Victoria’s bushfire planning strategy needs a “major overhaul”, an urban designer has told the Bushfires Royal Commission.
The Commission called Roslynne Hansen, principal at Hansen Partners, as one of six experts at a planning forum held yesterday.
Bushfire-prone policy in Victoria has been “left behind” when compared to the policies created for other hazards such as rising sea levels as a result of climate change, Hansen told the Commission.
“The policy that currently relates to bushfire-prone areas is sadly lacking and it really is time to do a major overhaul of that policy in conjunction with the overlay being seriously reviewed.”
The current Wildfire management Overlay (WMO) is “confusing” and “inadequate” in that it fails to make expert advice compulsory.
“Certainly at the moment [the WMO] doesn't require as a mandatory provision the involvement of experts in assisting applicants in making decisions, nor assisting councils in having that expertise within their own organisations.”
Population growth outside Melbourne’s urban growth boundary is also “clearly causing problems”, Michael Buxton, associate professor of Environment and Planning at RMIT University, said.
“Three per cent of the land mass in Victoria accounts for about 50 per cent of the economic damage from bushfires and most of that is in the peri-urban area,” Buxton told the Commission.
Part of the problem is that statutory planners have few measures to stop incremental development in fire-prone areas. Buxton calls this a “weakness” in the statutory system.
“There hasn't been an adequate anticipatory approach by the state to look ahead far enough through the strategic process to identify the kind of emerging risks in 10, 20, 30, 50 years, for example, by locking climate change responses in.”
