There is no need for a Royal Commission and John Brumby should NOT be congratulated for calling one.
Public television and some of its journalists need a wake up call. Just because we have had some very hot weather doesn't mean that people should be narcisstically and indulgently suggesting we need bunkers and space age housing designs to allegedly reduce the risk of homes being lost. This is all nonsense.
The real elephant in the room for those who vote Green and also for the ALP and Coalition who take Green preferences, is back-burning each year in the cooler months.
Any park ranger can tell you this.
Farmers who cleared up branches and debris and saved their properties were fined by the Vic State Govt.
Time for an end also to secular liturgies for the deceased as organised by the Victorian Government. Leave that to the Church to organise; the Church whose laws you politicians love to flout and the Church you love to hate.
The NCC and DLP have proven to be correct all along about the real causes of events eg bushfires, river conservation, ethanol, keeping manufacturing here in Oz; giving workers trade union strength through pre 1980s laws etc. The Libs and their opposite number the God hating Left and secular humanists continue to rely on media mates to spin out the lies to deny the facts every time.
A Royal Commission and congratulations for Brumby?!. Get a life !

Webby,

The only person who was reported in the press and on TV as being fined was someone who illegally cleared 100 metres around his house and who had cars and a shed well within that 100 metres burnt. If everyone cleared 100 metres around their houses, there would hardly be a tree standing in the townships in the fire areas. People like living in treed environments – that’s why they moved there.

The DLP’s environmental objective can be found below:
‘In order to bring about this free and just democratic society, the DLP is pledged to the following political principles –

‘The creation of a nation economically strong, nationally secure, fully employed, in which poverty shall have no part, with the greatest possible educational opportunities and the highest possible moral and cultural values, and dedicated to the principles of liberty and peace….

‘The protection and conservation of our natural environment and the planned use of natural resources in recognition of the close relationship between man and nature and the finite nature of the earth’s resources.’
(The DLP Looks Ahead, 1976)
In other words, the DLP believed in the protection of the natural environment.

The implication that the DLP was a Church party is also false. While the majority of its members were Catholics, that was simply a consequence of Catholics being more anti-communist than others. It was a secular party founded by those anti-communists expelled by the left-wing controllers of the ALP in the 1950s and it welcomed those of all religions and those of none.

The implication that the DLP and the NCC were the same is also false. Many DLP members, including former MHRs Stan Keon and Bill Bourke, were anti-NCC.

A Royal Commission is a sensible step. The real debate will come when its findings are handed down.

Chris Curtis
(Vice President, Victorian DLP, 1976-78)

Chris,

You have obviously misread the reports. The farmer cleared trees upto 100m from the farm house. The majority of the clearing was no more than 50m.

The present municipal bylaws allows only 6m from the house, which is clearly ridiculous.

Permits are then required for anything further. That the farmer went too far is probably not in doubt, but even if he had cleared 10m he would have been in breach and still would not have done enough.

He would have had more chance of falling pregnant than getting a permit to clear 30m.

When laws are unreasonable, reasonable people are outlaws.

The flow of donations into the wilderness society's fund raising buckets has almost dried up by the drought caused by the Sydney Morning Herald article on the Victorian bushfires published immediately after the disaster and reflecting the emotion of many of the victims.

“It wasn't climate change which killed as many as 300 people in Victoria last weekend. It wasn't arsonists. It was the unstoppable intensity of a bushfire, turbo-charged by huge quantities of ground fuel which had been allowed to accumulate over years of drought. It was the power of green ideology over government to oppose attempts to reduce fuel hazards before a megafire erupts, and which prevents landholders from clearing vegetation to protect themselves.” So wrote Miranda Devine in her article “Green ideas must take blame”.
See http://www.smh.com.au/environment/green-ideas-must-take-blame-for-deaths-20090211-84mk.html

Before dismissing this article as green bashing, the SMH who sponsors Earth Hour, quoted Dr Phil Cheney, the former head of the CSIRO's bushfire research unit and one of the pioneers of prescribed burning. He said if the fire-ravaged Victorian areas had been hazard-reduced, the flames would not have been as intense.

Yet many have already claimed he was wrong as even where fuel reduction was carried out it did not prevent the fire or stop it. Yet Dr Cheney and other real fire experts do not make this claim, but that reducing fuel decreases the intensity of the inevitable fire and gives hope to be able to fight it. Clearing fuel loads near your residence, gives a better chance to save your home.

Due to the preference system and the unwieldy Senate paper we now have the greens, with a vote of less than 10%, having huge influence over mainstream politics, a bit like the tail wagging the dog. Who can forget the 2004 election when the ALP adopted the greens forest policy, and the last minute change by the Liberals not to out-green the ALP, and instead save the jobs of working families.

Major political parties must heed the lesson from this tragedy and refuse to make deals with the greens.

Chris,

30 to 40 metres will do. Just because some inner city 'don't have a clue' hobby idealists moved to rural Victoria to hug trees doesn't mean that we go along with them in their naiveity, does it? There'd still be trees aplenty left in the national parks. The number of dwellings in towns outnumbers the number of farms. This means that farm properties engaged in land clearing around their homes and assets is not a problem. Still plenty of bush after any clearing. Towns mainly need clearing just around them. That's not asking too much. Thus not a problem for the precious trees.
The DLP in NSW do not believe in supporting stupidity and thus hobby idealists should never be catered for or pandered to. I leave that to the self indulgent on the ABC's pseudo -intellectual Q & A programme and SBS's programme with Jenny Brockie ( boy was she silly tonight ! pandered to sexual deviants and libertines just like on Q & A the other night. Senator Conroy gets 110% for commonsense over the invited flips. I do digress; hope you see the point I am making.)
Stupidity has no rights.
A fully employed rural sector can create many jobs in back-burning Chris. Preferencing Greens is an immoral value not a moral one and hence not in line with DLP policy. There is no "liberty" in placing hobbyist starry eyed city migrants to the bush fantasies over the common sense of rural folk who have lived there for generations and have more commonsense. As for "poverty" you need more than full employment. Wages and conditions based on strong unions is the way ahead; not National Party supporting farmers who have traditionally paid low wages to agriculture workers.

Re: Bourke and Keon. So what!
I am from a younger generation schooled in Young Labor and the ALP. Left them on good terms. Just think the DLP is better. I can see you didn't get the constitutional majority required to wind up the DLP. John Mulholland provided organic continuation of the Party;legally validated.

Chris

The Royal Commission will result in getting Brumby and previous governments including the Coalition, off the hook. Royal Commissions are often set up with the terms of reference framed so that the government of the day is never to blame.

Yet someone ( plural) is to blame for the nearly 200 deaths in Victoria.

Now as for the DLP being a secular Party. I never said or implied different. As for the NCC, I am a member. I think it has great ideas and policies which any political party can take up to their betterment. I personally dislike some of the pro Coalition and pro Family First/CDP leanings of some of its members. But hey ! So what. That's life. I generally associate with the pro ALP/pro DLP secular and religious within it. It is a civic organisation non aligned to any political party. That is how it should be today. However, its five primacies can be taken up from a Laborite persepctive. That is where I am coming from Chris. I support ALP candidates where there is no DLP candidate so long as they are pro life and pro trade union and pro protection, anti privatisation. Grassroots Labor that rank and file within DLP and ALP share in common.
If an ALP candidate is not the above but favours big immigration and loss of Aussie identity or supports the selling of our resource industry to Chinese sovereign funds etc then I wipe them. The letter 'A' in ALP means nothing to many of them today.