Hansard debates

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (18:02): My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Health. Regional communities are facing significant fire risk due to the Labor government’s prohibition on Melbourne residents travelling to their secondary properties to undertake maintenance. The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) currently advises that you may only leave home to undertake ‘emergency maintenance’ of a property other than your place of residence. Residents in the designated metropolitan Melbourne area, such as Kylie Borg of Rockbank, have been told by Victoria Police that necessary removal of vegetation does not constitute emergency maintenance.

According to the CFA, the fire danger period may be declared as early as October in some municipalities, which would preclude controlled burning without permits and limit the use of machinery to reduce vegetation. On 4 October the Premier was asked in one of his many press conferences about the prospect of residents of metropolitan Melbourne being allowed to travel to their regional properties to undertake fire risk mitigation, to which he replied, ‘We’ll have more to say about that soon’. Since then to my knowledge and to the knowledge of Victorians who have reached out to me expressing their concerns over this issue no announcement has been made. The Premier often harps on about the current ‘public health bushfire’—well, he is going to have some real bushfires on his hands unless he allows Melburnians to reduce fuel loads on their regional properties before the fire danger period.

The last thing regional Victoria needs after the economic catastrophe caused by Labor’s public health disaster is another season of bushfires because property owners were denied the ability to reduce vegetation. Reducing fuel loads on farming properties is vitally important for preventing fire risk, unbeknown to this inside-the-tram-tracks government. We cannot afford to have a situation where many properties in regional Victoria pose a significant fire risk to their local communities because the landowners are locked up in Melbourne and unable to undertake any maintenance. So the action I seek is that the minister ensure that DHHS immediately amends their advice to clarify that travel from metropolitan Melbourne to regional Victoria to undertake fire risk mitigation constitutes emergency management and is therefore legal.