Bushfires – The Solution

by Australia’s biggest residential property investor and major tax payer

I have investigated over my 52 years in property the causes and the possible solutions to this huge cost to the nation in money, lives and personal suffering. Bushfires mostly start in dense bushland which is difficult to surface. This fire is accidental, or is it? The cause of 20% of bushfires, deliberate arsonists. This is no accident at all but it is encouraged as we will see later.

Accidental – once bushfires in dense scrub were not as big a problem because of the logging process where even old bush tracks could be followed by fire trucks large or small to get to the seat of the fire and put it out while it is small. As logging and then selective logging became outlawed these tracks became overgrown, impassable and now impossible to get to the seat of a bushland fire. By the time airborne solutions are sourced and operating the small fire is now a raging fire, especially if fire winds have struck up. There is a solution to this.

Deliberate – As the recent cases have shown, 20% of our bushfires have been caused mostly by juveniles. They have caused tens of millions of dollars of damage and millions in the huge labor required by the fire crews and volunteers. These arsonists are encouraged by the light sentence they know they will receive and future firebugs will be similarly encouraged. We now know this is going to happen. Magistrates will deliver a slap over the wrist as they are mostly 14 and 15-year-olds meaning we can’t treat them as adults – or can we?

Solutions

Accidental – Banning selective logging was a step too far and should be reintroduced. Older trees take in less carbon and deliver ¼ of the oxygen of a new tree. Selective logging aims for these older trees, taller and straighter and allows for the planting of new trees in its place. A tick for the environment and a tick for jobs, and a tick for processing jobs utilizing this timber. A tick for less imported timber being brought in from overseas as happens now. With the reopening of these tracks, bushfires will not become major disasters as they will be quickly put out. So really, the culprit causing these bushfires and the huge thousand square miles of smoke (carbon dioxide) are The Greens!  

These are the same greens that go into panic mode at the thought of 4 smokestacks in India processing our coal with white smoke from these stacks.  Compared to our current bushfires this power station is like comparing a grain of sand with the entire beach.  The short-sided green policy would stop the grain of sand causing carbon dioxide but will happily see and cause major bushfires causing smoke from horizon to horizon.

Deliberate – Change the law so that those firebugs are all treated as adults! The sentencing judge, while they cannot send them to an adult prison can enforce home detention for a minimum of 4 years depending on the amount of damage that was caused. For the first time, this would put the cost back onto the parents. It was a lack of parental control, interest or education that allowed this mischief to happen in the first place. It won’t now, parents are paying the bills. The child must be home educated at a cost to the parents. Ankle bracelets will show if the firebug becomes a delinquent and breaks the home detention. They will then transfer to do 8 hours of community service on Saturday and Sunday for breaching the curfew.  

This process could be used also for those juveniles who currently laugh at the laws. Home detention!

In researching this I spoke with those intending to treat animals and birds harmed by the bushfire. They sadly said their services were not needed as nothing escapes the smoke or the fast-spreading flames. Bush fires are responsible for a lot of the endangered and extinct plants and animals so again, illogical green action has been counterproductive harming the very environment that they report that they want to protect. Who will point the finger at the greens every time their illogical actions produce counterproductive consequences? Without this exposure, their childlike policies will only grow.

 I am happy for this article to be used freely and to be quoted. I am happy to be interviewed.

Kevin Young | Club Founder & President of Property Club