Anger of the bushfire victims

VICTIMS of Australia's lethal bushfires claim they are being locked out of a public inquiry into the worst disaster in the country's peacetime history.

As a Royal Commission hearing into the fires which killed 173 people gets under way in Melbourne, victims' groups say they are being denied a voice.

There is also anger that the initial focus of the inquiry is the response to the fires rather than what caused them.

The "Black Saturday" bushfires in February razed more than 2,000 homes and caused tens of millions of pounds of damage.

The state government said the hearings would allow everyone to have a say - and that it would be a "people's commission". But groups and lawyers representing hundreds of victims claim they are being excluded.

The commission has decided to hear evidence from people whose conduct will come under scrutiny during the inquiry, including state officials and the emergency services.

The victims have argued that the best way to identify the causes of bushfires is to hear directly from those who have suffered from them: people who lost their relatives and their homes.

The state's leading forestry body has also been denied the right to appear, even though the management of forests and bushland is thought by many to have contributed to the ferocity of the fires. There has also been disquiet that the commission will focus initially on the government's evacuation strategy - the "stay and defend or leave early policy". They would prefer it to focus on the causes of the fires.

One lawyer said: "If you can stop the fires, you don't have to worry about whether you are going to flee." Melbourne barrister Tim Tobin warned that another bushfire tragedy was likely because lessons will not be learned from the recent disaster.

Mr Tobin, who represents fire victims, criticised the decision of Commissioner Bernard Teague to exclude victims and their legal teams from appearing before the commission.

"My clients take the view that they owe it to those people who have died to ensure that it doesn't happen to others,' Mr Tobin said. His call was echoed by the leader of the Victorian National Party, Peter Ryan, who said Premier John Brumby must honour his promise to let survivors of the fires have a say.

"The government should amend the terms of reference, to enable the victims to be heard," he said.

The chief executive of the Victorian Association of Forest Industries, Philip Dalidakis, says the government has not lived up to its promises.

"Victorians rightly requested in the aftermath of the tragedy that the terms of reference be as broad as possible, and the Victorian government responded with very broad terms of reference," he said.

"And I think at the moment the public has a right to feel let down in the very narrow definition the Royal Commission has taken, in terms of being able to allow people access to provide that evidence."