Brumby defends rebuilding delays

Sunday, February 07, 2010 » 11:31am


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Victorian Premier John Brumby has defended delays in rebuilding on the first anniversary of the Black Saturday bushfires.

The federal member for McEwen, Fran Bailey, has criticised the Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority as being an obstacle to rebuilding.

Asked about this, Mr Brumby said the federal-state authority had done a great job.

'There's been some degree of bipartisanship and there's been some degree of politics as well,' he told Network Ten on Sunday.

The premier also defended delays in rebuilding schools in the bushfire-hit towns of Marysville and Strathewen.

'People say, Why didn't you build it two weeks after the fire?'' Mr Brumby said.

'The reason we didn't do that is because we wanted to talk to the local community, to consult with the local community to make sure that the facility that we put back in ... was a better facility than the one that was there before.'

Asked if an event similar to Black Saturday would ever happen again, Mr Brumby said that could not be guaranteed.

'The level of resources, the communications, the new measures we've put in place, all of these things are all designed to actually minimise the possibility we would ever see another day like that but I can't guarantee it,' the premier told Sky News.