As Total fire bans came into force from midnight in much of southern and central Queensland, and a second wave of fire bans will start throughout the southeast, including Brisbane, from Tuesday night (11.59pm AEST).

Is this the shape of a summer to come for Victoria?

The question may be rhetorical, but the answer is definitely “Yes.”

With the Weather Bureau warning El Nino is with us in full force,  the problems faced in Queensland are equally probable in Victoria:

We have done nothing to prepare for the coming bushfire season.

We’ve had a Royal Commission sift through the ashes, charged with the delicate responsibility of not finding fault, but we’ve had no decisive action.

Locally the greenie groups are still railing on about how the bush “buffers fire” – without a shred of credible science to support the assertion – and are not being called on this nonsense.

We’ve heard claims around where I live in the electorate of McEwen – the area destroyed by February 7th Black Saturday – that fuel reduction efforts will be met by “civil disobedience”.

This is probably the same ratbags who protested at Hazelwood power station a few weeks ago.  Rabble using force for a cause no Victorian can afford to have implemented – the immediate closure of a power station with no replacement facility.

Such is the thought processes of the cult of Green.

Yes, the current power stations are filthy.  But close them before viable alternatives are up and running?

Ridiculous!!

The power station owners have already announced a maintainance moratorium – condemning Hazelwood and Yallourn to an immediate decline – and the big new gas-powered peaker at Mortlake will be ready for summer.  But this still isn’t good enough, oh no!

Our thoughts turn to the people in Queensland, in hope their bushfires don’t degenerate further.  At the same time we pause to consider the consequences for rural Victoria of the lack of any real action or preparation or protection undertaken by the Brumby Labor government.

We should also consider why the Liberal Party have been so ineffective in holding the government to account – as is the job of Her Majesty’s Opposition.

We must consider what the feral fringe, and the party they ask you to vote for – The  Greens – are doing to each and every one of us with their worship of eucalyptus totem poles, on which they insist every Victorian in fire prone areas be sacrificed like the witches of  Massachusetts.

Every Victorian needs to be loud and vocal about this.  It is time to say “no more”.

Caring for the environment is essential, but the decaying organic matter on a eucalyptus forest floor is not lovely compost or trapped carbon dioxide, it is fuel for the holocaust, coming to your home this summer!

We must reduce the fuel load by widespread burning off in the small time available before summer, or stop the rebuilding and evacuate the people.  This is the consensus of scientifc advice to government.

Premier Brumby has stark and unpalatable choices before him.

Don’t burn us again.

Scott Kane

Other Readers Also Enjoyed

• Countdown – 90 Days Till A Bushfire Season Worse Than The Last In Victoria – Forget El Nino, What About El Secrecy? What About El Greens?
• February 2009 Victorian Bushfire – Latte Environmentalism – Why Labor, Liberal And The Australian Greens Aren’t Thinking And Won’t Talk
• Higgins voters aghast! Campaign Notes on Climate Change and Tony Abbott.
• ETS Lynchin? Better Ask Minchin!
• Australia is drowning in debt – not Government borrowings – the private hellish sort that drives misery, paralysis even suicide.
• Brumby Must Clean Up Victorian Councils – Not Give Us His Best Horse Laugh!

I cannot accept that it should extend it’s scope to considering evidence around fire deaths ahead of the coroner, who has a particular statutory role in investigating the causes of death.  How can the coroner make clear-eyed recommendations and help the greiving if the evidence is muddied by a separate judicio-political inquiry?

Police officers have said they will withhold evidence from the commission where it reveals criminal behaviour by parties yet to be named, pending investigation by the coroner.  Quite right.

It is important to keep in mind that a Royal Commission negates and prevents criminal prosecution.  Yes, it does!  Those giving honest testimony receive a get-out-of-jail-free card.

It is time to suspend the Royal Commission and forward its evidence to the coroner.

The dead and grieving deserve no less.

There have been a number of serious allegations made to and investigated by Victoria Police.  These allegations can not be made public prior to court hearings.  Significantly, eye witnesses in places such as Kinglake West have not been heard by the commission – yet serious, damning statements have been made by these witnesses to police, including photographic evidence.

It is equally significant that Department of Sustainability and Environment employees were exempted from appearing before the Royal Commission.  By contrast, the coroner must hear from all parties of interest.

There are many important questions the Royal Commission has conveniently overlooked.

• Why was the Captain of a CFA station not given assistance when he called urgently, multiple times in Strathewan?
• Why is this same man still waiting for the delivery of fuel for the tanker he radioed for on that day?
• Why was he, his team and other teams not given the benefit of counselling after the fire and are still waiting?
• Why were residents of Pine Ridge Rd – now dead – sent back to their homes from road blocks to perish there?
• Why was the alleged back burning operation carried out in Kinglake West prior to fire engulfing Pine Ridge Rd where 21 Victorians died?
• Why was the Kilmore spotting tower staffed with inexperienced people in a make shift operation early that morning?
• Why was the Kangaroo Ground tower effectively ignored when it reported not only fire but deceased persons in Strathewan and St Andrews?
• What happened to the allegations naming the electricity power poles n Kilmore as a potential source of the original fire?
• Why were communities not warned of imminent fire attack – yet certain government employee families were?
• Why were the people of Marysville consistently told there was no fire and the spotting tower and relay station ignored by the Emergency Operations Centre?
• Why is a certain shire council introducing “Green policy” by-laws without a council vote on all articles?
• Why have CFA stations been stripped of their fire sirens – a simple tool to alert people to fire?
• Why have the Federal government, states and the big telcos bumbled the emergency telephone notification system across years of inaction and and futile semantics?
• Why are green groups being given the opportunity to object to Fire Danger signs in outer suburban and rural Victoria?
• Why are The Greens, including the one who ran in McEwen in the 2007 Federal election,  about to play the “civil disobedience” game to protest for the closing of Hazelwood power station yet have remained utterly mute about Black Saturday?

There are so many dangling issues.  It is essential we suspend this Royal Commission.  Now.  And let the coroner – armed with good science and 150 years of experience – do what that office does best.

With the next bushfire season looming – and predicted be worse than the last – Victorians are the victims of a sham.  While politicians like John Brumby cry crocodile tears, the tears in affected communities are genuine.  For the real people no longer with us.  I fear the grief is not yet over.

Calls to “…not look for blame.” are a travesty.  Victoria needs a clear path forward and  the families of the deceased need justice – or it will just happen again, maybe as soon as this year.  The Royal Commission cannot and is not going to deliver this.  Despite its judicial trappings, it is not a court of law.  It is a truth and reconciliation mechanism.

Fran Bailey is the Federal Member for McEwen, which covers the areas sterilized by fire on February 7th.  As the Federal Member – and in opposition to Labor -  Fran should have been all over this with a jackhammer and hard hat.  It there was ever to be an objector to the indulgences of Premier Brumby and his farcical Royal Commission, then one would expect the Hon. Fran Bailey to be screaming about justice for her constituents.  But she isn’t.  Sadly, Fran Bailey – the Pink Fink of McEwen – has flunked again.  Perhaps she’s out covering the Great Barrier Reef in shade cloth to protect it from global warming? Think I jest?  Click Here.

So while Fran’s off putting pink parasols on parrot fish, Victorians await the election in twelve months or so, and the chance to send this message to the Brumby government:

“You are MAD Premier Brumby if you think Victorians are going to let this pass.

But then, maybe his catch phrase actually is:  “What – Me Worry?”

Scott Kane

Other Readers Also Enjoyed

• Victorian & Australian Small Business – All The Risks, No Security, No Respect But Truckloads of Government Red Tape
• To What Length Would The Brumby Government Go To Be The Definition Of Bastards? Burn The Bushfire Victims?
• Countdown – 90 Days Till A Bushfire Season Worse Than The Last In Victoria – Forget El Nino, What About El Secrecy? What About El Greens?
• Queensland Bushfires- The Shape Of Summer To Come For Victoria.
• February 2009 Victorian Bushfire – Latte Environmentalism – Why Labor, Liberal And The Australian Greens Aren’t Thinking And Won’t Talk
• Is Victoria dinkum about our Fire Risk?

Surely the bureaucrats wouldn’t be allowed by the Brumby government to charge bushfire victims for caravans donated out of  goodwill by the people of Victoria?

No, not even Brumby would bushwhack these devastated individuals, he’s not that feral when it comes to basic decency – surely?

I mean, it would take one nasty, disconnected, uninterested, remote, malcontent of a politician to permit such a thing to occur – right?  Not here in Victoria!

The Reality – This Is Exactly What They’re Doing

Yes, for $25 a week, bushfire victims can camp out in a decrepit leaky strainer on wheels that lets in the elements.

It snows in Kinglake nearly every year, it snowed there this month.  It gets so cold the Department of Sustainability and Environment is forced to deny rumours of roaming brass monkeys looking for welders.

All is not lost.  For an additional $50 a week these tortured souls, rendered homeless by grievously incompetent government forestry management, can upgrade to a caravan that doesn’t leak.  Also donated by Victorians.

Now, if that doesn’t define “bastards” in government then what does?

This bizarre scheme is the exemplar of the all new shiny labor party of modern Australia.  They’re  so inconceivably morally bankrupt they’ve shafted the shafted.

Wake up Victoria!  When John Brumby and his henchpersons are tucked up tight in their warm beds at night, after a hard day negotiating with lobbyists for cash, the people of the fire devastated regions like Kinglake are freezing in a leaky caravan.

After five months they still don’t have:

• Toilets
• Hot Running Water
• Basic Heating
• Anything beyond basic cooking
• Compassion

Thorough Bastards – From Insult To Injury

No bureaucratic construct would be complete without a range of thoroughly vile conditions and rules:

• FIRE victims are banned from repairing the vans or making any addition or alteration.
• VANS must not be shifted without the approval of the head of the department.
• THEY can be taken back if any contract clause is breached.
• SURVIVORS must surrender vans if the department “reasonably forms the opinion that the renter has suitable alternative accommodation”.

Of course the conservative coalition aren’t doing a damned thing either – it suits them down to the ground to be as mute as mullets.

Equally, The Greens will talk about anything else apparently.   Senator Bob Brown has spent the last few days lecturing on his theories about Jimmy Hendrix.

What a waste of a senatorial salary and vote!

And what about the Federal Liberal Member for McEwen whose electorate covers most of the bushfire devastated region?

Urgent Public Appeal

“They Seek Her Here, They Seek Her There – They’re Seeking Fran Bailey Everywhere!”

Hon. Fran Bailout Federal "Pink Fink" Of McEwen

If anybody has seen the Federal Member for McEwen could they please make the sighting known.  The voters of McEwen are concerned about her whereabouts and welfare.  I’m so concerned I am considering sending out a search party to locate the corpse.  There is no sign of life at a time when her constituents are suffering -  living in third world conditions – and need her leadership.  Where is the representation?  The advocacy?

Maybe she’s “pink” with embrassment and is hiding?

Scott Kane

Other Readers Also Enjoyed

• Victorian & Australian Small Business – All The Risks, No Security, No Respect But Truckloads of Government Red Tape
• Countdown – 90 Days Till A Bushfire Season Worse Than The Last In Victoria – Forget El Nino, What About El Secrecy? What About El Greens?
• Brumby Must Clean Up Victorian Councils – Not Give Us His Best Horse Laugh!
• Victorian Democrats Call On The Brumby Government To Suspend The Bushfire Royal Commission Pending Criminal Investigation by The Coroner
• Rudd Abbott Wars – Episode XVVVV – Religion And The Education System Strikes Out?
• Your Civil Rights overruled by Police Convenience: Strip-Searching your ‘Designated Areas’ at Will and without Consequence.

But the government wasn’t going to tell us about that were they?  At least not until it was leaked to Fairfax.

Now, to be fair, we have to pretty much take Fairfax’s word on the leaked document.  That’s because, I  assume, Fairfax is protecting the source of it’s leak.  Perfectly understandable as Victoria’s flimsy Whistle Blower legislation of 2001 is unlikely to protect them from the most vicious retribution – jail, dismissal, loss of pension.

Naturally the “official” – read “paid” as opposed to “volunteer” – arm of the CFA has rushed to deflect this with gobbledegook that the bushfire risk is “…depending on what El Nino does”.

This is nonsense.  The problem is not dependent on El Nino anymore.  Victoria is beyond that.  The fuel load is still there -  untouched, denser and more explosive than a year ago.

The leaked document reportedly names the outer suburbs where the potential tragedy will unfold.  To the best of my knowledge details of which towns have not been released.

Why not?

Fear.  No – not the public’s fear -  the fear their own backsides will be kicked by the people of Victoria.  They know they’ve made a mess of this, they know why, they know how, they even know when.

The Liberal/ National Coalition appears to have handed out corks to stuff into their pollies’ mouths in a desperate bid to make sure absolutely nothing is said by them .  That’s pretty much been the case all year.   Cowards!  Who do they really represent?

Premier Brumby put on his serious and sorry face to appeal to us to be calm.  If the DSE predictions are accurate, he will be able to appeal for calm all summer long, as shocked and blackened evacuees camp out in relative’s lounge rooms.  Again.

Better not be any deaths this season, John Brumby.  You have been warned by DSE and the buck stops with you.

The Greens, the ultimate purveyors of bovine manure, on the other hand have been busy all year.  Their posture has been likened to the tobacco industry’s denial of the connection between smoking and cancer.

Victorian Greens Party spokesman Jim Reiher said on 16 February 2009:

“The Greens do NOT oppose controlled back-burning.”

(His emphasis)

That’s a strange and politically expedient statement from a party who, as recently as 2003, said in a submission to the Victorian Bushfire Inquiry:

“An effective strategic fuel-reduction burning strategy is required on scientific fire ecology behaviour information. It is critical that any revised approach to fuel-reduction burning is scientifically based, drawing on the expertise and further research of fire ecologists and fire behaviour scientists.”

To translate this Orwellian Doublespeak:  “The Greens will support fuel-reduction only after ‘further’ critical research.”

This is what the tobacco industry did.  They demanded more research.  When the research failed to match their position they simply demanded more research.  On and on and on…  This is to confuse voters, water down existing research by scientists and indeed the forestry industry, who whether we like it or not have a direct interest in this issue – just as The Greens, you, me and all Victorians do.

What is at the end of this cycle of “research” and “inquiries”?

Nothing.  No action.  You’d be better served watching a rock grow as there would be more positive action there.

The only “evidence” The Greens have reluctantly accepted are those with ambiguous findings, those that talk about animals dying in controlled burns  – but curiously omit the animals and people dying in wildfire.

It is so disappointing to realize The Greens are just as much “bastards” as the Labor and Liberal parties.  Perhaps more insidiously so having promoted themselves as a party that would watch the excesses of the big two.

They have their own clear agenda, and it doesn’t include those most at risk of losing lives and property in Victoria.  They’d rather you burned.

Scott Kane

Other Readers Also Enjoyed

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• Media Release – Exempt Left-Handed From Climate Change
• Greens Surrender Freedom
• Dont take my word for it: Climate Change Debated in Higgins, Collyer led.

One could argue the Brumby Labor government is acting in direct response to the horror we all witnessed on February 7th 2009,  Black Saturday.

Giving A Disaster A Cool Name And A Royal Commission Isn’t First Aid

We are quick to stick a brand name on sorry events.  It makes it easy for the media to discuss it;  it looks sharp.  It’s easy to erect a Royal Commission to  palliate community horror and indeed outrage.

But a bandaid is not going to resolve the issues that led to this fire.  No, I dont mean the drought or climate change.  I refer to something entirely in our hands:  sensible forest management and fuel reduction.  

Two conflicting intents paralyse our emergency services and government departments in relation to the whole forestry management and fuel reduction issue.  As a society of decent, humane people we have a serious obligation to think the matter through and decide.  Let me be clear – without either a genuine fuel reduction program or the complete evacuation of all civilians from the fire-prone areas, more innocent people will die in the next fire season.

We got to this point by pandering to simple-minded green politics for the sake of votes.

Note: at no time am I referring to the brave volunteers on the ground or the men and women of our police, fire and ambulance services who were left to clean this mess up.

Latte Green Politics Is The Core Of The Issue

Many political decisions  are targeted, nay designed, to woo inner suburban greens who love the environment, even if they dont know what it means.

It’s easy, it’s attractive and it feels good.  If feels like you’re making a difference – and yes, in that they are right.  They are.  What these well intentioned and passionate people fail to grasp is that the brand of politics they  subscribe is a life-threatening danger to the people living in the bush. I live in the Federal seat of McEwen – the seat containing the communities most heavily devastated by the 2009 bushfires -and I know the people don’t want mass clearing of forest or bush.

They love it!

They live in an area they cherish and seek to protect it.  But they don’t want to die in it, just  because a misinformed green in the inner suburbs believes clearing of fuel is bad, that burning the bush is intolerable environmental vandalism and that “Black Saturday was a one off event”.  These contentions are being actively circulated by the green movement.

It wasn’t.  It will happen again.   On average there’s a bad burn every ten years.  Each time the loss of life and property has increased.  Yet we do even less fuel reduction now than when I was a boy forty years ago.

Labor, Liberal And Green Votes – Where There’s Smoke There’s Fire

Let’s talk perfectly plain here.  Environmental concern is a good thing.  The Australian Democrats have actively pursued best environmental practice for 30 years.  This isn’t about environmental concern or environmental activism.  There is nothing wrong with that.  In fact I  ran an entire electoral campaign on the issue of Climate Change in 2007.

What is wrong is government,  specifically, political parties pandering to the latte environmentalists purely to garner votes and look impressive and concerned.

It’s wrong and yet it works – and that is gravely concerning.

In a forthcoming article, I’m going to address issues of science and previous debate and inquires..  That is, the evidence we had before February 7th 2009 aka Black Saturday.  It was predicted by credible scientists holding hard, scientific, verifiable data.  They were ignored.

Today,  I am contending that the problem lies with Labor and Liberals desperately seeking to win votes that would otherwise go to minor parties or independents.  That problem and The Greens, specifically their supporters, are doing the Australian community great harm campaigning – particularly at local government level – with rhetoric based on pseudo science, emotionalism and the cult of the glowing ember.

Can’t See The Wood For The Greens

The labor government has had ten years to address the problems that led to Black Saturday.  Before them the Liberals had their chance.  The Victorian state government has had 70 years to do so!

Consider the commissions, coronial inquests and public  submissions to both since 1939.  We have the answers yet they’ve not been acted on in an overwhelming number of instances.  It hasn’t always been due to the influence of green politics, to be sure.  But that does not detract from the fact that there has been no action at all.

I remember – like it was yesterday – being caught in the 1969 bushfires.  I lost a fire fighter school friend in the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires and I’ve mentioned here previously that my sister, family and friends lost their homes and in many cases their lives on Black Saturday 2009.  So many lost so much, and the reason is simple.  We live in the area the green movement of the inner suburbs likes to poke holes in the air about.  We live here and, as was the case in February 2009, we die here.

We had commissions and inquiries after all these calamaties.  Yet after the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires there was less, not more fuel reduction taking place.

How could that be?

The rise of Green politics.  After the 60′s and 70′s environmental movement had passed and – it needs to be said,  with some very positive outcomes – there was a brief pause in the early 1980′s.  Enormous energy was devoted opposing the nuclear fuel cycle  – rightly – and I applaud that work even now.  It was the Australian Democrats, in the Senate, who led the charge against the damming of the Franklin River – not Bob Brown and The Greens despite their desperate and recent efforts to rewrite history to look like they’ve actually done something, anything!

I supported those real environmental actions.

But the need for fuel reduction is a real concern.  It isn’t based on flimsy theories that trees enjoy being barbequed every ten years by a firestorm.  Sure, Australian native trees germinate widely after a bushfire.  But a firestorm is not the same thing as a bushfire.

When greens point with orgasmic enthusiasm at a series of green sprouts covering the trunks of recently burned trees, they are pointing to an desperate illusion in many cases.  Much of this “green regrowth” is  a last ditch stand of the tree to hang on to life -  soon be extinguished as the tree rots out from the inside.

And that breathless naivity makes me ill.

Yet, this is exactly the kind of material we see published by the green movement.  This and a whole swag more.  Sure, not all the trees will die.  Some of them will in fact go on to live, but  many with this symptom won’t.

How do we know?  The scarring on the hills of Lorne or Warburton after Ash Wednesday is how.  Visible ten years after the fire had passed.  Dead, lifeless trees.  In other words – past forestry experience.  It takes decades to recover from a firestorm, and if not carefully managed leaves the door wide open for invasive and undesirable species to take over.

A little bit like the Senate now the Democrats are absent.

This disinformation is swallowed whole by  latte drinking greens.  This is why labor and sadly the conservatives will not, can not, address this issue – they are desperate to hold the support of these “believers”.

Victorians Have To Decide.  Either We Fix This Now Or We Stop People Living There.

The equation is a simple one at the end of the day.  We either fix this issue by listening to bushfire scientists or we tell people they can’t live in bush-fire prone areas.  It’s a simple decision but it’s painful.  If we attend to proper, science based fuel reduction management then all political parties advocating it face a voter backlash from the latte sipping types we’ve discussed.

On the other hand there is going to be hell to pay if we are going to tell the people, such as those of McEwen, to pack their bags and leave their homes and lives.

The remaining option is no option at all.  That is, to continue to ignore the problem, to pretend all things green are good, and to watch homes and lives burn again.

What would you decide, as a humanitarian, if it were up to you?

Scott Kane

Other Readers Also Enjoyed

• Warning Graphic Images. Australian Liberal Party’s Nuclear Agenda; dirty politics = radioactive environment
• Dont take my word for it: Climate Change Debated in Higgins, Collyer led.
• ETS Lynchin? Better Ask Minchin!
• Media Release – Exempt Left-Handed From Climate Change
• Australia is drowning in debt – not Government borrowings – the private hellish sort that drives misery, paralysis even suicide.
• Your Civil Rights overruled by Police Convenience: Strip-Searching your ‘Designated Areas’ at Will and without Consequence.