Peter, it is very obvious from this opinion piece that your strong points are not science, nor meteorology, nor bush fire management, nor climate science, nor fire fighting. You have brought nothing of fact to the discussion.
If, has has been claimed, there is in fact a measurable increase in average global temperatures over the past century, it is still less than a full degree centigrade. This does not cause the spontaneous ignition of piles of dry vegetation that have built up in the Australian National Parks, Nature Reserves and Forestry Reserves. It is this build up of fire fuel that has driven the bushfire "emergency" this season. One fire can spawn dozens of others downwind of it, so a single act of arson can generate over one hundred subsequent fires.
Your attacks on people who have questioned the simplistic acceptance of AGW shows that you, personally, have not dug into what is happening in the Australian environment. You have driven it as a side of politics division. Maybe there is less smoke and mirrors on the "conservative" side?
The responsibility for the management of the sites of those fires has been that of the State Governments and it is not the Federal Government that needs to feel any shame about what a poor job has been done over many decades.
An interesting side note of the fighting of these fires is that the extremely expensive use of the large airtankers and other aerial "assets" doesn't appear to be giving the "bang for the buck" that their supporters lead us to expect. Their not being in the air in those first few hours every morning leads to ask what they are really here for?

has Peter ever written an article where Abbott, Trump or Murdoch are not to blame. Dear oh dear all these professors who have been paid for by capitalist push the swamp narrative. I was dumb enough once to believe universities were set up to get people to think. Where do you send your kids these days if you want them to learn facts and think? Certainly not our unis. Ask Prof Ridd.

Hmmmm. When climate change believers attack individuals, they demonstrate the weakness of their beliefs and when they merely spruik the same old material, handed to them by the global warming hi-priests, no one listens anymore.

I wonder when the reality of the climate change 'suit of cloths' is recognised as gossamer thin, will the blame Tony Abbott for supplying them with substandard cloth and thread... and they sue him?

Abbott Abbott Monckton Murdoch Murdoch Murdoch Trump. Curious "proof".

These fires are exposing the failure of state control in typical fashion. That's what all the old school socialists are upset about.
"Environment Environment Environment" We must have state control of everything for the sake of "Environment".
Anyone who tried to mention the potential dangers of all this preservationist state control was shouted down and ridiculed. For over a quarter century it's been the same one sided push.

You can't blame farmers, foresters or outer urban homeowners. They've been totally hamstrung with legislated tree preservation dogma for years. And judging from the words "new normal" being thrown about it sounds like the intent is to keep it that way.
It started with the Nature Conservation Act and then the EPBC act along with the apology for the coal extraction to the UN in the form of the Australia clause for Kyoto to count carbon stored in forest preserved from clearance. (Sorry Jay Cee Ess. The Fed is central). The states implemented it all to avoid the compensation the Federal government would otherwise have to pay landowners.

Environmentalism laws and state incompetence caused the intensity and destruction of these fires. Weather conditions played a part but that part can't be controlled unlike the state imposed build up of fuel and prevention of private land clearance.

These recent fires are only a drop in the bucket. The vegetation preservation dogma has been imposed right across the country.
From now on every home, livestock animal and human life lost to this type of fire outbreak is on the federal and state governments so long as they maintain current environmentalism laws.

"However, important exceptions aside, the quantitative evidence available does not support these perceived overall trends. Instead, global area burned appears to have overall declined over past decades, and there is increasing evidence that there is less fire in the global landscape today than centuries ago."

http://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2015.0345#d1152638e1

It seems axiomatic that higher temperatures = more fire. That's certainly the prevailing common knowledge. But the evidence suggests otherwise and that our penchant for fighting all fires in all places is the real root cause of the problem.

A good burn-out will do the place good.

Dan