The Government has learnt nothing about fire and risk management.
The report highlights that it was a fiasco of satirical proportions with bureaucrats unable to deal with it speedily and that it had done nothing to reduce fuel loads.
It’s a damning indictment of the Government because the size and extent of the fire’s devastation could have been avoided.
The review is a catalogue of mismanagement, inaction, underfunding and incompetence.
The Environment Department is responsible for the protection of the Island’s flora and fauna and for overseeing business activities conducted on the island.
The buck stops with them.
This is another departmental failure of the Government.
They have been unaccountable for flora, fauna and possibly endangering homes and businesses, the failure to undertake routine and substantial management of fuel loads, the failure to extinguish the fire when it was small and controllable, the use of firebombing aircraft to assist in early fire control.
It appears the Government has learnt nothing about fire and risk management.
They were told in May last year in a Queensland Audit Office report that more work had to be done on mitigation efforts, managing fuel loads and hazard reduction burns.
The Department is creating more harm to the environment than preserving it.
They bury their head in the sand.
The Government has a propensity to ignore the practical reality that these are changed landscapes.
The environmental outcomes are much worse under their management.
As the gateway to Fraser Island Rainbow Beach is a 100% tourist-based economy which relies on visitors to the region, and many businesses are linked to servicing those visitors and Fraser Island.
The failure to deal with the fire speedily and make routine prevention measures left many local businesses vulnerable to the impacts of the course of the island.
They had already been financially stressed from Covid-19 lockdowns.
They didn’t need incompetence to make things worse.