Public policy, driven by the pursuit of minor party preferences, was a recipe for disaster of the greatest possible magnitude for humanity and the forest, outspoken federal Liberal MP Wilson Tuckey, WA, said this morning.
He has blamed both major political parties, in part, for Victoria's bushfire tragedy, saying some of the weekend wildfires were preventable.
A former Forestry Minister, he says current policies that have locked up forests created excessive fuel loads.
He told FarmOnline: "I'm sorry I didn't fight harder for fuel reduction policies in state forests.
"I didn't adequatelty prosecute the slogan: 'no fuel, no fire'," he said.
Forests today, he says, have nearly 10 times the number of trees to the hectare than they did previously, he told FarmOnline.
Both major parties had been “running around, putting in more reserves to get green preferences", he told the ABC yesterday.
Previously, much of this set aside country was grazed and managed by farmers or managed by professional foresters.
The choice is either to have forests managed by industry or as reserves, Mr Tuckey says.
"In both cases, the reduction of fuel load is a daily requirement and it is not always necessary to do it with burning," he told reporters in Canberra.
Mr Tuckey says firefighters need better access to such country to fight fires.
"When you had a forests products industry...we used to have roads and we used to have bulldozers."
That machinery was traditionally used to help put out a fire the day it started.
"I am heartbroken at what's happened because it was preventable," he told the ABC.
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