[Forum] When Kariong was evacuated in the 1994 bush fires, Gosford Leagues Club Field was used as an emergency meeting point.
Well that won’t be happening this time. Perhaps the NSW Government will be using some of the funding it cut from the National Parks and Wildlife Service to “re-imagine” the tidal creek that still, in fact, flows under the Leagues Club. It is all about priorities.
If the Federal and NSW Governments were to prioritise adaptation in expectation of longer and more severe bush fire seasons, they would not be in a position to prioritise tax cuts to banks and bankers or SEPPs so their favourite developers can over develop low socio economic areas with cheap housing and no infrastructure or employment.
If the state and federal LNP Governments were to prioritise paying for a professional fire and emergency service to protect our bush, they would not be able to prioritise centralised bio-certification programs to make it easier for greedy developers to bulldoze whatever precious bush is left at the end of this current catastrophe. It is our most precious bush that is burning, from one end of the NSW coast to the other.
We are losing rainforests, ecologically endangered communities, irreplaceable terrain and endangered species. The volunteers fighting these fires are truly remarkable but they only have the capacity to protect lives and property and contain the blaze.
The fires, though contained or being controlled, rage on, edging ever closer to major population areas and eventually the sea. If these greedy governments acknowledge climate change, acknowledge the need to take responsibility, they might have the capacity to minimise these fires or save more bush. Does that mean that their priority is to watch the bush burn, making it easier for their developer mates to move in?
Email, Dec 11 Joy Cooper, Green Point