Melissa Price links Victoria bushfires to climate change

Environment Minister links the Victoria bushfires to climate change, saying there’s “no doubt” of its impact on Australia.

Minister for the Environment Melissa Price visiting the Snowy Hydro Tumut 3 Power Station, last week. Picture: Kym Smith.

Environment Minister Melissa Price has linked this week’s devastating bushfires in Victoria to climate change, saying there is “no doubt” of its impact on Australia

As Victorians in the state’s east survey the damage done to their properties by bushfires, the Environment Minister said Australians across the nation had suffered from the nation’s hottest summer on record.

“There’s no doubt that there’s many people who have suffered over this summer. We talk about the Victorian bushfires; (in) my home state of Western Australia we’ve also got fires there,” she told Sky News this morning.

“There’s no doubt that climate change is having an impact on us. There’s no denying that.”

Coalition figures, including former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, have been reluctant in the past to link climate change to recent natural disasters such as bushfires.

Residents of Tonimbuk, a small rural community heaviest hit by Victoria’s weekend bushfires, believe dan­g­er­ously high fuel loads on vacant­ crown land contributed to the feroci­ty of a blaze that left Country Fire Authority firefighters unable to defend some properties.

Ms Price has been accused of avoiding the media in recent months but she has been front and centre of Scott Morrison’s push to highlight his government’s environmental records and policies including a $3.3bn Climate Solutions Fund and a commitment to Snowy Hydro 2.0.

The environment minister said this morning that recent quarterly figures showing a decrease in Australia’s carbon emissions was the start of a downwards trend, after five years of increasing emissions.

“We’ve been saying this for some time that we believe emissions are going to come down, so this a very positive story,” she told Sky News.

“We know over the next three years that energy from renewables will increase by over 250 per cent.”