Australia's war

Bushfire is Australia's homegrown equivalent of war. It is essential that we learn the lessons of every fire, writes The Australian.

The Australian

Our wide brown land displayed its terror, rather than its beauty, on the weekend as fire took dozens of lives and hundreds of homes in Victoria. …

Bushfire is Australia's homegrown equivalent of war. It is essential that the lessons of every fire are used to update doctrine, to assess how resources are used and, above all, to educate people about what they can do to protect property and to save their lives when all else is lost. ...

But while the experts will fine-tune tactics and training as a result of this catastrophe, it will also add fuel to a broader debate, the continuing argument about the way Australians interact with the bush. In essence, this debate divides people who believe bushfires can do less damage if there is controlled burning, to reduce the thick undergrowth that increases the ferocity of a fire, from those who think such precautions damage biodiversity. ...

The problem on the green side of the argument is that arguing that the occasional high-intensity fire does less damage to the environment than regular hazard reduction burning is not all that impressive, given the way bushfires kill people. In a deep green world, government would forbid anybody from building houses too close to the bush. But … any ecological orthodoxy that holds that the bush has equal rights with people is politically irrelevant. ...