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AM - Tuesday, February 18, 2003 8:14
This is a transcript of AM broadcast at 08:00 AEST on local radio.
LINDA MOTTRAM: The recent fires that cut a swathe through New South Wales and Canberra look set to be the trigger for a court battle. The New South Wales Farmers Association wants to take legal action against the National Parks authorities.
With fires still burning in mostly inaccessible terrain in South Eastern New South Wales and in North Eastern Victoria, farmers say that they'll sue on the grounds of negligence, claiming that excessive fuel loads made the fires worse.
Jo Mazzocchi reports.
JO MAZZOCCHI: Farmers, already battling the worst drought on record, say they intend to sue National Parks for fires not just in Canberra but across New South Wales, a State that's lost more than one million hectares this summer to bushfires.
Mal Peters is the President of the NSW Farmers Association.
MAL PETERS: The thing that's so frustrating is that this follows on from recent fires in the Tenterfield and Grafton area in the north of the State.
Twelve months ago massive fires in the Goobang state forest [national park] and about six months prior to that in the Armidale and Glen Innes areas.
And it's the same scenario painted in each occasion. Massive fires that have started in the state… in the national parks burnt, have come out in a great fireball in a totally unmanageable state and farmers not being able to do anything about it except lose all their land.
JO MAZZOCCHI: Mal Peters will be telling farmers at today's executive council meeting what legal grounds are available to them.
MAL PETERS: The advice is that we can take action on the basis of negligence for allowing a noxious substance to escape, the noxious substance being the fire and the other one can be taken under negligence.
I mean when you put it in terms of farmers managing seventy four percent of the land mass of New South Wales, I mean we live, work and breath in Australia's bush.
We don't experience these unmanageable firestorms that seem to be regular occurrences in national parks.
JO MAZZOCCHI: The Director General of New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service, Brian Gilligan, says any attempt by farmers to take legal action is counterproductive.
BRIAN GILLIGAN: I wonder where it might lead because it clearly has implications for individual farmers who have a fire escape from their property onto an adjoining farmer's property or into a state forest or onto a national park.
Are we going to embark on counter-litigation in these circumstances?
I think it's quite a worrying development because it's counterproductive to the sensible neighbour relations and the sensible processes we have used in the past to resolve any outstanding issues.
LINDA MOTTRAM: Brian Gilligan is the Director General of the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service.
He was speaking to Jo Mazzocchi.