Bureaucracy nightmare dogs fireys
Agency double-up not a Yes Minister skit, it’s costly and dangerous, says Greg Ray
IN the context of the dire warnings about Tasmania’s growing vulnerability to bushfires, it is timely to consider whether or not the state’s split administrative structure for bushfire management, protection and control is fit for purpose.
We have multiple agencies and organisations involved in the task of protecting Tasmania from bushfire, so much so it requires a multiagency co-ordination group to co-ordinate the management of inter-agency response to serious bushfire. That sounds like a Yes Minister solution to a structural stuff-up.
Is it best practice to appoint a specialist group with the task of ensuring those agencies and organisations responsible for protecting the state are in fact working together as they should? Or is it an attempt to paint over the cracks in a system primarily designed to protect the territories of individual agencies?
The three big players are the Tasmania Fire Service, National Parks and Wildlife and Sustainable Timber Tasmania. Local government is also involved.
On top of that, we have a seven-member State Fire Management Council which has “the responsibility of providing advice to the Minister and the State Fire Commission about the management of vegetation fire across Tasmania, particularly in the areas of prevention and mitigation of fires. It also formulates and promulgates policy in relation to vegetation fire management within Tasmania in relation to bushfire fuels and mitigation” — whatever that means.
And don’t let’s overlook the State Fire Commission which is “the peak governing and policy group for the Tasmania Fire Service”. It was the Commission who forced the stand-down of the TFS remote area teams because of WorkSafe breaches by the TFS in summer when it failed to provide adequate safety and evacuation measures.
Confused? Not surprisingly. There are enough separate ]bodies involved to pretty much guarantee confusion, and not just in the public mind, but in the firefighting bureaucracy itself. What is the financial cost of this sort of duplication and territorial protectionism? And wouldn’t the money be better spent on recruiting, training and equipping more firefighters?
Why not start again by scrapping the split responsibilities and bringing all firefighting needs under one roof and under a single management? This would rid the system of pointless duplication, save money and obviate the need for a special organisation to make sure everyone is working together.
I’m no economist, but the potential savings appear obvious, and that’s money that could be redirected into increasing the size of the firefighting force; improving training; up-to-date equipment; and raising the ability of management to ensure the safety of the state’s remote area crews.
There will be inevitable resistance. Everyone likes to protect their slice of territory and very few enjoy the uncertainty of rationalisation. That is not how such change needs to be viewed. We are talking about the best solution for those whose homes and livelihoods will be threatened by fire; for farm animals and wildlife that will perish; for the thousands of hectares of wilderness reduced to cinders; and the brave people who go out to fight these fires for us.
Firefighters in particular deserve better. These fiercely committed people, working across three separate bureaucratic institutions, don’t care about divisional management control. They stand side-by-side in defence of the state against fire, irrespective of what agency they work for.
Those in bushfire management openly confess a fire as fierce as that of 1967 is no longer a matter of ‘if’, but of ‘when’. In the space of one day in February 1967, 62 people died, 900 were injured and 7,000 left homeless. There were 1293 homes destroyed, 652,000 acres reduced to cinders and thousands of animals incinerated.
If our defence against a repeat of such an event can be improved with one efficient, sustainably funded organisation it should be done.