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It has been a week of catastrophe in Australia.
For
so many people, and so many communities, there have been days and
nights of sleepless, exhausting anxiety, and fear of monstrous
firestorms; and for some, the destruction they have caused.And now the oppressive knowledge that it is likely that this could go on for months.
It has also been a week of catastrophic failure of our political dialogue. It's easy to just express exasperation at the sniping of some of the statements made by politicians this week as they have tried to fight a culture war about climate change in the midst of such disastrous scenes.
But there is actually something much more alarming going on here. If our political conversation really is at a point when these cultural weapons can't be downed in the face of a crisis, we really are in a lot of trouble.
The widespread acknowledgement that this current fire season is something out of the ordinary, that it has no end in sight, and that in some cases there may not even be enough water to fight fires, is an opportunity of a lifetime for our leaders, for all its catastrophic costs, if only they weren't too thick, or too incapable, to seize it.
We don't need 'gotcha' moments
The starting point, after a week like this, doesn't have to be who wins the culture war on climate, who concedes the "gotcha" moment of shifting ground. The starting point is being able to shift to say "yep, things have changed and we need a strategy for dealing with it".
That's all people want. That's what you are supposed to do if you are a leader. The fact that doing this might also help you get out of an unsustainable political corner would just seem to be an added self-interested bonus.
So who has been providing this leadership?
It's been the people at the frontline of these fires, who have the least time to be engaged in such things, but provide the most powerful advocacy. It has been mayors like Carol Sparks, from the Glen Innes Severn Council.
Sparks found herself having to describe the devastation of her community; of the horror of a relative who had run up a hill amid encroaching fire, pleading with a man, who later died, to get out.
But then she was also being asked to respond to comments by deputy prime minister Michael McCormack.
People suffering the effects of the fires, McCormack had said, "don't need the ravings of some pure enlightened and woke capital city greenies at this time when they are trying to save their homes."
Sparks wrote in The Guardian:
"Members of my family are in hospital. Two community members, my neighbours for decades, are lost to us. We have lost dozens of homes beloved by hundreds of people. An entire community has been all but wiped off the map.
"While all this is a personal tragedy for my family and myself, it is but one story within an unfolding statewide and global disaster, about which our community deserves nothing less than the honest and unvarnished truth.
"There are already those who, following such statements, will aim to shoot the messenger. To those people I say this: take your best shot, for I have already been through hell and there is nothing you can say or do that can touch me now."
Mayors take charge
Sparks was joined on Friday by the mayors of 12 other fire-stricken regions calling on federal and state governments to acknowledge the link between climate change and the catastrophic fire conditions facing New South Wales and Queensland this week.For them, climate change means, right now, the need to recognise "the spiralling costs to the community from catastrophic fires, and provide more funding and resources for frontline services".
And there are the emergency services who, in some cases, we are told have been instructed by their superiors not to discuss the link between climate change and the current disasters. They have been given voice by their former respected leadership.
Former NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner Greg Mullins led the charge, but also got shot down, including by McCormack, because he had dared to mention climate change.
Beyond a plea to acknowledge a climate emergency, Mullins and 22 other former emergency leaders were not just asking for a meeting with the Prime Minister but a discussion at the federal level of the adequacy of the resourcing of emergency services to cope with increasing natural disaster risks due to climate change.
They want a recognition that "strategic national firefighting assets, like large firefighting aircraft, are prohibitively expensive for states and territories, are currently leased from the northern hemisphere, and that increased overlap of fire seasons is restricting access to this equipment during times of need".
Elvis enters the debate
And this is where the other thread of what seems a perplexing lack of anyone grabbing charge of the current imbroglio comes in.Bushfire fighting, like dealing with droughts, and dealing with water allocations, are all matters that are constitutionally within the control of the states.
It's okay, this isn't going to be a story about blame shifting by different levels of government. As such.
But it does help explain why the federal government sounds even more useless on bushfires at the moment than it does in its political messages about climate change.
The only real contribution the federal government makes to bushfire fighting — as opposed to disaster relief funding — is the provision of funding to aerial firefighting.
This contribution dates back to another prime minister confronting community demands for governments to "do something" in the face of catastrophic bushfires.
Remember the debate over the so-called "Elvis" helicopters and why there were not more available to fight fires in 2003?
John Howard responded by setting up a special agreement where the federal government contributes $30 million to the upfront costs of firefighting aircraft.
But these costs, with time and escalating fires, are now around $90 million.
Perfect storm meets its match
Canberra has resisted lifting its contribution, opting instead for the odd one-off payment. A lift in annual contributions, we are assured, is in the budget consideration works. (As in, for next year's budget.)We know why that is. Everything the government does right now rests on its desperation to say it got the budget back to surplus.
And just as it has had a perfect storm of drought and bushfire stripping the credibility of its stubborness on climate change, and alienating it from its own constituents in the bush, it now has a perfect storm of urgent demands for spending — as soon as the mid year budget review next month — to consider, including spending on aged care.
Our environmental crises are not just testing our local communities, and our pathetic level of political discourse, or our budgetary pockets.
They are once again showing how the constraints of our federal structure seem to paralyse our capacity to formulate a national response.
At a time when federal politicians have become only too happy to venture into the realm of local council politics — cheerily turning up en masse to the opening of a roundabout — you would think this must not be beyond their capacity.
Maybe instead of just barging in to local council politics for a photo opportunity, they could learn a few lessons from the leaders of those communities.
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