Real Climate Records

ARSON CONFERENCE

Arson compared to terrorism.

Arsonists were in the same criminal category as terrorists because they killed people and

destroyed property with no thought of the outcome, the Victorian Minister for Police and

Emergency Services, Mr Mathews, said in Canberra yesterday.

He was speaking at a four-day conference on arson being run by the Australian Institute of

Criminology at the Hellenic Club at Phillip. He said community attitudes had to change from

indifference about arson to active concern.

It had added greatly to the anguish of those who suffered in the Ash Wednesday bushfires

in Victoria when it had been discovered that most had been deliberately lit.

The bushfires, the worst experienced in Victoria, had resulted in more than 40 lives lost and quantifiable losses so far estimated at more than $150 million.

It would be premature for him to comment about problems in co-ordination of the emer-

gency services fighting the fires, as a committee was now examining these.

“What I can say is that the enormity of the fires was so great it would have been very difficult for any force to have contained the fires once they had started,” he said.

He told the 140 conference delegates that the law did not provide adequately against arson and made it difficult to apprehend offenders.

“As a Government still in its first year of office, we found that the armoury available to us for dealing with this sombre situation was ill-stocked,” he said.

“In the face of the most desperate fire danger most of us can remember, a person caught redhanded lighting a bushfire was released on bail. Another person convicted on charges arising from the lighting of bushfires was let out on a two-year good-behaviour bond.”

The police had taken action against alleged firebugs on summons and the Country Fire

Authority Act had no provision for an offence of malicious fire-raising. The only offence was

lighting a fire in the open on a day of total fire ban. The Victorian law was being changed.

Only last weekend, Victorians had been appalled that fires in schools had caused damage estimated at more than $1 million. Research of school fire offenders in Victoria between

1971 and 1974 had shown that revenge was the most common reason given.

Money spent on finding out why some young people were so alienated against school was one

way a preventive program could operate, rather than spending money simply replacing the

schools so that they could be burnt down again.

Australia needed a nationally coordinated campaign against arson, emphasising prevention which used reliable information and statistics.