Senator BACK (Western Australia—Deputy Opposition Whip in the Senate) (23:18): I rise this evening, with the advent of summer, to warn the chamber and the community of the risks of bushfires as they present themselves in the months ahead. It was in my first speech, 17 March 2009, that I said: We in the Senate have an obligation to the Australian community to ensure that those charged with the responsibility to protect life and property have the tools, the legislative capacity and the will to so do. It is incumbent on us to review past recommendations by authoritative sources and assess how effectively they have been implemented. I made the comment at that time: This is not the last we will hear of this issue in this place. I concluded those comments with this statement: The tragic privilege of delivering the eulogy of a 19-year-old volunteer who lost his life in a bushfire and attending the funeral of a brigade member born on the same day as me certainly focuses the attention on the awful sacrifice our volunteer firefighters are prepared to make. On 1 November this year with my colleague Senator Humphries, I moved, and the Senate accepted, the motion relating to the 10th anniversary of the devastating Canberra bushfires, which occurred almost 10 years ago in January 2003, that we should reflect on the report A nation charred. The report was from an inquiry convened by the House of Representatives member at that time, Mr Nairn, and it made 59 recommendations, many of which have not been implemented. In that motion with Senator Humphries, I asked the Senate to recall the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria—we have several of our colleagues from Victoria in the chamber this evening—which is said to be the worst day in the history of the state. There was the 2009 Victoria bushfires royal commission, which made 67 recommendations, and the Senate Select Committee on Agriculture and Related Industries report, The incidence and severity of bushfires across Australia, with which I was intimately associated when I first came into the Senate in 2010. There were 15 recommendations on that occasion—only five were ever accepted in principle and one has been implemented. I come back to the comment: this is not the last we will hear of this issue in this place and I give that undertaking this evening. Those of us associated with the emergency management, particularly of bushfires, in this country speak of the DEAD cycle: commencing with a disaster, leading to an inquiry with an outpouring of expenditure, all too often that leads to apathy, and following the apathy is another cycle of disaster. The only position that separates us in the different states and territories of Australia is the time interval between each of the Ds—disaster to disaster. It has always been my plea that one of the natural disasters that can be prevented in this country is bushfires. We cannot prevent cyclones, we cannot prevent floods and we cannot prevent tornadoes, but we can prevent the impact of devastating bushfires, and it is that to which I refer this evening. This very day in Queensland there are some 37 bushfires burning. Thirty of those 37 are wildfires and seven are controlled burns. In Tasmania, there are three bushfires of concern burning at the moment. In our state of Western Australia, there are four, and in South Australia there are 10. To give you just some understanding, we have not yet got to the start of summer, on 1 December, and yet we have that number of bushfires burning. I refer to some names that would be absolutely unknown in this Senate chamber: Roger Underwood, Frank Bottini, Frank McKinnell, George Peet, Jim Williamson, Bruce Beggs and Don Spriggins. These gentlemen represent some 40 years of experience, reaching back to the 1950s, covering the science of bushfire, fuel reduction burning, strategic planning and fire suppression. In our state of Western Australia, these men and their associates are the mountains of men who have faced fires and dictated policy. I will go on if time permits to share with you some of the success that those people have had over time. They now refer to themselves in their semi-retirement—although I hope that, to their dying days, they will not retire—as the 'Bushfire Front'. This was the warning given by their chairman, Roger Underwood, only in the last few days: Only luck will prevent WA from experiencing a "catastrophic" bushfire this summer, with WA ill-equipped to handle multiple high-intensity blazes merging into one … Whilst I speak of WA, we know that we are speaking about Mediterranean, eucalypt dominated, summer, low-rainfall fires. The comments I make can be extended right across southern Australia. That was the comment that Roger Underwood made in recent times. This man has been held in great regard. We have had two major bushfires in the last two summers in Western Australia, one in the Darlington area outside the metropolitan area of Perth, which Premier Barnett asked the recently retired commissioner of the Australian Federal Police, Mick Keelty, to report into and on which Roger Underwood advised him. And only this time last year did we have massive bushfires down in the area that all of you in this chamber would know as Margaret River and surrounding areas. They were devastating bushfires, which regrettably were the result of a controlled burn that had gone badly wrong. Again Keelty was asked to come in with his experience and again Roger Underwood was there to advise him. Mr Underwood made an important point to the inquiry, which I think should resonate around this country. He told the inquiry that south-west rural subdivisions remained undefendable from wildfire for four reasons—and they are certainly typical across this country: first, dead-end roads; second, unburnt bush; third, inadequate water supply; and fourth, clueless inhabitants from the city. Senator Kroger, if you go back and have a look at the recommendations of the royal commission and the data put before the commission, you will see each of those four was there in abundance, regrettably, during the bushfires in Victoria in 2009. I speak of these four people and I go immediately, if I may, to the devastating bushfires in 1961 in the town of Dwellingup, right in the middle of the jarrah forests just south of Perth. It is interesting historically because the first of the forest managers that were brought into Western Australia and the other southern states were all from Britain and, of course, they had this idea that the bush never burns, so therefore their whole philosophy was directed toward stopping burning. Well, of course, Dwellingup was a prime example: a building up of fuel loads—fuel loads that never, ever got to the level of the Victorian situation in 2009. Those fires devastated towns and forests, and it was only the excellence of the people I mentioned and their colleagues that actually saved that town. For the 50th anniversary, in January last year, Roger Underwood and his colleagues compiled a book of the experiences of people and it was a great privilege of mine to launch that book at an event on Australia Day 2011. The point they make—and I think again it is one that all of Australia should bear in mind when it comes to land management—is a basic principle that applies universally to conservation and land management in bushfire-prone areas: if effective bushfire management is not first achieved, no other land management or conservation objective can be achieved. For example, it is pointless to invest in resources such as capital resources and it is pointless to invest in anything to do with the protection of endangered species or recreational facilities in national parks if they are going to be wiped out in a devastating bushfire. Time does not permit me to actually go through the discussion associated with fuel reduction burning. Regrettably, conservationists and those ignorant of the eucalypt forests have captured the agenda to the extent that now state governments and local governments are reluctant to do the necessary work to protect the community against the inevitability— (Time expired)