CFA Chairman Kerry Murphy

No Australian should forget that 173 people died in the Victorian Bushfires last February. That it could happen again should be so anathema to Premier Brumby that he should realise an overwhelming need for a paradigm shift away from the current misguided and out-dated strategies of the Country Fire Authority's Board and Executive.

One hope out of the avoidable tragedy of the 2009 Victorian Bushfires and out of the political football of the Brumby Royal Commission is that public will demand a paradigm shift in Australian bushfire fighting resourcing and standards.

One of the fundamental changes must be to force a leap frog from post-World War II bushfire detection to state-of-the-art 21st Century remote sensing of ignitions. The current system which relies upon members of the public calling 000 to report bushfires is substandard fire-fighting practice and unacceptable. Allowing ignitions to burn out of control in remote locations and blow up into fire fronts is also substandard fire-fighting practice and unacceptable.

A report by ABC journalist, Jane Cowan, 1-Jul-09, 'Bushfire lawyers blast CFA's Rees' states that lawyers assisting Brumby's Royal Commission into the 2009 Victorian Bushfires have in an interim report concluded that the Victorian Country Fire Authority (CFA) was ill-prepared for 'Black Saturday'.