Here's a tip: Keep good program going

Tasmania’s rural communities rely on more than good luck to stay safe during seasons of higher fire danger; they rely on programs that are practical, proven, and trusted. The Red-Hot Tips program is one of those rare initiatives that genuinely delivers to the community it serves. 

It fills a vital gap in our state’s fuel reduction strategy, providing rural landowners and communities with the tools, training, and confidence to manage their own bushfire risks responsibly.

TasFarmers has long supported Red Hot Tips, and we do so for good reason. This is a program that works and is focused on landholders; it’s efficient, and more than competitive in its cost of delivery, when compared with other public programs, and it’s well respected. 

Red Hot Tips facilitators now have 450,000 hectares registered across 330 properties under the program, sharing decades of frontline experience in bushfire suppression and land management with landowners.

The hard-working team have become a familiar presence at field days and agricultural events across Tasmania, it’s not another government tick and flick, but a trusted, practical support for landholders in the effort to ensure that fire management starts at the farm gate.

Critical programs like this can’t run on short-term uncertainty. It needs secure, multi-year funding for a minimum of at least three years to protect the program’s integrity and effectiveness. Anything less risks eroding morale, losing highly skilled staff, and undermining years of progress in building community confidence around safe fire practices.

Red Hot Tips stands as a beacon and a valuable complement to the Tasmanian Fire Service, certainly not a duplication of it. Its identity is key to its success, and that is in its independence, which gives it the credibility and community connection that large bureaucratic programs often lack or never achieve.

As the government looks for savings in the coming budget cycle, this is precisely the kind of investment worth keeping. Cutting Red Hot Tips would not only diminish Tasmania’s fire preparedness, but it would also undo years of careful relationship-building between government, landholders, and community.

TasFarmers urges the government to secure the program’s future and maintain its independence, ensuring Red Hot Tips continues to keep our rural communities safer, stronger, and better prepared.