COMMENT: The release of the Queensland Government review into the 2018 bushfires will do nothing to diminish the city-bush divide across our state.
As the recent federal election results attest, the people of rural and regional Queensland are endlessly frustrated by city-based politicians and bureaucrats spearheading centralised policy decision making that ignores practical, local knowledge.
The current political class are proving woefully incapable of conducting meaningful engagement with rural and regional communities.
This top down decision making is resulting catastrophic outcomes. Years of hard one experience is being ignored.
Anyone with even a basic understanding of natural resource management practices can see the catalyst for last year's devastating bushfires.
The vegetation management laws, much heralded by Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Treasurer Jackie Trad, locked up thousands upon thousands of hectares of land across the state.
Additionally, poor management of state government-operated forest enabled overgrown trees, bushes and grass to gradually transform into a life-threatening tinderbox.
It didn't take much for an extended dry spell to light the spark that literally engulfed much of our state in flames, destroying family farms and threatening communities in its wake.
Once the alarm was raised, landholders and our rural fire brigades fought diligently around the clock to contain and then extinguish the blazes.
Even more frightening is government intention to revert about 80 more grazing leases to national park with no increase in an already woefully underfunded area.
Since the fires, rural and regional communities have pulled together, as we always do, for the recovery effort.
Even while still fighting the fires, there was much talk about the urgent need for a fair dinkum inquiry that would truthfully examine the dangerous fuel loads that made these fires nearly unmanageable.
That is why the release of the bushfire review report this week is nothing less than a slap in the face to those whose homes, businesses and communities were ravaged by these blazes.
It appears to have all been a cynical political exercise by a government facing an uphill battle for re-election.
- Martin Bella, Green Shirts Movement
It appears to have all been a cynical political exercise by a government facing an uphill battle for re-election.
It was the inquiry you have when you don't want to have an inquiry and you don't want to admit to the real problems.
The frustrating truth is the ramifications of onerous policies for agriculture that are currently in place is lost productivity, and reductions in land values that will only increase exponentially as the thickening of vegetation continues.
By doing nothing to admit to the disastrous impacts of its legislative agenda on rural Queensland, the Palaszczuk government is again damning our communities to another life-threatening fire season.
Landholders must be able to undertake weed control and thinning of thickened vegetation.
They also must be able to construct breaks of a viable width and segment their property to enable several defensive positions depending on fire behaviour.
Bureaucrats must be held accountable for opportunities lost through slow processing of permit applications.
And we need government to work alongside our communities for practical, mutually-beneficial outcomes.
The economic and social ramifications of an endless cycle of poor management resulting in subsequent disaster must be a cause for concern for every Queenslander.
I don't think anyone wants to see this.
The frontline knowledge of people across rural and regional areas must be valued by government.
Anything less is mere lip service, which rural and regional communities are fed up to their back teeth with.
People in the bush are angry.
And it will only lead to a fire being lit underneath the Labor government at the ballot box next year.
- Martin Bella is the convener of Queensland's Green Shirts Movement.
