It seems wrong, as a supposed writer, to be silent about the bushfire crisis. I haven’t even written anything in my diary about it. It’s like someone living through the opening days of a terrible war and not remarking on it. But like so many Australians, I’ve been following compulsively. Through Twitter in my case, the feed refreshing to show photos out of Mallacoota as the sky turned red and then black, and tears came into my eyes at the thought of those thousands on the beach and in the hall as they waited for the end of the world.
The compulsion has also been because I thought that this, finally, had to be the turning point. This was when Australians woke from our complacent sleepwalk into climate change. This was when we realised what a hotter world was going to be like. But someone tweeted weeks ago that climate action is to Australia like gun control is to America. And sure enough, the fossil fuel industry, the Murdoch empire, the LNP, and the other climate deniers are trying to fool us again, to take us away from the moment we could demand real action.
Australia, don’t be fooled. Listen to the science. Get out on the streets, demand change.
Nathan Hobby, a biographer in Perth 
I think the turning point for Australia was Rudd-Gillard. We said to them ‘come up with a plan’, they did, failed because of the Greens, did again, but by then Gillard’s authority was gone, and so we went with Abbott and the Deniers. And there I think we’ll stay.
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You probably know I’ll have a different slant on the Greens’ role, but yes, what a tragedy that the very effective scheme Gillard legislated was destroyed. Let’s not give up yet, even the NSW Young Liberals want action!
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I can relate to feeling stalled: I’m not reading coherently, and I’ve been glued to the media throughout the crisis too.
What I want to see is millions of Australians on the streets demanding an election. We wouldn’t get it, but demanding that would be a powerful incentive for the government to respond.
But globally, what we need is for the big emitters China and the US to stop their childish game-playing. Yes, it’s true that Australia has behaved unconscionably but that’s no excuse for them to be refusing to act.
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Oh, yes, we need all of those things!
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Well said … one feels so helpless but now is the time to act. I think that some of the conservatives – including in the National Party – might be starting to shift. Those in electorates like with those pollies in particular need to get them moving. We need to get the shock jocks moving too – a much harder ask methinks as they have so much ego invested now.
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Hope you’re right Sue! It’s our best hope, when the incumbents and their base begin to change their mind on these issues.
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It really is, isn’t it.
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Yes! Well said. Flicking through that excuse of a newspaper – The West – this morning made me want to vomit. A parallel universe. Sigh…
Sent from my iPhone
>
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Oh no, I shudder to think! I remember we were complaining about The West’s slipping standards fifteen years ago, little suspecting the beast it could become.
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What a mess all this is! And to think of all those warnings last year that this was coming and Morrison refused to meet with the experts. ( No good blaming the Greens, BTW. )
Denise
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Aptly put.
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Thank you!
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