THE Victorian Government is still not getting the message on fire prevention, says MAX RHEESE

The leaking of the Department of Sustainability and Environment's fire outlook report last week and the response from the State Government should be of real concern to all Victorians exposed to fire risk.

Their responses backed the report, but failed yet again to detail any tangible action to prevent a reoccurrence of the Black Saturday tragedy.

Premier John Brumby stated that "efforts would be focused 100 per cent on making the state fire ready this summer".

Unfortunately, this does not accord with the facts as we know them at this time.

Firstly, let's acknowledge a few things.

The Government response to the fire recovery has been timely, compassionate and appreciated.

No one is suggesting extra fire prevention effort will stop a Black Saturday or that fuel-reduction burning is a panacea for fire management.

It is however the most important preventative tool we have to combat fire disaster and reduce fire intensity.

Almost everybody is arguing for better fire prevention, which, as Judge Leonard Stretton said in 1939, "should be the paramount consideration of the forest manager".

It is clear this has not been the case in Victoria for more than 25 years and this is the crux of the current debate: how and to what extent should we focus on fire prevention in the most fire-prone state in the world.

The Premier needs to answer some simple questions:

Why is the 2009-2010 DSE burn target of 130,000ha the same as the last five years?

Why does the 2009 Budget show an 11 per cent decrease on preventative fire funding from two years ago?

Why will the Government not adopt the key recommendation of its own parliamentary bushfire inquiry of last year to set a fuel reduction burn target of 385,000ha?

It is all very well for the Environment Minister (Gavin Jennings) to stand in Parliament last week and say that DSE exceeded this year's burn target by burning 154,000ha when the Government's own inquiry recommendation, based on evidence given by DSE staff to the inquiry, calls for more than double that level of fire prevention burning.

The Government watchdog, the Auditor General, in 2003 reported that "DSE had consistently failed to meet its own (low) burn targets".

This report on behalf of the people of Victoria; this wake-up call, has not been acted on, and in the following six years, three million hectares were incinerated in four mega fires.

Victoria has spent $1.8 billion in fire suppression and recovery over the last six years, and the Government announced in the budget that it would spend $10 million on fuel reduction burning per annum.

The extraordinary thing is this money, reannounced in May, was the same money announced on December 4 last year - three months before the tragedy of Black Saturday.

This hardly displays a commitment to a new paradigm in fire management, or recognises the expectations of the community as detailed in DSE research, which says 80 per cent of the community wants to see a big increase in fuel reduction burning.

Despite what we read, there is no increase in the burn target, apart from a recent announcement for extra funding to carry out limited, but strategic burning on the fringe of Melbourne, there is no extra funding for fuel reduction burning and DSE fire-fighter numbers are expected to be less this year than when then-premier Steve Bracks promised after the Alpine fires of 2003 to increase numbers.

Fire prevention in Victoria has been manifestly inadequate for years, where the common sense approach of prevention has been largely ignored. The last decade in particular shows this to be a fundamentally flawed approach.