Blaming Aussie Greens for the bushfires

From Council ignored warning over trees before Victoria bushfires

The shire council covering some of the areas hit hardest by the bushfires was warned five years ago that its policy of encouraging people to grow trees near their homes to give the appearance of a forest would lead to disaster.

One of Australia's leading bushfire experts, Rod Incoll, warned Nillumbik Shire Council in a 2003 report that it risked devastation if it went ahead with changes to planning laws proposed by green groups that restricted the removal of vegetation.
 
Mr Incoll, the Victorian fire chief from 1990 to 1996, and David Packham, a former CSIRO bushfire scientist and academic who also produced a report on the issue, argued against the regulations, which actively encouraged the builders of new homes to plant trees around the houses for aesthetic reasons.

Mr Incoll told The Australian yesterday the proposed planning rules were "foolhardy and dangerous and ought not to be proceeded with".

"But they were nevertheless instituted," he said. "That is certainly one of the things that people will be looking at as an aftermath of this tragic event."

Mr Packham, now an honorary senior research fellow at Monash University's school of geography and environmental science, wrote in his report, after inspecting the Kinglake to Heidelberg Road: "The mix of fuel, unsafe roadsides and embedded houses, some with zero protection and no hope of survival, will all ensure that when a large fire impinges upon the area a major disaster will result."

Mr Incoll said that in 2003, green groups were pushing for changes to planning laws that included restrictions on the removal of vegetation, "and worse still, the requirement for planting vegetation around and almost over houses, as part of any planning permit to build a house in the shire of Nillumbik, so it gave the appearance from the outside of being a forest".

In 2003, the Nillumbik Ratepayers Group asked Mr Incoll to assess the bushfire risk, and the proposed planning rules.

Council elections were looming, and planning was a major issue. "The green group carried the day in council and the rules came to pass," he said.

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