Minister defends Fraser fire response as aircraft ramp up efforts

“The question that everyone’s asking is, if it had been deployed earlier, would it have put this fire out?” he said on Friday, after earlier calling for an independent inquiry into the response.

In parliament, Mr Ryan described the deployment of resources including the LAT – one of more than 20 aircraft involved in the efforts – as a “matter for the experts”.

“I trust them to make the right decisions,” he said. “We back the experts – it is not for any politician in this place to tell our firefighters when they should use their firefighting equipment.”

With the LAT used every day this week, he added, 3 million litres of water and retardant gel had now been dropped onto the fire. A high-level review announced this week would help…