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It is essential, after what we are seeing in Canberra, to ensure that mid-summer fires occurring anywhere in the Wombat Forest are treated as threats to Melbourne as a whole - not only as local incidents. To this end, fire-fighting skills and resources must be conserved, husbanded and enhanced.
Instead, however, we see those resources being diminished. The timber industry, with its bush skills and equipment, is being disbanded as fast as the Labor Government can organise it. Forestry staff are being downsized and converted into a summer-only "strike force". And the forest, as an economic resource capable of financially supporting those worthy fire-protection endeavours, is to be transformed into a theme park.
Now, to cap it all, professional forest management, presumably including
fire protection, is to be taken away from the professionals and delivered
to a bunch of amateurs - "Community Forest Management". Should a serious
emergency arise in future, what part will those amateur forest managers
play ? All I can visualise is them running around like headless chooks.
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