It continues to amaze me that the "green" movement is forever slandered, despite the fact that raging bushfires have occurred long before the green movement was born. These bushfires occurred despite the fuel reductions which had been carried out for many decades, prior to the birth of environmentalism.

I am particularly concerned that the forestry and logging industry continue to duckshove in their endeavours to find scapegoats, when it is clear that logging and felling of forests has a drying effect thereby reducing the moisture content of these forests and making them more flammable which would surely exacerbate the fire risk.

As I alluded to in another post, this year's forecasts from respected climate scientists predict the return of El Nino which heats the planet. These predictions contain a grim warning that extreme temperatures will again place Australia's forests at grave risk:

"Given our expectation of the next El Niño beginning in 2009 or 2010, it still seems likely that a new global temperature record will be set within the next 1-2 years, despite the moderate negative effect of the reduced solar irradiance.”

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/

I might also add that contrary to the preface to this piece by Gavan where he says "Since Black Saturday one thing is certain, the rules about fire management have changed and a new approach is necessary", the rules have not changed at all, it is just that the Greens have finally admitted that their credibility is shot and a new approach based on real science is necessary.

David

Greenies? Greenies? Less than 10% of the vote, and somehow they are responsible for all the damaging political decisions? Sounds a lot like scapegoating to me. But what is a more plausible explanation? How about people wanting to sell property in the area decided that if there were trees all over the place, it might be of more appeal to the tree changers, and so attract a higher price? The close alliance of property developers and councils is commonplace: Stop everyone cutting down trees and dont things look pretty? When things catch on fire you blame those rotten greenies. How sweet. Now let's see if we can weave Jewish bankers, homosexuals, the severely disabled, Jehovah's Witnesses and Gypsies into this tapestry of blame, and give the bigots a little satiety.

The whole blame for the burning of Victoria rests with the Judges and Magistrates of Victoria who have allowed the Parliament of Victoria to dictate results to them in their Courts. These nasty vindictive people who are nothing more than State appointed atheists, have over the past ten years punished everyone who would have saved their property, by clearing trees and undergrowth, by heavy fines, and not one of them has understood the consequences.

The extraordinary influence of the green lobby is only possible because at grass roots level, where most decisions should be made, the Judges and Magistrates of Victoria never call together a grass roots political meeting any more. If the Judges and Magistrates would do their job, in the Christian tradition adopted by the English Catholics in 1297, and abolished by the State Government in 1986, after the Australia Act 1986 was passed without referendum, and give every person charged with destroying a tree or conducting a precautionary burn, a jury trial, then many houses and lives would have been saved.

The Judges and Magistrates of Victoria whose courts should sheet the damage wholly home to the State government, and award total compensation to the victims, by being Australian courts, not Victorian Courts, will probably not do so.

The Commonwealth has created another alternative Court system, but that system is also a rort system. The Federal Courts of Australia are manned by the same type of egomaniacs who have caused this holocaust and although the Judges of the Federal Court of Australia can sit with juries at the expense of the Commonwealth they refuse to convene an Australian court.

Judges and Magistrates lack education. They should have realized the Australia Act 1986 continued the Australian Courts Act 1828 in S 11; an Australian court, is a court with a Judge/Justice, a jury of 12 local people with absolute power to call to account whatever maniacal legislation the central government tries to impose upon them. An Australian court was a local grass roots political meeting, that unlike the local CWA or Rotary Club, had real political power

Examinator,

Your comments of

"If you were better informed with environmental planning you would know that the sentence SM highlighted was enviro speak for the same thing only more accurately/diplomatically expressed."

Does not mean that Gavan McFadzean implied that fuel load management was included.

As Cinders pointed out, his previous platforms have been strongly anti fuel reduction, and to infer here that he implied it is a little fanciful.

Having lived in a small town on a small holding on the fringe of national park, I am only too aware of the huge expense and bureaucratic run around that anyone trying to clear a fire break around his own home is given to get a permit.

The "scientific" planning procedures are sufficiently vague and open to interpretation to ensure that anyone trying to clear land is strangled with red tape and bankrupted before any clearing takes place.

It was only after the fires of 2003 that a previously rejected plan was passed as the council found itself facing an electoral lynch mob.

So before you hop on your soap box and start waving your pieces of paper, I have a mum with a PhD in Botany / Zoo and has years in agricultural / environmental planning and research, and combined with my masters (perhaps not in a directly related field) I am far from ignorant of the complexities of environmental planning, nor blind to what damage can be done. I have also done my share of cleaning up and rehabilitation.

My approach has been deliberately simplistic to counter the miasma of pseudo intellectual "anything you do will hurt the environment thus anything you do must be analyzed in triplicate at your expense and approved by a twit with a 12 month TAFE certificate" obfuscation.

My call is also simple. A simple set of guide lines for anyone wishing to clear land / reduce fuel load should be published with clear dos and don'ts, so that Joe Blogs can protect his family without damaging the environment or facing a $50 000 fine from bureaucratic pin heads.

I see this article as simply an effort to try and deflect some of the criticism coming the way of greenie type groups in the wake of the recent Victorian fires. The author suggests climate change as a factor and also throws in the strawman of salvage harvesting to move the debate away from the greenie groups influence on preventing and delaying bushland fuel reduction programmes.

There is no doubt there has been a major influence by greenie groups in the adoption of policies by local councils and a multitude of government departments.

Having been involved in trying to get fire trails established and fuel reduction burns in large areas of bushland, I can tell you there is seemingly no end to the objections and delays such proposals encounter. All due to the flawed greenie ideology of 'no entrance or interferance'

Not only does one face local council hurdles but objections from greenie groups directly, then many Government authorities also having a say and influence. People such as National Parks, Forestry, Soil conservation, catchment authorities. Enviromental studies, aboriginal studies and archeological studies can be required. This can halt or delay the proposal for years. Consequently no where near enough is done.

I agree with Shadow Minister that simple guidelines are needed and the emphasis put back on the saving of life and property rather than some greenie groups ideology.