Royal commission into bushfire crisis would examine role of climate change

A royal commission into Australia’s bushfire crisis would examine the country’s operational response to the blazes, the role of climate change and how the nation can boost its resilience.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has flagged further action to reduce carbon emissions and a royal commission into Australia’s bushfire crisis.

Mr Morrison said he would take a recommendation to Cabinet for a royal commission into the fires, which have claimed 28 lives and are ­expected to burn for months.

He said the royal commission, on which he would consult the states, would look at the operational response to the fires, but also the role of ­climate change and how Australia could boost its resilience.

Mr Morrison told the ABC the government would “continue to evolve our policy’’ and hinted it might not rely on carry-over credits to meet its international carbon emissions reduction commitments.

The Australian Defence Force (ADF) commenced Operation Bushfire Assist 19-20, helping fire-ravaged towns in Victoria and NSW begin the major clean-up effort, as well as evacuating communities and dropping in supplies.

The sky turns red from the fires in Omeo on January 04. Picture: Getty

But he said any changes would be made within the policy framework taken to last year’s election, and there would be no carbon tax, no higher electricity prices, and regional industries and jobs would be safeguarded.

He did not say how the government might further reduce its emissions, other than referring to new technologies.

Australia’s emissions ­reduction target for 2030 is to be 26 per cent below 2005 levels and Mr Morrison did not flag changes to that figure.

“We will always be taking up the opportunities of measures that enable us to achieve lower emissions, but lower emissions at the same time as we stay true to the policy I took to the last election,’’ he said.

“That was to ensure we get the balance right, to get our emissions down without putting a tax on people, without increasing their electricity prices, without removing the ­industries upon which they and their communities and their towns and their regions rely for their very livelihoods.’’

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The PM conceded he could have handled some matters relating to the bushfires better after awkward vision emerged of him pressing unwilling people for handshakes.

He said “95 per cent of the responses’’ he’d had were positive, but “prime ministers are flesh and blood, too, in how they engage with people’’.

Mr Morrison said he would henceforth make public statements before he took holidays, and alert the public an Acting Prime Minister was in charge.

This follows criticism of his holiday in Hawaii, which he was forced to cut short during the bushfire crisis.

“In hindsight, I would not have taken that trip knowing what I know now,’’ he said.

He said he had sent Opposition leader Anthony Albanese a text as he was leaving on his break, so was not being ­secretive about it.

Mr Morrison also said the call-up of 3000 Army reservists to help tackle the bushfires had required the approval of the Governor-General and raised constitutional issues.

He said the ADF had been able to operate in “a very agreeable environment’’ with the states, but “these arrangements have pushed, I think, the constitutional authority for us to act to its very edge’’.

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