Bushfire budget announcement

On 12 June the NSW Government used the opportunity of the imminent state budget to announce how much it was putting into bushfire management. The 2022-23 budget will commit another $315.2 million over the next four years to “complete the recommendations of the NSW Bushfire Inquiry“.

The NSW Government announcement says it has previously committed $516.4 million to addressing recommendations from the Bushfire Inquiry. The government accepted the 76 recommendations and say that all recommendations are now complete or in progress.

At about the same time the latest quarterly NSW Bushfire Inquiry Progress Report was released, for the period January to March 2022. It lists 27 recommendations as completed, with the remainder being either fully or partly ‘in progress’. Action on many recommendations is complex and ongoing.

IBG comment

• The government is to be commended for committing to all the Bushfire Inquiry recommendations, and for funding, pursuing and reporting on their completion.
• Much good work has been done, and IBG is particularly pleased to see progress in important operational areas such as bushfire research, firefighter safety, ecosystem management, the Fires Near Me app, night-time firefighting, divisional commanders, rapid aerial suppression, use of heavy plant and assessment of risk mitigation programs.
• In some cases the actions and progress listed in the progress report interpret the recommendations either narrowly or differently to what was intended, or overlook parts of the recommendation, eg. recommendations 8, 20, 24, 28. The highly dubious Rural Boundary Clearing Code was justified as a response to recommendation 28. IBG has previously questioned the value of this initiative (see below IBG’s Post of September 14 2021).
• IBG has previously commented that the progress reports lack measures of success, ie. actions are not outcomes, so how well are the actions working to achieve what was intended? Most inquiry recommendations were couched with outcomes in mind: “That in order to ensure…”, “that in order to improve…”
• IBG continues to advocate for an independent Inspector-General of Emergency Management to ensure continuous operational improvement, and a NSW Bushfire Strategy that would tie the disparate actions into a comprehensive framework with clear targets and accountable outcomes (also see below IBG Post of August 24 2021).