Mr DEAN ( Windermere) - Once again my contribution will be relatively brief. I express my condolences to all the families and the communities who have suffered immensely as a result of these bushfires. I thank the Leader for bringing this matter forward. The horrendous situation is that some of these fires were deliberately lit, and that makes such a tragic event even worse. To think that somebody would have the mentality and the capacity to deliberately light fires in those conditions is quite unbelievable.

It is interesting, and it has already been mentioned, that at a time of such tragedy the best comes out in individuals. We have seen it here in Tasmania, we have seen it right across Australia. I just wanted to tell one very quick story of a lady in Mayfield whom I was called to see. She wanted me to go to her home because she had some items she wanted to give to the bushfire victims.

When I got there she came out with two or three boxes of very good stuff - clothing in the main. She brought out with her two new Tontine pillows still in their package. I said to her, 'Are you able to give this to others?' Her answer to me was, 'I have an old pillow. At least I have a pillow. They have nothing'. So she wanted to give two new pillows that she had just purchased for her husband and herself to this relief appeal. That just goes to show you what some people are like. I had boxes of new pharmaceuticals brought down from Wynyard on the north-west coast to my office to give out to the victims as well. It just goes to show you what people are like in these situations. I too, as the member for Western Tiers has referred to, was in the area close to where this happened not long before. In fact I was in Bacchus Marsh not long before as well, where the temperature was 44 degrees. It was just horrendous.

I had to pick up a car at the railway station at Bacchus Marsh. To get into the car we had to open the doors and leave the doors open for a time to try to get a bit of fresh air because the wind was strong at the time. Then we had to jump in the car and drive it to a place in the shade to try to use the vehicle in some safety. The conditions were absolutely horrendous. I might say that in all of this I thought about my son who had that day left Dayton in Ohio with his wife and our grandson. At the time it was minus 30 degrees in Dayton. They arrived here to temperatures of plus 40-odd degrees. The turnaround in temperatures was just amazing, and they just could not come to terms with it. It was horrendous for them to survive in those sorts of conditions. It just goes to show you what happens and what can occur. We can rebuild properties - and we often say this - but we cannot replace lives or those personal possessions that people have had - photographs of long ago and all the other things, which makes this tragedy even worse.

We can hark back to the 1967 bushfires in Tasmania that resulted in 62 deaths. The experience in those fires would have come back to them, what they went through and how they suffered. My brother was burnt out in that fire.

I was serving with the military in Borneo when we received a message that the surviving Tasmanians, and that is how it came through to us, 'the surviving Tasmanians' were evacuated by two submarines'.

Mr Parkinson - Three submarines.

Mr DEAN - Three submarines. It was an incredible situation, trying to imagine what did happen in Tasmania with our relatives and my parents. So we do know what the people in Victoria went through and are going to go through for a long period of time.

We want them to recover but the recovery process will be a mammoth task. Christine Nixon has taken on a huge job there but she is someone who will be able to do that, in my view, with her background and experience in working with people and her knowledge of emergency services - how they operate and what they do. I think that she will handle that process well.

I want to commend all of those emergency services that are involved with firefighting, for their support and assistance and the ongoing support that they will provide into the future. Our Fire Service, our State Emergency Service, the police and community workers and volunteers have done so much to try to help and relieve some of the problems that have occurred.

I also want to mention the royal commission. I think it will be interesting to see what comes of that royal commission at the end of the day. Currently we are all talking in Tasmania about what should we now do to ensure that we do not have a tragedy like that or a similar occurrence to one that we had back in 1967. Local governments are being inundated with requests from the community to take some action and to take it now. I suspect that the State Government is getting the same pressures put on them.

Do we sit back and wait for the outcome of a royal commission that will give us some directions and things that we ought to be considering and doing, or do we now step in and take some of the actions that we know will make our people much safer?

We have many people who build in the bush and are restricted in what they can remove and cannot remove. I think that we are going to see some big changes in that area. We have all read about the person in Victoria where contrary to local government requirements and directions, he got in and cleared around his property. As a result of that we are told he was able to save his property but he faced a horrendous fine from local government in relation to the actions and attitude that he took in that situation. I think that we will see some very big changes occurring in the future. Currently there is a lot of talk about bunkers and all those sorts of things that we should be ensuring occur in some of the localities where people build. I think we have to go a long way before we make those determinations because we do not know just how safe they are.

There are lots of things that we need to do. In conclusion, I pass on my condolences to all of those people and we will all continue to work hard to give them whatever support is necessary.