Bunbury council back-flips on firepit ban, admitting policy went too far and wasn’t thoroughly considered

City of Bunbury councillors have back-flipped on a “woke” plan to ban open-air campfires and firepits, with one councillor admitting elected members “make mistakes” when policy isn’t read thoroughly. On Tuesday night, open-air fires were back on the agenda following community backlash to a previously-passed policy which banned the fires on blocks less than 2024sqm during certain times of the year. Amendments to the bushfire inspection and mitigation policy were carried, meaning a permit is now not required and firepits are allowed in all backyards. That is except for the summer months or when there is a total fire ban issued by the Department of Fire and Emergency Services, which trumps local guidelines. Councillor Karen Turner thanked the community for having patience after sounding the alarm, admitting councillors are “not perfect” and sometime miss things in large documents. “Sometimes we’re not perfect. Some of us can make mistakes. Sometimes you get agendas of 600 pages up to 1500 pages, so you don’t always see everything, as much as we try to be as professional as possible,” she said. Local resident Gavin Pound said it wasn’t good enough to have policies passing through council without proper consideration and called on the elected members to be more thorough. Mayor Jaysen Miguel told the South Western Times the policy had been designed by a committee with fire experts on hand, before it made its way to council. “Clearly, it probably wasn’t something that was reviewed thoroughly enough in realising the impact,” he said. “Part of it was probably the fact there was only a (small) number of permits that were being applied for each year, so obviously, clearly, a lot of people probably were doing it anyway.” Mr Miguel conceded the city went too far with the policy, but reiterated the council was “happy” to go back and review items when the community called for it. He said he wasn’t concerned councillors weren’t reading enough into the items which come across their desks. “When we get advice from our dedicated officers and whatnot, sometimes we take those as granted, and as is expected. That’s why we have specialists in that area,” he said. Councillor Gabi Ghasseb said he was concerned the policy was too “complex” for community members to understand, especially those who are linguistically diverse. He called on the city to engage a lawyer to simplify the policy using short sentences and “contemporary English” to make it “clear and concise”. “Why am I being paranoid about it? Not just the fire pits, but the fire policy in general, does attract some severe penalties if there’s including imprisonment,” Cr Ghasseb said. “We need to make sure an elderly lady of an Italian background who’s going to cook some sausages on a barbecue — solid fuel or charcoal — knows what’s going on. “We don’t want people being arrested and going to prison.” Councillor Karen Steele said no councillor wanted to see people thrown in prison, calling it an unlikely outcome for those who might be caught not following the rules. “I think most of us are Australians that do know when is the right and the wrong time to light a fire,” she said. “I would also hope that if our rangers do get called out to someone that may possibly do something wrong, we would give them warnings. We wouldn’t throw them in prison. I’ve never known, in my time on council, that we’ve thrown anybody in prison for lighting a fire outside of the (rules).” The motion to amend the policy was carried, with fire pits now allowed to burn without a permit during the set months.