A national disaster that needs a national response

This was published 7 months ago

A national disaster that needs a national response


Fires have swept down the east coast of the country with unsurpassed ferocity, and are now throughout Victoria. Queensland, NSW, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania are alight. This very much looks like, even sounds like, a national disaster in need of a national response.

Illustration: Matt Golding

Illustration: Matt Golding

A national response may require the Coalition government to open the purse that contains the lower than expected surplus. Morrison and his party appear either blind to the fiscal and logistical immensity of the very present problem, or else ideologically divided on the issue. Future remediation and health costs alone will be beyond the capacity of any sole state to deal with. The fires are not over but the health of those left reeling with shock demands immediate national action.

Terry Malone, Warburton


Call it for what it is

Reading John Hewson's powerful article (Comment, 2/2), and considering it with Ross Gittins' insightful comments last week (1/1), I suggest we call the present situation for what it is, a national emergency. The Coalition's policies have had their day, and cost-shifting to the states and charities is no longer acceptable.

Declaration of a national emergency should override these old excuses and mobilise all those resources financed by ourselves, the taxpayers of Australia.

We also fund a body called Emergency Management Australia that seems obsessed with security measures, OK, but let's see what they can offer in our time of national crisis.

Now's the time to discard the old territoriality and ownership disputes and get going with a national plan for today, tomorrow and the future.

Julie Shaw, Glen Iris

It's time for a national levy

Climate change is not going anywhere and its effects are only going to get worse. Time for a 2.5-5 per cent levy on all raw materials exports (excluding agriculture). It's time the mineral wealth that makes our big cities rich, pays for the future of our climate-affected rural and regional areas.

The proceeds can go into a fund that in future generations will assist with disaster and drought relief. The remaining proceeds can be used in a separate fund that will directly provide financial assistance to fossil-fuel-producing regions and rural Australia to re-train and transition to a renewables-based future.

Bill Hosking, Red Hill

We can have both

A tragic irony resulting from the devastating bushfires is that with appropriate government support there will be a boost to economic activity. Ross Gittins (The Age, 4/1) makes the point that we can have growth in GDP and sustainable use of natural resources by changing the way economic activity is organised.

Here is an ideal opportunity for Scott Morrison to make positive changes to policy in the interests of rebuilding the nation. He can justifiably let go the obsession with the surplus, raise more revenue by implementing measures recommended by the Henry Report, expand the GST (the states will need this), and introduce a carbon tax or trading scheme to tackle climate change. How good would that be?

Allan Dowsett, Preston


No questions asked ...

Australia continues to be a haven for the profits of crime and money stolen from overseas being transferred here ("Luxury goods target of laundering", The Sunday Age, 29/12). We have evidence of real estate firms seeking to attract money from places like China with no questions asked as to the legitimacy of the source of the funds.

Australia needs to catch up to leading countries where real estate agents, accountants, lawyers, jewellers, luxury car dealers and companies that set up companies need to report to AUSTRAC suspicious transaction patterns so they can be investigated.

As an example, a man was found guilty in Queensland of serious criminal drug related offences. He was able to buy a Gold Coast residential property in 2000 for $275,000. He paid for the property with 192 separate payments over a period of two weeks. These payments included 181 $1000 money orders bought from more than 14 different post offices and $40,000 in six cash payments.

The lawyer involved issued 190 separate receipts for these payments and there is no evidence a report of suspicious behaviour was made to authorities by the lawyer or the real estate agent involved.

Mark Zirnsak, Parkville

We came, we stayed

According to the National Archives of Australia, about 6000 Czechoslovak refugees came to Australia after the August 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia ("State of migration through the ages", The Sunday Age, 29/12).

The Australian government provided several chartered flights from Europe. My wife and I were among the beneficiaries of the scheme, contracted for a minimum stay of two years. But the lure of the kangaroos proved too strong, and we just stayed on.

Jerry Koliha, South Melbourne

It wasn't a referendum

Stephen Farrelly asks why it was felt necessary to put the same-sex-marriage issue to a public ballot "to endorse a bill that promoted social inclusivity" while a religious discrimination law is being voted on "by a beholden few". (Letters, The Sunday Age, 29/12).

Perhaps he forgets: the poll was a "consultation" not a referendum. An idea for a law was canvassed, but Parliament had to frame and pass it.

In the event, the poll reassured timid politicians that same-sex-marriage legislation would be pushing on an open door and revealed that social attitudes in Australia have become more liberal than some advocates had feared.

Farrelly's nature v nurture arguments to convict politicians of bad priorities are unconvincing, but also beside the point. Odds are, fear of the electorate was the real origin of the plebiscite.

I suspect the religious discrimination bill also arises from survival instincts. With the hiring practices of religious schools particularly, the fact is that students are overwhelmingly of the same religion and are sent to the school by parents who, presumably, want their children educated in a particular environment.

Unless a certain quantum of co-religionists can be maintained on staff, administrations are unlikely to be able to deliver this.

Brian McGuire, Glen Waverley

Which one is next?

Well done, Jan Fran ("Smoke signals make the need for change clear" Metro, The Sunday Age, 29/12), such a great way to articulate the history of the last years: the absence of a coherent policy on global warming.

It almost beggars belief, the political trajectory that has contributed to much of Australia being on fire. Equally galling is that there is no one taking responsibility, for the accumulation of loss with lives, homes, incomes and animal habits.

To think we have three more years of the Morrison government with its denialist attitude towards a warming world. One wonders which of the remaining Horsemen of the Apocalypse will come next.

Judith Morrison, Mount Waverley

But it was personal

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he does not take the criticism of bushfire victims personally. He should. He should hold himself personally responsible for his administration's lacklustre commitment to the climate change emergency in the face of the scientific evidence.

He failed to provided the leadership the climate emergency called for. That's why the victims are angry with him. They are right in directing their indignation at him.

Rajend Naidu, Glenfield, NSW

He hasn't changed

I'm not sure why people are complaining about Scott Morrison. He has not changed since he was voted into power.

Perhaps the public attitude has changed? Shame his voters did not think ahead about our Prime Minister and his leadership qualities as I have not seen any before or after his election win.

Jennifer Del Prete, Preston

A grateful evacuee

I am proud to discover Australia has a humanitarian aid ship fully equipped and on standby, manned by friendly, competent and capable crew that were recalled from leave while at NYE parties all over Australia.

They left Sydney within 24 hours of being tasked for deployment. Planning was years in the making but is not so rigid as to stop the crew from responding immediately to changing events. I'm pretty sure that there were few imagined scenarios involving at least 50 canine pets.

Congratulations to Commander Scott Houlihan, who has given his men and women confidence to make decisions and act with apparent autonomy to the hundreds of requests from this mob of climate refugees. And that is what we are. I have seen three major fires up close in the past 40 years and each is worse than the previous one.

The cost of this evacuation to Melbourne must be $1000s per head, without including past capital investment and ADF salaries and so I thank the Australian people as well.

Let's hope Scott Morrison learns more from this experience than he seemed to get from his empathy coach.

Andrew Taylor, Frankston (Currently at sea on HMAS Choules)

The knock-on effect

Here's how it works, Scott Morrison. I nearly knocked over the woman in front of me when she suddenly stopped to pick up plastic rubbish on the footpath outside the supermarket. I said "good on you" and helped her. The teenager behind us then also stopped and binned a few bits.

We could have generated a spontaneous community clean-up event and tidied up Sandringham if we had followed the compulsion to "retrieve just one more tiny bit of plastic". (An obsessive disorder learnt while volunteering with our local beach patrol).

Your duty is to lead and set an example for planet Earth — just like that woman ahead of me.

Ronald Elliott, Sandringham

Enough with the abuse

Enough please. I cannot believe the abuse that continues to be directed at Scott Morrison during these bushfires. The media, both print and visual, insist on repeatedly referring to this abuse by those caught up in this disaster.

He cannot make it rain any more than he can personally put the fires out. He can support, direct and issue financial assistance which is being done. Already millions have been spent on financial aid, the ADF have been assisting in NSW since November. How about mentioning this?

In such a catastrophe as the nation is experiencing, abuse achieves nothing. I've seen on the news communities firing appalling abuse at the Prime Minister. For sure they're upset, distraught and frightened but firing off abuse at the PM is unjustified.

Please would the media concentrate more on the emergency and less on stirring up more trouble than already exists.

Prue Beck, Highton

The PM's language game

Natural disasters are so called, says Scott Morrison (3/1), because "that is what they are ... natural disasters".

At first I thought our Prime Minister had lost the plot, until I realised he was stressing "natural"– not just as being "of nature", but "natural" in the sense of "normal". So the current bushfires are normal, and can be dealt with in the normal way.

Hence, apart from a token nod to climate change, the PM himself need do little more than work on his empathy skills. Restive colleagues will be soothed and his treasured surplus will be safe.

Anthea Hyslop, Eltham

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