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Semi-professional firefighters being considered: Watt

Watt is asked about whether Australia can continue to rely on a volunteer firefighting force to respond to increasingly larger and more threatening fires as a result of climate change.

That work will carry into the new year and I don’t want to pre-empt those recommendations but as I say, we are taking short-term steps in the meantime by investing in those kind of groups like Disaster Relief Australia. But it is possible in the future that we will have the need of turning to semi professional firefighter services like they have in California, where people can be paid just for the fire season, rather than the entire year. There are all those sort of options under consideration at the moment.

We do live in a more uncertain strategic world than we have in the past and it is important that the ADF can be focused on their core mission, with is the defence of the nation, and the reality is that every time we do call on the defence forces to assist in a disaster situation, that is taking them away from their training and their preparedness for their core duty.

I think in a situation like we faced in Lismore and the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, there is no doubt you would need the ADF deployed for that kind of thing and in the recent floods in the Kimberley, we were bringing people from across from Townsville, aircraft in Townsville and getting the But it is about making the balance right and not over-relying on them.