“The chances are there were farmers doing their own back-burning,” RFS Inspector Ben Shepherd said. Loading When the Herald visited northern NSW this week, locals recounted how a neighbour had decided to backburn around his house to clear lantana, despite the fire bans. The man had ended up having to call in the rural fire brigade when the blaze threatened to get away, diverting resources from other fire fronts. On Thursday, the ABC also reported that efforts to fight a raging fire at Bora Ridge, near Lismore, had been compromised after a local landowner started a blaze when he did back-burning.

Mr Borsak said farmers living next to state land were desperate to protect their property, with "millions of hectares of national park ... locked up and forgotten". "The national parks are not being properly managed," he said. "They are universally seen by any farmers we talk to as being bad neighbours. No government seems to want to address the issue of what should be done where private land abuts public lands." NSW Deputy Premier and Nationals leader John Barilaro this week weighed into the debate over fire management, calling for more hazard reduction in national parks.

"Since we came to government, hazard reduction has increased 250 per cent. Is it enough? I say it is not enough," Mr Barilaro told Parliament. "The First Peoples, the Indigenous people of this land, used to burn this country to protect its wildlife and its people, but over the decades and centuries we have decided that we know better." Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video Mr Borsak said he would consult the Volunteer Fire Fighters Association (VFFA) about how they could assist farmers carry out controlled burns. But Mr Borsak's bill is unlikely to be supported by the government, which says hazard reduction is a complex task that requires significant planning.

A spokeswoman for Emergency Services Minister David Elliott said: "The NSW Rural Fire Service works in collaboration with partner agencies including NSW Parks and Wildlife on hazard reduction. “The ability of the NSW RFS and partner agencies to complete hazard reduction burning is highly dependent on the weather, and the windows of opportunity available are limited." Fire retardant covers an area in Colo Heights. Credit:Getty Images Despite this, the spokeswoman said the NSW government had “exceeded its target” for hazard reduction over the last four years. The Enhanced Bushfire Management Program began in 2011 with a commitment to treat, on average,135,000 hectares of bushland each year.

But on Friday the National Parks Association of NSW (NPA) warned that fire management had no “magic bullet solutions.” Loading NPA president Anne Dickson said: "We can’t kid ourselves that prescribed burning is the complete solution, especially given the increasingly narrow windows of opportunity in which burns can be safely conducted.” Rising tensions over fire management come against the backdrop of doubts being raised this week about the true volunteer strength of the RFS. Mr Elliott told Parliament on Wednesday that there were 75,000 volunteer firefighters “ready for deployment” while the Volunteer Fire Fighters Association put the figure at closer to 18,500.