Public deserve to know how politicians benefit from crisis
Whether out of selflessness or self-interest, a handful of people have emerged from the bushfire season with higher profiles, new opportunities and international recognition, writes Sharri Markson.
Opinion
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- The political climate has changed but climate policy won’t
- Sharri Markson: They only have themselves to blame
As a cynical journalist, I can’t help watching Australia’s politicians navigate their way through the bushfire crisis without wondering how much they are using the tragedy to advance their own political interests.
Not everyone is as selfless as our heroic firefighters who have risked, and in some cases tragically lost, their lives over the past three months.
But whether out of selflessness or self-interest, it is indisputable a handful of people have emerged from the bushfire season with higher profiles, new opportunities and international recognition.
Starting with Malcolm Turnbull.
During his time as prime minister, Turnbull was persuasive when he spoke about the need to separate ideology from climate change as the 2018 bushfires at Tathra on the NSW south coast took hold.
In a media interview unearthed by the IPA, he even invoked the beautiful words of poet, Dorothea Mackellar.
Turnbull said: “As you know very well, you can’t attribute any particular event, whether it’s a flood or fire or a drought or a storm to climate change.
“We are the land of droughts and flooding rains. We’re the land of bushfires. Nature hurls her worst at Australians, always will and always has, often unpredictably.”
And when the Greens said the fire was a result of government inaction on climate change, Turnbull said he was “disappointed that the Greens would try to politicise an event like this’’.
Fast-forward to today and Turnbull has slammed the Morrison government’s inaction on climate change ahead of this unprecedented bushfire season, calling Australia a “laggard” on emissions in TIME magazine. But back in February 2017, Turnbull disagreed with today’s version of himself, saying we should not do more than other countries.
Now, Turnbull is arguing we need to move away from coal “urgently”, as he wrote in TIME.
There’s lots more where that came from. For the full contradiction and inconsistency of his public statements as prime minister to his comments this summer, watch my television program on Sky at 6pm on Sunday.
The question is, who is the real Malcolm Turnbull? If the real Turnbull is the one who backs robust action on climate change then it would appear that as PM he put his ambitions over and above the need to act.
Interestingly, it was NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean who leaked Turnbull’s earlier treachery by revealing a private conversation where Turnbull claimed Morrison was avoiding calling an election because he wanted to “keep his arse in C1”.
It probably won’t surprise you to learn that Kean and Turnbull have now repaired their friendship, with Kean apologising for going public about their private conversation.
Prior to the bushfire season, Matt Kean had a low profile. Now, everyone — apart from Morrison’s cabinet — knows who Kean is. Even actor Leonardo DiCaprio gave him a shout-out in an Instagram post. His star has risen.
His colleagues say Kean, who started in politics in his early 20s, is ambitious and hopes to one day be premier. He has seized recent media opportunities as environment minister to blame the federal government for its lack of action on climate change.
Kean’s colleague, Andrew Constance, is another MP who has a new national profile as a result of the bushfires. Constance, whose home was in a high-risk zone, has given many emotional and tearful interviews throughout the fire season.
But, like Kean, he also deflected criticism of his own government’s shocking mismanagement of the land by sheeting home the blame to Canberra. When Constance said publicly he could understand why locals were angry at Morrison, the PM contacted Gladys Berejiklian to ask why her ministers were attacking him.
Berejiklian did not apologise. Instead, she defended him to Morrison by saying how traumatic it was for Constance to deal with the fire zone.
Liberal insiders claim Constance has been eyeing off the federal seat of Eden-Monaro, where speculation is that Labor MP Mike Kelly could retire, sparking a by-election.
Fire chief Shane Fitzsimmons is another figure who could emerge from the fire season with accolades and a new political career.
Fitzsimmons rules out entering politics, but the opportunity is there for him should he change his mind. The Liberal Party is discussing him as a potential replacement for Brad Hazard’s seat should the Health Minister retire before the next election.
He’s also being spoken about as Australian of the Year.
The RFS boss has publicly said there is no need for Scott Morrison’s royal commission. But even heroes need to be accountable.
Berejiklian left the decision about whether NSW needed assistance from the military up to Fitzsimmons, who said it wasn’t necessary.
The fire chief then complained about not personally being consulted when the PM overruled usual protocol of waiting for the states to request additional help and deciding to send in the army to help fire-ravaged regions.
Again, he was lauded by the media for criticising Morrison and gave a lengthy profile interview where he spoke about his family upbringing.
One of the things Morrison wants to look at is giving the Commonwealth new powers to declare a national emergency so that he doesn’t have to wait for permission from the likes of Fitzsimmons before deciding to send in the military.
It’s also worth noting that just last week Fitzsimmons dismissed the findings of the independent Mick Keelty review into the NSW fire agencies, claiming it was a political and industrialised inquiry.
And as I revealed on my Sky program last Sunday, Fitzsimmons personally knocked back a farmer’s request to clear a firebreak around his property in the weeks and then days before it was torched by flames in December.
The fact is, everyone needs to be accountable when it comes to examining this disastrous fire season to prevent a repeat.
And the public deserves to know how their political leaders stand to benefit from the position they are taking on the fires.