‘The devastating bushfires should not be a subject for politicking’
The deaths of two RFS firefighters is a devastating loss but the bushfires incinerating Australia should not be used by politicians to take a swipe at each other, Piers Akerman writes, after the opposition took aim at PM Scott Morrison for being on holidays.
Opinion
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No one who has ever stood in the front of a raging, roaring bushfire would ever doubt the violent, deadly force before them — which makes the supreme sacrifice of those who lose their lives even more noble.
Just as soldiers and our law enforcement officers know that signing on each day carries the potential for death, so too do seasoned, experienced volunteer firefighters, such as Geoff Keaton and Andrew O’Dwyer.
They both had at least a decade’s experience in the tightly-knit Horsley Park RFS brigade, they had fought fires before. They had both kissed their wives goodbye, cuddled their babies (born within days of each other). This time they did not come home.
Just like hundreds of other ordinary Australian men and women, Mr Keaton, 32, and Mr O’Dwyer, 36, understood the peril of their service and accepted the challenge of the extreme and terrifying conditions of the Green Wattle Creek megafire.
As RFS commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said: “They’re ordinary, everyday individuals like you and I that go out and simply want to serve and protect and make a difference in their local community and they don’t ever go out in the knowledge that they might not come home.”
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian spoke of the “remarkable individuals” who simply wanted to protect their community.
“Every time a loved ones goes out to fight a fire you hope they come back through the front door,” Ms Berejiklian said.
“I don’t think you can see a worse set of circumstances than seeing two young dads lose their lives in this way.”
Mr Keaton was at the wheel of Horsley Park 1 Alpha, Mr O’Dwyer next to him in the front seat.
Smoke was so thick they could barely see 50m ahead of their fire truck when an old dead eucalypt crashed onto the cab of their vehicle killing them both almost instantly. A blessing, if there can be such, in that relentless inferno.
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Contrasting their commitment to others with the inane actions of members of the Extinction Rebellion who were on Friday morning disrupting the activities of other members of the public in the Sydney CBD gives way too much legitimacy to the green idiots.
Reliably, the ABC found time to air the whining Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese attempting to smear Prime Minister Scott Morrison for not curtailing a family vacation in Honolulu.
Mr Morrison was certainly ill-advised to proceed with his pre-planned and pre-booked holiday but as he said on 2GB as he was trying to find a flight from Hawaii: “I don’t hold a hose, mate, and I don’t sit in a control room. That’s the brave people who do that are doing that job. But I know that Australians would want me back at this time out of these fatalities. So I’ll happily come back and do that.”
Prime ministers deserve private time away from the media and Mr Morrison had explained to Mr Albanese he would be away. His presence, had he been on the continent, would not have saved a single home or life.
The fires incinerating Australia from coast-to-coast this Christmas should not be a subject for politicking but they are certainly worthy of a thorough investigation just as Victoria’s Black Saturday fires.
Those fires were started by incorrectly strung electrical power lines near Kilmore East. They were fanned by high winds blasting rural areas which had not seen hazard reduction operations in years and in which forestry roads had been closed.
In some areas of Victoria, as in other states, individuals who took it upon themselves at their own expense to reduce the fuel loads on adjacent state-owned land had been prosecuted and fined by the authorities.
There were 173 direct fatalities and a further seven deaths were later attributed to the inferno, the worst in settled history. Ten years later, a Royal Commission, tens of millions lost, and we have learnt nothing.
As a member of a NSW RFS brigade, I join all in sympathy for the loss of these courageous volunteers.