DISGRACEFUL GREENS EXPLOIT BUSHFIRES FOR POLITICAL GAIN

THESE bushfires have brought out the best and worst of our national character. The best has been the thousands of people who drop everything to go and fight these fires as volunteers. The endless kindness people extend to each other in times of pain and the undying spirit of Aussies who, no matter how hard life knocked them down this week, are already fighting back.

The worst are those who seek to exploit the fires to draw political attention to themselves. The Greens have been a disgrace this week, but sadly their supporters are like cult members cheering on their grandstanding. Climate change warriors use this and every other fire to make their point – that things are getting worse and they were right all along.

But let’s not be distracted by the noise, and let’s not fight amongst ourselves about why fires happen. Here is the cold truth … climate change doesn’t start bushfires. People do.

Eighty-five per cent of all bushfires are started by humans, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology. These numbers are also supported by NSW and Queensland police and are signed by fire services too.

Fifty per cent are lit on purpose, 37 per cent are suspicious and 13 per cent proven. Thirty-five per cent are accidental, often as a result of industrial accidents.

Just 6 per cent of all bushfires are started by nature. These numbers haven’t changed for much of the century.

So, while gross politicians want us to go to our corners and fight about climate change, ignore them. All of them. Let’s keep the focus on who starts a fire; people.

On days like the ones we know are going to be extreme fire danger days, we need to ban anyone entering bushland areas. That way it will be clear that if we see someone near the bush on those days, they aren’t there to go bushwalking. They are there to light a fire.

We need the media to warn people over and over again about keeping an eye out where sparks fly at work and not to flick their cigarette butts out the window. We have gotten lazy and simply assume younger people know the obvious about fire days.

As it’s been proven, some of them don’t.

Those who maliciously light fires should be named and known for their crimes. They should be charged with attempted murder. It’s that serious.

I’ve spent much of this week wading through government reports to get answers to some key issues that always come up during a political debate when there are fires. Is hazard reduction to try and prevent fires going up or going down? Are we having more fires than we used to? Or in the age of media saturation, do we just know more about them?

Sadly, I’m not much the wiser for my research. You see there’s not a clear set of numbers on any of those questions. At least not publicly available.

For example, in NSW there are half a dozen groups who do hazard reduction and they all overlap. Each have their own ways of reporting and most use “three-year goals” and percentage of goals achieved to measure this.

So it’s time to pull all of this together.

The Federal Government needs to force the states to produce a report that states the following:

How many bushfires were there last year? How many hectares did they burn? How many hectares were cleaned by hazard reduction efforts?

These numbers need to be backdated too so we can compare 2019 to 10, 25, and 50 years ago.

Fire authorities have these numbers. They just change the way they report them every couple of years to hide a reduction or pump up and increase on the previous year’s reduction.

Without clean and clear data for all to see, there is a smoke haze of spin and misinformation for opportunists in our politics and media to exploit. And that’s a disgrace.

Thank you to anyone who helped out this week and all our strength to those who have lost so much.