2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission

On 13 February 2009 Brumby announced that Justice Bernard Teague, former judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria, would chair the Commission, to be assisted by two other Commissioners.

The policy was founded on the empirical claim, researched by Dr Katherine Haynes, that concluded that survival was more likely for people to be actively fighting the fire at home than passively shelter or evacuate to be stuck on the roads.

The policy was defended by Esplin, who argued against the proposal of compulsory mass evacuation insisting that people intending to leave their homes should have been gone long before specific fires were imminent.

Robert Manne adds "In the philosophy of Bruce Esplin … the kind of mid-afternoon warnings the citizens north of Melbourne so desperately needed on 7 February simply had no place".

"Because of the false empirical assumptions of the stay-or-go policy, many of those at the IECC seem to have convinced themselves that if last-minute warnings triggered flight, this would pose a deadlier threat than staying put.