By Jenny Noyes
Australia could have been better prepared for the current bushfire crisis facing multiple states if the federal government had heeded warnings from emergency leaders as early as April, former Fire & Rescue NSW Commissioner Greg Mullins says.
Speaking on the ABC's Radio National program on Thursday morning, Mr Mullins said he wrote to Prime Minister Scott Morrison in April and again "immediately after" the May election, warning him of the coming bushfire season and requesting an urgent meeting to discuss funding for firefighting and action to address climate change.
Of the response from the government, he said "in a nutshell it has been difficult and the Prime Minister has seen fit not to meet with us".
Instead, he said he was told Energy Minister Angus Taylor would be in touch. Mr Mullins said the Energy Minister was not the appropriate contact, and that it was only recently that the Minister for Natural Disaster and Emergency Management, David Littleproud, had reached out and scheduled a meeting for next month.
Former FRNSW Commissioner Greg Mullins as an RFS volunteer.
"By that time what we'd predicted earlier in the year had manifested... That something is on everybody's TV screens at the moment," he said. "We saw it coming. We tried to warn the government."
While he welcomed the scheduled meeting and said he hoped the Prime Minister would attend, he said "there could have been real concrete differences had we been listened to" in April.
He said an intervention in April would have given the government an opportunity to lease more large aircraft tankers, like the one that contained the fire in Turramurra on Tuesday, in time to help fight the fires currently ravaging northern NSW and southern Queensland.
However, he would not comment on whether homes and lives could have been saved. "I get quite emotional thinking about it because I've seen so many people lose their lives and homes over the years."
In addition to funding national firefighting efforts, Mr Mullins, who wrote to the Prime Minister on behalf of the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action group, said the government must take urgent action to address climate change and stop Australia's rising emissions.
"This is where people say it's political, but it's a fact that over the past five years our emissions have been going up, not down. It appears we are using credits from our very low Kyoto commitments to offset the Paris [agreement obligations].
"Mother Nature is not fooled by dodgy accounting, she just sees the CO2 go up."
Mr Mullins said climate change "makes the drought much worse, and we see these mega fires that we just can't put out."
A spokeswoman for Prime Minister Scott Morrison's office said the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action had been offered meetings with senior cabinet ministers "several times this year".
"The government is taking action on climate change, we are meeting our commitments and our Climate Solutions Package outlines to the last tonne how we will meet our targets," she said.
Mr Mullins said he wants to see a bipartisan approach to addressing climate change, and for the government to declare a climate emergency.
"It is not normal, it hasn't happened like this before. We can't fix the past so let's start now and fix the base cause, which is the burning of coal and gas.
"Let's look after the future and let's give our firefighters and emergency services the tools to save lives and homes," he said.
A motion by Victorian Greens MP Adam Bandt to declare a climate emergency, which was supported by Labor and the crossbench, was voted down by the government in October, with Energy Minister Angus Taylor calling it "hollow symbolism".