A personal view of Australian and International Politics

Friday, 17 January 2025

Palestinians in Australia await Gaza ceasefire ‘but now we must grieve this unimaginable pain’

Deal brings refugee community some relief and hopes of seeing family again – but, after 15 months of war, many ‘cannot celebrate’

Mostafa Rachwani Community affairs reporter

Fri 17 Jan 2025 01.00 AEDT

Despite the changes a ceasefire could bring to Gaza after more than a year of bombardment, Karam Alakklouk is still concerned.

“We have very mixed feelings about the deal, because we have so many bad experiences from previous ceasefire deals, where the violence increases before they come into effect.

“Until it formally begins, these couple of days will be very heavy on our souls – each moment will be counted as a year. We just want to sleep through these couple of days and wake up and there is officially a ceasefire.”

A ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel was announced this week, aiming to bring a pause to the war in Gaza, and designed to end the brutal 15-month conflict that began after Hamas’s attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023.

The deal, announced by Qatar’s prime minister, has three phases, including a prisoner and hostage swap and is intended as a stepping stone towards ending a conflict that has resulted in the deaths of more than 46,000 Palestinians in the enclave.

Alakklouk worked as a civil engineer in Gaza before arriving in Australia last year and says he worked on many reconstructions of the territory after previous Israeli incursions.

“But this feels different,” he said. “We have never seen this level of aggression and violence before and reconstruction will be extremely difficult with the likely restrictions on resources coming into Gaza.”

He said refugees in Australia had approached the news with some trepidation, particularly because of how this next phase will affect their grieving.

“Ultimately, it is too late,” he said. “Our lives have been saved but now we must grieve this unimaginable pain.

“Previously, we were solely focused on survival, on the survival of our families. But now, the real struggle will begin. The struggle to accept and to heal and to cry.”

He said there was not a sense of celebration in the community but rather a slight sense of relief, at the hope loved ones were no longer living in constant fear of death.

“That no more lives could be lost each day, each hour, I think most people would feel relieved at that. I did not sleep last night in anticipation, spending it crying and imagining all the people I want to see again.”

He said upon the announcement of the deal, his wife wondered aloud if they could only visit Gaza again, if only for a few hours.

“Our connection with Gaza is beyond words and imagination. We are connected to each centimetre of land. But now there is nothing there – no streets, no houses.

“I love Australia and don’t want to leave here but I do want to see my family again one day, to hold them again and to cherish every moment, because that is what this experience has taught us.”

Rami Tarazi is a former managing director of an NGO in Gaza, and came to Australia during this latest war. He says any step towards ending the violence is a positive step.

“I still have family there, my mother and father-in-law, my extended family, uncles and aunties, all still in Gaza. We need peace more than anything.

“The people of Gaza only need safety, to be able to return to our normal lives and not to face death on every corner.

“We cannot celebrate, after so many people died in Gaza. We are just happy to have this moment, to have some hope.

“There is now so much to do, Gaza is starting from zero now. There is no infrastructure, no electricity, no roads, no water, nothing. I wouldn’t know what to return to if I ever went back for a visit. It is permanently changed.”

The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network welcomed the ceasefire deal, which it called “long-overdue”.

APAN’s president, Nasser Mashni, added that the deal was “not justice” but a “fleeting reprieve.”

“A ceasefire is not justice – it is a fleeting reprieve that will never undo the profound pain caused by Israel’s genocide, nor will it, alone, prevent the next wave of bloodshed. Justice means liberation.

“The resilience of Palestinians is not just a story of survival but a call to the world to end its complicity.”

Wednesday, 15 January 2025

Donald Trump engaged in 'criminal effort' to overturn 2020 election, report finds.

Extract from ABC News

Topic:US Elections

12 hours ago

An older man wearing a red tie, white shirt and a black suit jacket with a serious expression — US president-elect Donald Trump. (Reuters: Marco Bello)

In short:

President-elect Donald Trump engaged in an unprecedented criminal effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat, according to a report released by the Department of Justice.

The report details US special counsel Jack Smith's decision to bring a four-count indictment against Trump, accusing him of obstructing the vote count in his loss against Joe Biden.

It says the evidence would have been enough to convict Trump at trial, but his imminent return to the presidency on January 20 makes that impossible.

US special counsel Jack Smith found president-elect Donald Trump engaged in an unprecedented criminal effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat, according to a report released by the Department of Justice (DOJ).

The report details Mr Smith's decision to bring a four-count indictment against Trump, accusing him of plotting to obstruct the collection and certification of votes following his 2020 defeat by Democratic President Joe Biden.

It concludes that the evidence would have been enough to convict Trump at trial, but his imminent return to the presidency on January 20 makes that impossible.

The DOJ's "view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a President is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government's proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Office stands fully behind", the report said.

"But for Mr. Trump's election and imminent return to the Presidency, the (Special Counsel's) Office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial."

Trump and Smith trade insults over report

Jack Smith in a suit on a blurred background — Jack Smith found Donald Trump engaged in an criminal effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat. (Reuters: Kevin Wurm)

Trump was quick to respond to the report's release, calling Mr Smith "deranged" and a "lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the election".

"Deranged Jack Smith was unable to successfully prosecute the Political Opponent of his 'boss,' Crooked Joe Biden, so he ends up writing yet another 'Report' based on information that the Unselect Committee of Political Hacks and Thugs ILLEGALLY DESTROYED AND DELETED, because it showed how totally innocent I was," the president-elect said in a post on his Truth Social platform.

Mr Smith, who has been the target of relentless criticism from Trump, defended his investigation and the prosecutors who worked on it in a letter detailing his report.

"The claim from Mr. Trump that my decisions as a prosecutor were influenced or directed by the Biden administration or other political actors is, in a word, laughable," he wrote.

Cases against Trump bogged down in courts

Aileen Cannon wearing glasses in front of a US flag and three framed certificates — Aileen Cannon ruled on Monday that the report could be released after a long court dispute. (Reuters)

Mr Smith — who left the DOJ last week — dropped both cases against Trump after he won last year's election.

Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges. Neither case reached a trial.

Mr Smith's case faced legal hurdles even before Trump's election win, however. It was paused for months while Trump pressed his claim that he could not be prosecuted for official actions taken as president.

Trump and his two former co-defendants in the classified documents case had sought to block the release of the report, days before his inauguration.

Courts rebuffed their demands to prevent its publication altogether, with US District Judge Aileen Cannon ruling on Monday that the report could be released after a long court dispute. She had previously blocked the DOJ from releasing the full report.

Report's second section on Trump's alleged secret documents

The second section of the report details Mr Smith's case accusing Trump of illegally retaining sensitive national security documents after leaving the White House in 2021.

The DOJ has committed not to make that portion public while legal proceedings continue against two Trump associates charged in the case.

Judge Cannon has also ordered the DOJ for now to halt plans to allow certain senior members of Congress to privately review the documents section of the report.

Much of the evidence cited in the report has been previously made public.

Prosecutors gave a detailed view of their case against Trump in previous court filings. A congressional panel in 2022 published its own 700-page account of Trump's actions following the 2020 election.

Both investigations concluded that Trump spread false claims of widespread voter fraud following the 2020 election and pressured state politicians not to certify the vote, and ultimately, also sought to use fraudulent groups of electors pledged to vote for Trump, in states actually won by Mr Biden, in a bid to stop Congress from certifying Mr Biden's win.

The effort culminated in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol — when a mob of Trump supporters stormed Congress in a failed attempt to stop lawmakers from certifying the vote.

ABC/wires

Tuesday, 14 January 2025

Mystery syndrome killing rainbow lorikeets and flying foxes leaves scientists baffled.

Extract from The Guardian

Birds

‘The animals that don’t die need total nursing care,’ wildlife rescuer says, ahead of a potential spike in cases in coming weeks.

Donna Lu Science writer

Mon 13 Jan 2025 18.04 AEDT

Thousands of rainbow lorikeets and hundreds of flying foxes have been hospitalised in Queensland in the past year with a mysterious paralysis that can affect the animals’ ability to fly, swallow and even breathe.

Lorikeet paralysis syndrome has struck birds in Queensland and New South Wales since at least 2012, and a similar syndrome was identified in flying foxes five years ago.

Scientists don’t yet know whether the two syndromes have the same cause, but they overlap geographically and cases occur seasonally, spiking each December and January.

In 2024, the RSPCA admitted 1,079 flying foxes to its wildlife hospital in Wacol, Brisbane, and nearly 8,000 lorikeets across two facilities, said a wildlife veterinary director at the hospital, Dr Tim Portas.

“Historically, we would see 2,600 lorikeets and 200 flying foxes in any given year,” Portas said.

Not all the admissions last year were due to the syndromes but Portas said “the most common reason that we have lorikeets admitted to us, and certainly that increase with the flying fox [numbers], was predominantly due to paralysis syndrome”.

The wildlife hospital saw an unusually late peak last February, with 195 lorikeets admitted in a single day, and another spike in December. “We’ve seen well over 100 animals a day in December,” Portas said.

Across the border, the NSW Wildlife Information Rescue and Education Service (Wires) said it had not yet seen an increase in animals affected by the condition, but it was bracing for a spike in the coming weeks.

In both lorikeets and flying foxes, the conditions cause hind leg and flight paralysis. “They might initially appear weak and unable to fly,” said Dr Alison Peel of the University of Sydney. “The lorikeets might keep hopping around on the ground, or the flying foxes end up falling low in the branches … they can’t climb back up again like they normally would.”

Close-up of rainbow lorikeet perching on a branch

Peel called the syndromes a “really significant welfare issue”, because severely affected animals can lose their ability to blink, swallow [or] breathe, resulting in suffocation or dehydration.

“The animals that don’t die need total nursing care,” Storm Stanford, a flying fox carer at Wires, said. “You start off having to use injectable fluids to keep them going long enough before they’re able to use their tongue … to actually be able to drink [by] themselves.”

Peel said most animals, if not too severely affected, would survive, requiring several weeks of supportive care to recover and regain flying fitness.

“The thought at the moment is that there’s some common cause,” said Peel, who co-leads the paralysis syndromes working group, which is seeking to identify the culprit. “There’s no indication that it’s anything spreading from animal to animal.”

“We seem to find it happens in summertime; some years are worse than others, there’s loose association with heavy rain.

“It could be some naturally occurring fungal toxin or bacterial toxin like [botulinum toxin],” she said, suggesting that changing environmental conditions may have increased the toxin to levels not previously present.

She encouraged anyone who spotted an unwell animal to call their local wildlife rehabilitation group or veterinarian instead of picking it up themselves.

Pallas said the syndromes presented in a similar way to water fowl affected by botulism, which occurs when the birds inadvertently ingest botulinum toxin. The potent nerve toxin, commonly known as botox, is produced by Clostridium botulinum bacteria.

triple j turns 50 this week — listen to its first day of broadcast on Double J this Sunday.

Extract from ABC News

Double J

Posted 18 hours ago

Early logos for 2JJ, or Double Jay as it was known, before it became triple j in the early 1980s.

Double J celebrates the 50th anniversary of triple j on January 19 with a special 12 hour rebroadcast of the first day of the station that started it all — 2JJ, Double Jay Rock!

triple j's story began at 11am on January 19, 1975 in studio 206 at the ABC in Sydney.

black and white image of a man sitting in a radio studio — Holger Brockmann was the first announcer on 2JJ, and will return this weekend to celebrate its 50th birthday.(ABC Archives)

Beaming out across the city on 1540Khz was the banned Skyhooks song 'You Just Like Be 'Cos I'm Good In Bed' and behind the mic was former 2SM DJ Holger Brockmann.

Holger will join us on the 50th anniversary to introduce and provide context for this historic replay. You'll also hear the first shifts from Chris Winter, Ivan Walker, Graham Berry and Bob Hudson, as well as comedy skits, news bulletins, surf reports, live concerts and more.

YouTube Double Jay's first moments on air

Double Jay was Australia's first non-commercial, 24-hour rock radio station for young people. It played the music that commercial stations ignored and gave prominence to the youth culture and issues that were important in the lives of 18–25-year-olds in the mid to late 70s.

"Once Double Jay came along, you could hear the music you liked, you could hear people talking about the issues that mattered to you, and you could feel like you were part of a community that shared these common views," former Double Jay presenter Keri Phillips says.

"Young people said, 'We have a voice now. We have someone who's speaking in our language about things we're about'."

black and white photo of woman with curly hair and light sunglasses in a radio studio — Gayle Austin was one of the founding staff at 2JJ and is regarded as Australia's first female rock radio DJ.

"Young people of that time had learnt that you don't have to bow down to the ideas of people from a generation before," the station's founding co-ordinator Marius Webb told us back in 2015. "We gave that feeling a voice."

To pay tribute to the birth of triple j and this milestone moment in Australian media we've dug back into the ABC archives to replay highlights of the first 24 hours of 2JJ.

It will be like listening to a rebellious and risk-taking station again, in real time, as it sounded when it went to air exactly 50 years ago.

Listen to it unfold on Sunday January 19 to Double J from 11am to 11pm, with a special simulcast on triple j for a couple of hours from 11am.

Double J is on DAB+ digital radio, Channel 200 on your TV and the on the ABC listen and triple j apps or your home smart speaker.

'Rotten egg gas' from Western Sydney recycling facility to be converted into renewable electricity.

Extract from ABC News

1 hours ago

a truck outdoors suspends a large cylinder — Bingo Industries has partnered with LGI, the company building the power generator plant. (Supplied: LGI)

In short:

Bingo Industries' "rotten egg" gas from its landfill in Western Sydney will soon power a major generator and be converted into renewable electricity.

The NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) has received over 750 complaints from neighbours complaining of the landfill's odour.

What's next?

By the end of January, the site in Eastern Creek will have 60 gas wells, drilled 30 metres deep, each vacuuming methane and other gases.

The "rotten egg" gas from a Western Sydney landfill that led to hundreds of complaints from neighbours and a successful court prosecution will be among the gases piped into a generator and converted into renewable electricity.

Bingo Industries plans on capturing the gas from its landfill at Eastern Creek and using it to power a 4-megawatt generator — creating enough electricity to power the equivalent of 7,000 homes a year.

The development will take methane — a gas 28 times stronger than carbon dioxide that's harming the atmosphere — and other gases to produce a green form of power.

An aerial view of a tip — The recycling facility had received hundreds of complaints from members of the local community due to the smell. (Supplied: Bingo)

Peter Newman, a professor of Sustainability at Curtin University and a long-time adviser to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said the proposal represents a stride forward in the sustainable treatment of waste.

"Waste is so hard to deal with in our cities around the world," he said.

"If you can actually turn it into power and burn it in the process, then that's even better, because you're making something very useful out of it, as well as protecting the atmosphere."

Professor Peter Newman specialist in sustainability stands in front of congested perth freeway looking at the camera — Peter Newman from Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute said waste is a perennial problem for cities around the world. (ABC News: Claire Moodie)

Offensive gas leads to 750 complaints

Bingo Industries' treatment of gases from its Eastern Creek landfill started with a challenge, before the company identified an opportunity.

In 2021, residents of Minchinbury, Eastern Creek and Horsley Park were blanketed in the trace gas hydrogen sulfide, known for its "rotten egg" smell.

At the height of the issue, the NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) received about 750 complaints from neighbours over three months to June 2021, claiming the landfill's odour was keeping them indoors.

a man in a hard hat walks around at the Eastern creek renewable energy facility — The technology to convert gases from landfills has been growing over the last few years. (Supplied: NSW government)

The Land and Environment Court issued a ruling against Bingo Industries' subsidiary Dial-A-Dump last year, ordering them to pay a $280,000 fine and cover the EPA's costs of approximately $410,000.

"There was a plethora of evidence that many residents affected by the odour suffered very real psychological and physical harm, as well as considerable harm to their amenity," Justice Rachel Pepper said.

Bingo Industries treated the odour in response to the complaints by installing flares that transmuted the methane into carbon dioxide and water.

Turning harmful gas into electricity

Up to 2 million tonnes per year of solid and asbestos waste can make its way to Bingo Industries' recycling ecology park in Eastern Creek, according to a modification assessment report by the NSW government.

As the organic material in its landfill decomposes, it produces methane, carbon dioxide and trace gases like hydrogen sulfide.

These gases release into the atmosphere if they are not treated, polluting the air and producing offensive smells.

Bingo Industries plans on mining these gases and using them to generate enough electricity to power some of its operations, before feeding anything left over into the electricity network.

Converting the gas to electricity will "improve environmental outcomes for the community", a company spokesman said, and lower emissions at its Eastern Creek facility.

"This project will enhance Bingo's earlier investment of around $5 million in landfill gas infrastructure, and ability to capture the gas generated from the landfill," they said.

gas-skid-under-construction-with-flares-in-hq — The electricity generated from mining the gases will be used to power operations at Bingo Industries. (Supplied: LGI)

Bingo Industries has formed a partnership with Australian company LGI, which will spend up to $18.5 million building the power generator plant, and it will run it around the clock for at least 15 years.

"Even today, if we found a new solution to our waste problem, all these [landfill] sites will continue to produce gas for decades," chief executive of LGI Jarryd Doran said.

"We have a facility here in Brisbane which has not received rubbish for 20 years, and we can still recover enough gas from it to generate electricity 24/7."

How the technology works

By the end of January, the landfill at Bingo Industries will have 60 gas wells, drilled 30 metres deep, each vacuuming methane and other gases.

Jarryd Doran chief executive of LGI smiles at the camera — Jarryd Doran from LGI said facilities can emit gases long after they have stopped receiving waste. (Supplied)

The gases will be piped into a power generator plant, where moisture and contaminants would be removed, before being fed into four 1 megawatt engines, each capable of combusting 700 cubic metres of landfill gas per hour.

LGI will then sell the electricity it generates to Bingo Industries.

"It's more commercially attractive to them, but it's also environmentally better off than if they were buying black power or electricity directly from the market," Mr Doran said.

Construction of the power generator plant is scheduled to be finished by June, but there are already plans to expand it by adding batteries and increasing its capacity.

Dozens of examples around the country

The technology to harvest gases from landfills and convert it into electricity has been emerging over the past two decades.

Mr Doran said compared to other countries, Australia has been comparatively slow at adopting it.

The Clean Energy Regulator said there are 55 registered sites currently using gas from their landfill to generate renewable electricity across Australia — 13 of them in NSW.

"The opportunity is to contribute some positive, hopeful solutions in an area where we are so used to getting just bad news," Dr Newman said.

"We've got an example here where an Australian company is showing us how to do something sensible with waste."

Monday, 13 January 2025

LA firefighters are water-bombing flames from above. These are the aircraft being used.

Extract from ABC News

By Luke Cooper

Topic:Wildfires

16 hours ago

Los Angeles firefighters are taking to the skies to tackle the blazes raging across the city.

As Californian emergency authorities continue to battle wildfires ravaging Los Angeles, many people have been left in awe of the capabilities and persistence of aerial water and fire-retardant bombardments being used to douse the flames.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection — known in short as CAL Fire — says it "boasts the largest civil aerial firefighting fleet worldwide" and it has been deployed in the hope of extinguishing the blazes.

A red and white helicopter mid-flight droppng water over bright orange lines of flames on a hillside — With the front lines of Los Angeles's wildfires rapidly changing, firefighting aircraft have been a consistent sight in the skies. (AP: Ethan Swope)

Since the turn of the new year, more than 101 wildfires have broken out across California, burning through more than 15,000 hectares of land.

In Los Angeles, four major wildfires continue to challenge firefighters: the Palisades fire — which has become the most destructive fire in the city's history and torn through almost 10,000 hectares — the Eaton Fire, the Kenneth Fire and the Hurst Fire.

With the front lines rapidly changing, firefighting aircraft have been a consistent sight in the Los Angeles skies since the blazes began on Tuesday, dumping more than 56,700 litres of fire retardant and up to 240,000 litres of water in a single day.

A white helicopter dropping water over spots of flame on a hill with dark trees as two firefighters in yellow watch on — Dozens of firefighting aircraft have been battling the city's fires from above through the day and night. (AP: Jae C. Hong)

Which aircraft are being used to fire the LA fires?

CAL Fire operates a firefighting aviation program that relies on five different types of aircraft to extinguish wildfires or keep them burning at contained lows.

"These aircraft, highly skilled pilots, and aviation support staff are strategically located throughout California at our 14 air tanker bases, 10 CAL FIRE helitack bases and one CAL FIRE/San Diego County Sheriff helitack base," according to the CAL Fire website.

"Aircraft can reach the most remote State Responsibility Area (SRA) fires in approximately 20 minutes, with the goal of keeping 95% of fires at 10 acres (four hectares) or less."

Firefighters attack the Mandeville Canyon wildfire from above.

The organisation's fleet currently consists of 67 different aircraft, including helicopters and air tactical planes.

The two types of helicopters in rotation are the UH-1H chopper, known as the "Super Huey", and the Sikorsky S70i, which is nicknamed the "Hawk".

A yellow 'super scooper' firefighting plane dropping a dump of water over orange flames on a dark hill mound — The CL-415 "Super Scooper" plane has generated an online following during the Los Angeles fires. (Reuters: Gene Blevins)

The Super Huey is crewed by up to 11 emergency personnel and can pick up and dump 1,226 litres of water or fire retardant during bucket-bombing operations or up to 227 litres using a pilot-controlled fixed tank.

The Hawk only has a fixed tank, but can drop up to 3,785 litres of water or firefighting foam onto a blaze.

A dark dual rotor helicopter mid-flight seen from below while dropping water onto a backdrop of grey-brown smoke — The Californian fire department says it has the largest civil aerial firefighting fleet in the world, which has been bolstered in recent days by federal aircraft. (Reuters: Daniel Dreifuss)

For major firefighting responses, CAL Fire uses its tactical planes — the S-2T and C-130H air tankers — for "rapid initial attack delivery of fire retardant on wildland fires", carrying up to 1,200 litres and more than 15,000 litres respectively.

CAL Fire's overall fire response during emergency situations is overseen by another pilot and observer based in the air in an OV-10 air tactical plane.

Water-bombing helicopters target the California wildfires.

The Californian aerial bombardment has also been bolstered this week by extra federal resources announced on Thursday by US President Joe Biden, including three additional CL-415 water-bombing planes and nine helicopters which have joined the five air tankers and 10 choppers already fighting the fires.

The CL-415 has already developed an online following under the nickname "Super Scooper" due to its visually impressive water-bombing capabilities and precision in dumping sea water on specific fires.

The Canadian not-for-profit Societe De Protection Des Forets (SOPFEU) also delivered its own CL-415 to California to help in the emergency response.

Quebec sends two of the aircraft to the state each year under a three-decade-old arrangement between their governments, according to CNN.

One of the Super Scooper fleet, Quebec 1, was grounded on Thursday after it collided with a civilian drone and sustained wing damage, but it is expected to be repaired and back in circulation by Monday, according to LA County Fire Chief Anthony C Marrone.

What is the retardant used to fight fires?

While the aerial bombardment over the fires in Los Angeles has mostly involved aircraft picking up seawater out of the Pacific Ocean, bright pink and red retardant has also been used to coat flames on the ground.

A backyard seating setting and fallen tree coated in bright pink flame retardant — CAL Fire says the retardant it uses is made up of 88 per cent water and 12 per cent ammonium phosphate. (AP: Eric Thayer)

An information document published online by CAL Fire said the retardant was made up of 88 per cent water and 12 per cent ammonium phosphate, which is commonly used in fertilisers.

The substance also includes gum thickeners to help the retardant stick to burning plants and trees, and red or pink colouring dye so the pilots can see where drops land from above.

The CAL Fire document says the retardant coats the ground and acts as a fuel break, with the chemicals in the substance reducing the chance of vegetation combusting when flames approach.

A plane dropping bright red flame retardant over a street alongside a smoking mountain and a red firetruck — The aircraft have been dropping seawater from the Pacific Ocean as well as bright red flame retardant. (Reuters: Daniel Dreifuss)

Firefighters also say the retardant is not hazardous for humans, animals or plants but can cause minor skin irritation due to the ammonium.

How could the LA fires impact Australia?

Australia and the United States signed a bilateral agreement in 2017 that determined the sharing of emergency personnel resources whenever a disaster struck.

Part of that agreement is a leasing deal for Australian firefighting organisations to be able to access water-bombing aircraft typically stationed in California.

Leigh Hills, the national president of the United Firefighters Union of Australia, told the ABC that this year's Los Angeles wildfires showed that the US fire season was lasting longer into the country's winter while Australia's bushfires season was starting earlier in the summer.

He said the overlap could pose a significant issue for Australian firefighting capabilities in the future.

"Certainly it is a concern. It's something I know various political parties on the national level are looking at in regards to shoring up and having our own assets," Mr Hills said.

"We may not be able to rely on those agreements in the future, or we may have an agreement but those assets may be drawn back to the US.

"Rather than release [the aircraft] in October, November, if they know that they're going to have fires through until January, they wouldn't be releasing them until much later.

"Firefighters and those in the industry have been warning about this for certainly the last eight to 10 years."

Mr Hills said if Australia's firefighters were to lose Californian resources prior to or during a bushfires disaster, it would drastically reduce the speed and efficacy of local emergency responses.

"The whole idea of using aircraft is early action," he said.

"You can get an aircraft in the air [and] get it 100 to 200 kilometres away from wherever it is located very, very quickly, whereas it takes a long time to get ground assets to a particular location.

"No state or territory could do it without some sort of federal system in place … Every political party makes a commitment to a national system for aircraft and assets."