Australia's politicians face a crisis of legitimacy as fire and smoke chokes the country

Extract from The Guardian

Opinion

Bushfires

David Ritter

A government’s primary duty is to keep its citizens safe but the bushfire crisis shows past and present leaders have not lived up to that duty

@David_Ritter

Fri 13 Dec 2019 16.19 AEDT

Scott Morrison and his predecessors have failed in their primary duty: to keep Australia’s citizens safe. Photograph: Joel Carrett/EPA

Is the fire and smoke enveloping our country Australia’s Chernobyl moment?
On the 20-year anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, Mikhail Gorbachev reflected that the meltdown was a “historic turning point” after which “the system as we knew it became untenable”. The catastrophe laid bare the rottenness at the core of the Soviet Union through overwhelming human and economic loss and terrifying spectacle. It was a crisis of legitimacy from which the regime did not recover.
Today Australia’s regime potentially faces its own historic turning point. The scale of the fires is colossal, with appalling loss of human life and property and the destruction of world heritage. The smoke haze is vast and toxic and Sydney is smothered in a poisonous plume 11 times worse than hazardous levels.
It is the primary duty of government – and the principal source of state legitimacy – to keep citizens safe. The bushfire crisis has spectacularly exposed the failure of Scott Morrison and his predecessors to keep faith with that fundamental duty. Evidently our leaders are prioritising propping up their power rather than acting to prevent vast human suffering.
Since 2013 the prime minister and his predecessors have received at least 18 top-level expert warnings linking climate change to worsening bushfires. All have been ignored. Morrison and other political leaders have not only failed to act to reduce the emissions driving the climate emergency, they have evidently not adequately prepared for the catastrophic fire conditions that were predicted.

Through their words and deeds, in denying the urgency and extent of the climate emergency and in failing to act, Morrison and his predecessors have preferred ideology to reality. They contributed to enabling the conditions that are now generative of disaster.
Morrison’s response to the bushfire crisis has gone through clear stages. First, it wasn’t appropriate to talk about the connection between the fires and climate change. Concurrently, new threats of political repression were made against climate activists. Then there was distraction – forget the fires, watch the cricket. There was the open preference of ideology to social reality when Morrison launched his religious discrimination bill within a thick haze of smoke.
But when people and animals are burning, vast swathes of the country are charred black, and cities are choking in smoke; when emergency service workers are calling you out for negligence; when survivors are angry at your inaction; when comedians are openly mocking you by saying what most people are thinking; and still your response is completely inadequate, then you are in trouble. If conditions persist then the system as we know it will become untenable.
The climate emergency is a truth that cannot be avoided through political spin. When your people are waking up with the acrid taste of inaction in their mouths and literally choking on the consequences of denial then the conceit has become visceral.
Only under enormous public pressure did Morrison finally acknowledge the link between bushfires and climate change – but with no change to the underlying systemic deceit of inaction on the climate emergency.

Importantly it is not just the Morrison government, but the wider “regime” of government in Australia which basically assumes a status quo of continuing fossil fuel extraction and use. This political order includes not only politicians but all those industry peak bodies, thinktanks, advisers, media outlets and other institutions who enforce the status quo. It is symptomatic that while the country burned the leader of the opposition toured Queensland trying to reassure the coal industry that it has a future.
To avoid climate catastrophe the world must rapidly take the path of clean energy, which is ready and waiting to power our economy. But even with the temperature rise that we have now, future disasters – including more frequent and worsening catastrophic fire conditions – are inevitable. Australia’s leaders should be scenario planning for what might happen. The fires could continue all summer. Rural towns are nearing zero water. Sydney’s storages could be at emergency levels by May.
Gorbachev said that the “Chernobyl disaster, more than anything else, opened the possibility of much greater freedom of expression in the Soviet Union”. With statements by Liberals Matt Kean and Sussan Ley over the past few days, we must hope that things are changing in Australia.
Disruption creates the opportunity for non-linear change. What is needed is rapid economic transformation to bring in clean energy at the speed and scale that is necessary to build a flourishing future and avoid climate catastrophe.

The tragedy of smoke and fire could be a moment of national rebirth that leads to the creation of the decent climate policy necessary for our national survival and prosperity. The alternative for our political leaders is the path of continued deceit and the further collapse of their legitimacy in the face of the fires that now threaten us all.