Living With the Bush

IN ITS interim report, the Bushfires Royal Commission called for a revised interpretation of Victoria's ''prepare, leave early or stay and defend'' policy. In future, the commission urged, the priority should always be saving human life, and in consequence it must be understood that the safest course of action when threatened by bushfire is always to leave early.

The reason the commission made this recommendation is simple: when there are blazes with the intensity of the fires that killed 173 people on Black Saturday, February 7, many properties will not be defensible. Firebreaks are of no avail if the winds fanning the flames and depositing burning embers are strong enough.

That reality has been acknowledged not only by the commission, but by the State Government in advance of the commission's report. Land-clearance rules passed by State Parliament last week, however, suggest that the Government has yet to accept all the implications of the revised stay-or-go policy.

Under the rules, landowners will be able to clear trees within 10 metres of houses, and within four metres of fences, without obtaining a permit. Environment Minister Gavin Jennings says the changes were under consideration for months, but if that is so, it does not inspire confidence in the Government's ability to consult expert opinion before making a decision, and to consider the compatibility of any new policy with other policies still in place.

According to a study by RMIT environment and planning professor Michael Buxton, the clearance rules, which apply across the state except in 20 metropolitan council areas, raise the prospect that large tracts of land may be denuded of trees. In an analysis of an aerial photograph of 4.6 hectares near Upwey, the study concluded that of the 262 trees now on the site only 12 would be safe from being felled under the new rules.

Professor Buxton describes the new rules as a ''knee-jerk reaction aimed at getting political kudos without regard for the consequences'', which seems a more credible explanation of the Government's action than Mr Jennings' claim that the changes were months in the making. No case for large-scale land clearances was made in evidence heard by the royal commission, nor has the commission made any such recommendation. On the contrary, there was evidence that in some areas trees provided protection for homes.

Anyone who has watched fire sweep through open grassland is likely to find that evidence intuitively plausible, but the crucial point is that removing trees would not make householders any safer when faced with fires like those of Black Saturday. Clear-felling large areas would, however, certainly remove the amenity of many of those areas for residents and tourists. Part of the tragedy of the February fires is that the very reason that drew people to places such as Marysville and Kinglake is also what made the houses there so vulnerable. The beauty of the bush is inseparable from the risk of living close to it. 

That does not mean that the bush should always be left intact: fuel-reduction burning is accepted practice, and firebreaks do help sometimes.

The staggering thing about the new clearance rules, however, is that Victoria seems to have moved from risk being blithely courted with insufficient or inadequate firebreaks to the possibility of extensive clear-felling that would not make houses safer anyway. And it is not just the areas ravaged on Black Saturday that may be denuded: residents' groups fear that areas of significance at Mount Macedon, Eltham and the Mornington Peninsula could all be destroyed.

The Government's desire to have precautions in place before the next bushfire season, now less than eight weeks away, is commendable. But hasty, ill-thought-out planning changes are hardly a substitute for the necessary preparation. Part of the problem is that the Government and the commission have sometimes almost seemed to be competing in devising policies that will enable Victoria to be better prepared for bushfires.

In July, when Premier John Brumby announced proposals for ''township protection plans'' and ''neighbourhood safer places'', the senior counsel assisting the commission, Jack Rush, complained that the commission's recommendations would lack force if the ''State of Victoria is out on a frolic of its own''. The new land-clearance rules are hardly frolicsome, but they are not good policy, either.