The green leaves of summer have surrendered to the 2020 fire season and under its darkening skies we no longer live en plein air (“Economic growth will take a hit: Goldman Sachs”, January 7).
It will be remembered as a tragedy of inhuman proportions.
The maelstrom is at once a humanitarian disaster claiming lives, properties, the environment, and destroying towns and their social communities along with all the economic sectors which sustain them.
Funds will need to be re-allocated to prime the pump of local reconstruction so as to engender a renewed business confidence, and ensure adequate resources for new housing, institutions, agriculture, industry and the tourist attractions which also serve as engines of growth.
All political parties should now adopt a responsible approach and work as one in what remains a national crisis.
In time, the fires will be doused and they will re-emerge elsewhere, along with floods.
The embers will later impact on all successive elections.

Mike Fogarty, Weston, ACT