We’re glad that there have been calls for a Royal Commission into the murder of Carl Williams, and we’re glad that the response from Premier Brumby has been so dismissive and populist. We’re thrilled to bits that people are saying things like “lie down with dogs, get up with fleas”, and “live by the gun, die by the gun”, and “he was a piece of shit crook, his killer’s on toast, why waste money on a Commission?”

We’re glad because it opens up a debate. Glad because that debate may just open up the possibility of a real investigation, and the chance that the public at large will start to understand that the point of Royal Commissions, is not to find a scapegoat, or simple answers, but to find the truth.

The Bushfires Royal Commission has released its interim report and will later this year release its full report of findings and recommendations. There will be individuals found to blame for fires starting, and for fires not being properly contained. There will be agencies criticised for incorrect actions, and for complete lack of action on the day and in the lead-up, and the aftermath. Things have already come out in evidence before the Commission that are making important and powerful people nervous, and with good reason, for the final report will have a lot to say about a lot of people and organisations who failed us that day.

The Kilmore fire, which killed dozens of people, has been found to have been started by one failed power line. The inspector who passed it has appeared already, and the poor man might as well have carried a neon “scapegoat” sign into the witness box with him. He signed off on a conductor and mountings that were aged and weakened. He had only inspected it via the zoom lens on a digital camera. He was, however, working under the guidelines he had been given. He was trained and certified and employed by a company sub-contracted by the power company to do their inspections, under a regime that had stretched from once every eighteen months out to three years or more.

A lot has been made of the communications failures that day, as far as warnings to firefighters and communities arriving hours late, if at all. More alarming is the ridiculous situation with the state’s radio network. Metropolitan emergency services run on a digital radio network, but rural services are still on analogue. Put simply, a metropolitan police car cannot use their radio in rural areas. Police men and women all over the fire zone running roadblocks and so on were either in radio silence, or were given analogue radios they had no idea how to use. A Police Superintendent gave evidence of coming across just such an instance when he met two young metro coppers manning a roadblock, who had had no comms for the several hours they’d been there.

Senior police have been relentlessly cross-examined on this point, particularly by counsel for the Police union, and the answer has been the same every time: Victoria Police and the other emergency services have been lobbying the State Government for over five years to upgrade the state radio network, and the $50 million is just not available. Victorians should be taking to the streets, demanding to know why the government couldn’t find $50 million for a vital service, when they fork that out every year for the Grand Prix.

It’s this kind of incompetence that should be examined and its perpetrators named and its recurrence prevented, not bitching about Christine Nixon going out for dinner. We must not let her, despite her obvious failings on the day, become the scapegoat when the final report is released, for the government, who let this all happen, will be looking for places to hide.

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