this council meeting, the mayor and a majority of councillors have swept fire issues under the carpet. We can hope this reckless decision may not come back with a vengeance to haunt them and afflict the community. But it can also be argued that it’s time for a ministerial enquiry into Kangaroo Island Council and the island’s Bushfire Management Committee, before it’s too late.
Dr Gabriel Bittar, Kangaroo Island