Tim Blair: Yes, humans are to blame for the bushfires
Climate change, coal mining and the government’s emissions policies have all been accused of igniting statewide bushfires, but let’s look at a more direct cause.
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The evidence is in and the conclusion is inescapable. Even I must now admit human beings were directly responsible for terrible bushfires in NSW and Queensland.
We call those human beings arsonists, and their destructive impulses were on full display during last week’s widespread (and continuing) fires.
Here’s a sampling of recent news reports:
■ “Police in Australia are on the hunt for arsonists behind 12 bushfires deliberately lit during this week’s catastrophic conditions across New South Wales.”
■ “Police allege a 16-year-old boy started a central Queensland bushfire that has destroyed a staggering 14 homes … the deliberately lit Cobraball fire, near Yeppoon, is still burning days after it destroyed homes, sheds and cars.”
■“A suspected arsonist has been arrested after an extraordinary chase through the bush in the Royal National Park, south of Sydney, by an Army Black Hawk helicopter.”
■ “Two youths have been arrested after allegedly setting a fire during a Total Fire Ban in Kingscliff earlier this week … the boys allegedly gathered paper, dry leaves and vegetation and ignited it using a cigarette lighter.”
■ “Authorities suspect two fires that started on Tuesday in Turramurra on Sydney’s north shore and Loftus in the Royal National Park were deliberately lit.”
■ “A 20-year-old man has been charged after allegedly lighting a bushfire in a Balgownie reserve …in the space of just five minutes, the fire destroyed about 150 sqm of bushland.”
■ “Police are seeking public help to crack down on suspicious behaviour around several Lake Macquarie fires that began on Tuesday.”
■ “(Queensland’s) new bushfire arson unit, Taskforce Overcross, has investigated dozens of deliberately lit blazes in the past two months with 74 people charged.”
While the likes of Greens MPs Richard Di Natale, Adam Bandt and Jordon Alexander Steele-John carry on about climate change, coal mining and the Coalition government’s emissions policies being the bushfire culprits, our freelance pyromaniac community clearly takes a rather more direct approach.
After all, why wait for a century or so of industrialisation to cause conditions suitable for bushfires when all you really need is some paper, dry leaves, vegetation and a cigarette lighter?
Yet arsonists are just about the only people Greens specifically don’t blame for bushfires. Bandt was at it again during Sunday’s ABC Insiders show, as usual sounding like a slightly more masculine version of Greta Thunberg.
■ “If we keep digging up coal at the rate of knots that we’re doing at the moment, it is going to contribute to making global warming worse,” the Melbourne MP said.
■ “And that is going to make bushfires like this more likely and more intense when they happen.”
Just a theory, but I don’t think very many coal miners were skulking through the bush last week, throwing around lit matches and fleeing Black Hawks. They were too busy helping Australia earn nearly $300 billion in mining exports.
Bandt was also asked about comments from his Greens colleague Steele-John, in whose world the only arsonists are pro-mining Liberal politicians. “You are no better than a bunch of arsonists — borderline arsonists — and you should be ashamed,” Steele-John ranted in the Senate, causing even Labor MPs to look away in embarrassment.
■ “I think that you should listen to the emotion in Jordon Steele-John’s voice as he’s talking there,” Bandt told Insiders. “I think he’s the youngest member of parliament. He’s part of a generation that is terrified and aghast.”
In fact, at 25, Steele-John is part of a generation that is terrifying. According to government statistics, the mean age of Australian bushfire arsonists is 26.6.
Instead of yelling at old Liberals, perhaps the Greens senator for Western Australia should be encouraging fire-minded Millennials to put away their Bics, step back from the dry leaves and find productive employment.
There are many excellent opportunities, for example, in the mining industry.
Not that they’ll ever do it, because it would destroy their panic-based business model, but the Greens and the media friends should also tone down the climate apocalypse talk. In a way, it could be providing a kind of moral cover for those inclined to set our bushland ablaze.
It isn’t entirely inconceivable that some of the crazier firebugs might imagine their crimes are raising awareness of climate change.
Then again, imagination isn’t their most obvious characteristic and previous arson attacks were provoked by nothing beyond a desire for mayhem.
Climate change wasn’t on the radar back in 1983 when 47 Victorians and 28 South Australians were killed in the Ash Wednesday disaster, which also left more than 2500 people injured and nearly as many homes destroyed.
As Melbourne’s Age newspaper reported: “Fires, many started by arsonists, were unstoppable.”
So, what to do with these maniacs? I probably share very few opinions with left-of-centre online writer Keith Davis, but when it comes to arsonists we are of completely like mind.
■ “I believe that as a nation we should identify gross acts of arson as acts of terrorism,” Davis wrote last week, as the fires raged.
■ “Arsonists are not simple little breakers of the legal code. Their acts have the capacity to kill innocent people, their acts have the potential to burn out communities.”
To protect people and the environment, we don’t need to stop mining. We need to stop flame-maddened terrorists.
On that, left and right can truly come together.
