GetUp hijacks firefighters to kindle its funds drive
GetUp email claiming to support fire fighters links bushfires to climate change, asks for donations.
GetUp is using the bushfires raging along Australia’s east coast in a new drive for public support, asking people to sign a petition berating Scott Morrison’s government for not doing enough to resource emergency services.
A GetUp email seeking support links the current bushfire season to climate change and includes a request for donations to help fund the group’s work.
GetUp claims to have gained 35,000 signatures in the first 24 hours of its petition backing firefighters. “These brave people are the only thing standing between us and unprecedented fire danger, and Morrison just doesn’t seem to care,” says a campaign message authorised by GetUp’s national director, Paul Oosting. “He’s utterly out of touch, because we value our firefighters.”
GetUp further claims: “As climate change makes the bushfire season longer and more intense, our ‘fireys’ must be able to do their jobs safely. Leaders think they can get away with inaction.”
Liberal senator Eric Abetz branded the new campaign a “false” and “tawdry” attempt to link uncontested government and community support for firefighters to GetUp’s political agenda.
He said GetUp was trying to revive its standing after discredited efforts at the May federal election to target Coalition MPs such as Nicolle Flint, Josh Frydenberg and others with an anti-Coalition “hit-list” campaign.
“It’s another example of GetUp trying to raise support with false advertising of a false narrative,” Senator Abetz said.
“Everyone knows the terrific work that our firefighters do, and to politicise it this way is atrocious.
“To make these assertions against the Prime Minister and the government is wrong.”
Senator Abetz said GetUp ignored scientists such as Andrew Pitman from the University of NSW’s Centre for Climate Extremes, who had acknowledged “no direct link” between climate change and the drought.
GetUp says the NSW firefighters’ peak body has highlighted a decade of underfunding.
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