This is very frustrating for this group of emergency chiefs, because had we spoken back in April, one of the things we would have said was try to get more aircraft on lease from the northern hemisphere, this is going to be a horror fire season.
We are only going to have seven of those large air tankers you saw at Turramurra saving homes the other day. They can be a decisive weapon. I have just come back from California – they had about 30 on one fire. But because the fire seasons are overlapping with the northern hemisphere, they are not available when we need them most …
The fire and emergency services in each state and territory, the commissioners, they are doing a great job. The volunteers and paid fire fighters, the national park [workers] on the ground are just incredible, salt-of-the-earth people who will do anything for anyone.
Structurally, we would like to actually go back to being retired and not to have to speak out. We would like the doors to be open to the current chiefs, and allow them to utter the words “climate change”. They are not allowed to, at the moment.
We want a national summit, where people are brought together. You need the insurance industry, you need farmers, you need the defence forces, you need fire services, of course, other interested groups. And we want a bipartisan approach.
None of us can understand why climate change in Australia is so political.
In the UK, the conservatives said years ago, Margaret Thatcher, said this is a major problem.
But in Australia, it’s a major demarcation. We would like to see Labor, the Coalition government, the crossbench, the Greens, all come together, declare a climate emergency and start to do something about the base cause – the burning of oil, coal and gas, the generation of CO2, and methane and nitrous oxide, which is what is warming the planet and making our bushfires unfightable.
