Robert LePage; why aren't you running the country mate? Your clear headed reasoning is like a glass of cool fresh water, in a baked desert, taken at midday, when the sun is at its zenith.
I see the Yanks have seen the light and stopped using fire in California, to reduce hazardous fuel loads.
Instead, they've started using goats, easily moved electric fences and grazing as a means to reduce fuel loads.
I'm not sure how well that works in say comparison to Alpacas, who have, like their camel cousins, soft pads instead of hooves.
Our kangaroos might do better, inasmuch as they graze right down to the dirt, and produce no methane in the belch gas.
You are inherently right, inasmuch as repeated burning simply bakes the topsoil, all while sending tons of irreplaceable essential nutrient skyward.
Given less rain can penetrate baked soil, the usual effect, as you rightly point out, hotter fires and progressive desertification?
Well, how else would you explain how a country like ours, once covered coast to coast in verdant forest, is now largely arid desert, with a shrinking green fringe.
Whether any of it is down to climate change? Possible?
Nonetheless, it's immaterial!
We need to change the way we manage regrowth and hazardous fuel reduction, least we simply compound our problems, in a warmer wetter world!
Hooves and very short term intensive cell grazing would, 1/ reduce the fuel load, 2/ allow more moisture to permeate through broken topsoil.
More moisture penetration would produce more verdant greener growth less susceptible to fire. Dung beetles would assist in keeping the topsoil open, friable and nutrient loaded, and as a side benefit, quite massive fly reduction!
And given greener growth evaporates more moisture, more precipitation follows, further compounding the positive outcomes of different more rational land management practices!
Rhrosty.

Lego, ice volume is just as significant as ice extent. http://www.thearcticinstitute.org/p/arctic-sea-ice-extent-and-volume.html

Rhosty, what animals are you thinking might intensively graze leaf litter and fallen branches in a eucalypt forest? The only natural way that can be diminished (fire aside) is breakdown by insects, fungi, bacteria etc, which best happens in a moist environment, and which is why fires are less intense where the ground is less dry.

Goats and electric fences?

In the eucalypt forests of the Great Divide?

In yer dreams!

If we return to selective logging, we will open up some space in our eucalypti forest for some grass growth.
Native peoples have been selectively logging their own old growth native forests for millennium, without either harm to flora or fauna, but much positive benefit! Such as occurs, when a forest giant falls of its own accord.
And increased moisture penetration will assist the biological breakdown of the inedible forest floor trash, as will the introduction of organic waste, dung beetles and assisting bacteria. And with the trash trampled, gone or damper, less likely to add to the fuel load!
Small clearings, will encourage grass growth and native marsupials, and or selected herbivores, to graze, but particularly if we add some critical watering points, which will also serve in fighting any fire outbreaks.
Selective logging requires roads, which also serve as fire breaks/escape routes. And more legitimate activity in our forests, (logging, summer grazing) reduces the prospects for illegal activity, such as arson! Wild fire, does more harm in minutes, than years of summer grazing ever did!
With fire removed as a management element, non-fire tolerant species, will be free to flourish, and where that occurs on a broad enough scale, rain forest will follow, as will increased rain.
And no it won't happen overnight, but if we persist, it will happen in some of our children's life times! And where that occurs, dry forests and forest fires, will retreat!
Rhrosty.

For LEGO, http://guardianlv.com/2013/09/antarctic-sea-ice-at-record-high-doesnt-refute-global-warming/

For the last 800,000 years, according to ice core data, CO2 and temperature have been closely coupled. See Figure 3 at http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/bas_research/science_briefings/icecorebriefing.php

Denialists grasp at anything to convince us that this coupling is now over (eg the noise they've made over the recent pause) and warmists say the coupling will take us 4 degrees higher than today by 2100 AD. I know where I'm putting my money.

The rise in surface air temperature over the last 150 years has occurred over what normally takes thousands of years. There have been very abrupt climate changes in the past (see Figure 5) so there is the distinct possibility that any current divergence in the coupling may correct quite sharply when it comes, and come it will.

The wise thing for mankind would be to decarbonize ASAP.

Abbott's strident views in AGW's involvement in the frequency of natural disasters http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/tony-abbott-should-never-say-never-about-climate-change-bushfire-link-20131025-2w5pt.html belies a denialist position and the path Australia will follow under his gov't. "Direct Action" will not deliver even a 5% reduction in emissions let alone what is required for Australia's part in decarbonizing globally. Carbon pricing will always be a necessary part of the remedy, and Labor should oppose its removal.

Oz breaks the record for warmest 12-month period - again.

Second consecutive month.

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/