EXCUSES, EXCUSES
Member for Western Victoria Region, Bev McArthur has criticised the Minister for Police and Emergency Services Lisa Neville’s response to a constituency question on traditional Indigenous burning practices as a method of land management.
Mrs McArthur asked on 28 November 2019 “why has the state failed to commit to implementing a long-term strategy of prescribed burning, when traditional Indigenous burning practices can be utilised for land management?”
Mrs McArthur told the Parliament how “This cool and quick, low-intensity fire protects country. It should be adopted in all public land management systems to prevent intense fires,” and that “traditional burning practice [had been] utilised by Australia’s First People for over 50 000 years.”
Ms Neville’s written response on 10 January 2020, revealed that the Labor Government’s position was to be “respectful of the cultural and intellectual property rights of Traditional Owners,” and that “knowledge of how to apply cultural fire and the purpose of that application is knowledge owned by Traditional Owners, not the Victorian Government or the Departments involved in forest and fire management”.
Quotes attributable to Bev McArthur MP:
“The Labor Government is prepared to risk the safety of rural Victorians to maintain an illogical and unsupported position on traditional burning practices.”
“This Government has been completely incompetent when it comes to hazard reduction burning, meeting only one-fifth of the recommended target set by the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission.”
“Now they’re even refusing to adopt Indigenous burning practices on a large scale, suggesting that they can only be used if they’re led by Traditional Owners, due to ‘intellectual property rights’ to which other Victorians are apparently not a party. This seems to be an absurd excuse for failing to sufficiently reduce fuel loads in forests.”
“It’s about time we actually started respecting Indigenous culture by letting Traditional Owners teach us how to use their effective land management methods, which have worked for thousands of years. The Labor Government thinks respecting Indigenous culture means virtue-signalling their avoidance of cultural appropriation, not learning from Indigenous peoples’ deep knowledge of the land.”
“If somebody has got a solution to bushfire risk mitigation – I think we ought to use it. This tragic bushfire season shows that we don’t have the luxury of being fussy over what methods we use. This is a real crisis.”
ENDS
14 January 2020