After more than four decades in local politics, Councillor Greg Watson knows how to play the populist game. His latest manoeuvre is a case in point.
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His motion calls for council to draw up an action plan to reduce all fuel loads on bushland it manages. A fair cop, you might say. However, council is responsible for relatively little bushland. Apart from reserves that border residential areas, most bushland in the Shoalhaven is managed by Forests NSW and the National Parks and Wildlife Service.
Council regularly inspects the land it manages and if it's deemed to be in need of hazard reduction the RFS is notified - and the land goes onto its already long to-do list. That list is getting longer as the window for hazard reduction burns gets smaller with each passing year.
The extensive bushfires across the north of NSW and south-east Queensland have created anxiety along the eastern seaboard, which has fuelled an unhelpful and at times wildly inaccurate blame game.
The subtext of Cr Watson's motion, that council isn't doing enough to reduce fuel loads, plays right into that. But it also fails to mention climate change.
This is despite a coalition of former fire and other emergency services chiefs last week pointing the finger squarely at climate change as a major contributor to the unprecedented fire conditions.
The councillor is a longstanding climate change sceptic so this omission should come as no surprise. He regularly circulates material from climate denial websites.
The second part of Cr Watson's motion - that council should lobby the state government to be given the power to force landowners to conduct hazard reduction - also carries the whiff of populism.
When a Section 44 fire emergency is declared, the RFS already has the right to entire private land and conduct whatever operations it deems necessary, including backburning and physical hazard reduction.
After a week in which the Nationals and The Greens clumsily attempted to appeal to their voter bases with outlandish claims and counterclaims, the intrusion of this style of politics at the local level is unwelcome and divisive when we need to work together.
There is a need to discuss intelligently and reasonably the challenges presented by increasingly intense bushfire seasons.
That discussion should not involve political point scoring - there is simply too much at stake for that.
