Alternatively we could ask why has the problem gotten so bad? The RFS has said it is not greenies preventing fuel reduction burns so the problem lies elsewhere. If it's firebugs how come they were unsuccessful in June and July. The main factor has to be high temps, low moisture and strong winds for which neither greenies nor firebugs are responsible.

Instead of a new RC perhaps Morrison could distil the findings of the previous 57 enquiries. He is about to flog some more coal to India so that may be a clue to the problem.

The RFS has said it is not greenies preventing fuel reduction burns
Taswegian,
That is the clearest sign yet that the hierarchy in the RFS needs replacing by sane people who're not seeking limelight & want to be of help to the community !

The most interesting aspect of Charles Essery's article is that his sentiments would not even have made it into print, thirty years ago. Mainstream media thirty years ago was so busy selling their media by scaring the bejesus out of the public, that it simply was not interested in publishing an opposing view to HIGW. Sceptics' were universally derided in the media as "deniers", and likened to Holocaust deniers.

But the times, they are, a changin' and Human Induced Climate change sceptic views have now become mainstream. The mainstream media is now publishing the opposing view and what the sceptics say makes a lot of sense. Especially since the hysterical predictions of the HIGW activists, that the polar bears would all drown, the Arctic completely ice free by 2013, and New Orleans, New York, London, and Miami would be 3 metres underwater by 2014,has proven to be laughably inaccurate.

And especially so now that the desperate climate change cultists have realised that they can not use reasoned arguments to support their position, so they have resorted to acting like screaming 2 year olds and doing whatever it takes to get attention. Using children as your foot soldiers hardly impresses the voting public either. The sight of 16 year old Greta Thurnburg sneering "How dare you!" to the representatives of every nation at the UN was more worthy of hilarity than serious consideration. Every parent has seen such adolescent disapproving and lecturing behaviour before, and this from kids who can't even keep their bedrooms tidy.

My advice to all of those educated elitists gluing themselves to busy roadways to prove how intelligent and nobly virtuous you are, is to switch sides now, as the whole HIGW hoax is coming apart. If you do it now, maybe nobody will remember how you made an absolute idiot of yourself by angrily claiming that you and your caste were the font of all wisdom and the epitome of nobility, while your opponents were stupid and selfish.

Well put LEGO. Its going to be interesting times in next few years, as more and more of the anthropogenic climate change cultists predictions fail. They have tried their damnest with the bushfires being a holocaust like proof.

I predict/hope the Royal Commission may offer a more realistic and balanced view.

Yes, the CCCer's whose activism and political blackmail have in effect, I believe, stood proud and tall over this predictable disaster!

Fuel load reduction by traditional mosaic burning is limited in both scope and application, only available in normal conditions for just a few weeks a year! Where could this have been practised in recent years some of which include three years without decent rain, bone dry dams? Whereas one could have put herd animals into this fuel load and safely reduced the hazard 24/7 and 365 days a year!

Goats are great giving their diet is not just grass! Other than that we need people armed with hoes in there hoeing out feral weeds not palatable to any ruminant! Burns even cool ones come with CO2 emissions and risk of sudden wind changes or acceleration

This CCCer's are on the front foot with their advocacy and already getting in with concerns for platypi. We've always had some species extinction and as millions, due to the changes in the environment, they couldn't adapt to! And our future environment needs to be far better-managed to harbour scarce water resources in the driest inhabited continent on earth!

If that includes some species reduction? That may be the price we need to pay to prevent history from repeating itself, again and again, each time possibly more catastrophic than ever?

CCCer's will object on imaginary or rabid emotional grounds, knowing as they do that part of the management plan has to include dams all over the joint mostly upland and small just to force more water into the landscape and extend normal flows up to three years? Plus force the salt table further down in the water table!

Recent research has established that broad-scale irrigation lowers localising temperatures and are a firebreak And are carbon sinks as well some of which is permanently sequestered in the soil!

Finally, the asinine prohibition on nuclear energy has to be removed. given this CARBON FREE energy has to be part of any practicable solution we can actually afford not dependant on sunlight or intermittent wind!
Alan B.

The right decisions on bushfires were made back in the 1970s and 1980s. Since then, the Greens and people wearing uniforms better suited to Banana Republic dictators (that's the regularly rotated and replaced heads of state volunteer fire services), plus bureaucrats who've never ventured into the bush, have decided that they know better: hence this year's inferno.

If there are still enough people around with the gumption to put a proper bush fire mitigation and control regime back into place (which I very much doubt), any new, inevitably expensive, bun fight masquerading as a Royal Commission will be as sensible as pissing into the wind