Today, 7 February 2010, Australians have been asked to make time to remember 7 February 2009 – the day bushfires in Victoria burnt out 430,000 hectares of land — and killed 173 people.

Prime Minister, Mr Kevin Rudd, has declared a “national day of mourning”, with flags flown at half mast and a minute’s silence at noon.

Remembrance services are planned for churches in towns in the fire-affected areas, including Kinglake West, Marysville, Flowerdale, Whittlesea, Toolangi and Bendigo.

Mr Rudd and Victorian Premier, John Brumby, will attend a “multi-faith” service at St Paul’s Anglican Cathedral in Melbourne.

Multi-faith? Will nobody be praying out loud for the souls of the deceased? They will not. The Protestants wouldn’t stand for it.

Better for Catholics to arrange their own one-faith memorial services — those people need our prayers.

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Mr Brumby has told the media, “We don’t want this tragedy to ever happen again. We all need to learn from this terrible disaster.”

OK. So a three-member Royal Commission was set up – Ron McLeod (ex-Defence Department public servant), Susan Pascoe (ex-CEO of Victoria’s Catholic Education Commission) and chairman Bernie Teague (ex-Supreme Court judge).

They’ve come up with an Interim Report — 51 recommendations – focussing on establishing early fire-risk warnings, relocation plans (fire refuges) and reorganising fire service command hierarchies.
They made no recommendations about fuel reduction.

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Everybody knows that fuel-reduction burning is the most important preventative tool  to  help avoid future multi-fatality bushfires.

However, the Victorian government’s burn target for 2009-2010 was 130,000 hectares – unchanged over five years  – ignoring its own Parliamentary Bushfire Inquiry’s recommendation of 385,000 hectares.

Is this government so dependent on the preference votes of the (anti-fuel reduction) Greens Party?

A useful recommendation which the Royal Commission probably will not make would be to stop calling that fatal day “Black Saturday” — and call it “Greens Saturday”.

Then whenever we remember those who died we’ll remember whose fault it was — and remember who never to vote for.

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