Oh and by the way, neither you nor Marohasy quoite this for some reason.

It is from the Royal Commission into the 1939 fires in Victoria and is second on the list of causes;

"The Condition of the Forests.—When the early settlers came to what is now this State, they found for the greater part a clean forest. Apparently, for many years before their arrival, the forest had not been scourged by fire. They were in their natural state. Their canopies had prevented the growth of scrub and bracken to any wide extent. They were open and traversible by men, beasts and wagons. Compared with their present condition, they were safe. B ut the white men introduced fire to the forests. They burned the floor to promote the growth of grass and to clear it of scrub which had grown where, for whatever reason, the balance of nature had broken down. The fire stimulated grass growth ; but it encouraged scrub growth far more. Thus was begun the cycle of destruction which can not be arrested in our day. The scrub grew and flourished, fire was used to clear it, the scrub grew faster and thicker, bush fires, caused by the careless or designing hand of man, ravaged the forests; the canopy was impaired, more scrub grew and prospered, and again the cleansing agent, fire, was used. And so to-day in places where our forefathers rode, driving their herds and flocks before them, the wombat and the wallaby are hard put to it to find passage through the bush."

Don't worry folks, our new born-again climate change warrior Soot 'Beam up me Scotty' Morrison will save the day.

He knows what has to done: getting the big greenhouse gas emitters China, US, EU, Russia, India and Japan to reduce their emissions in order to stop Australia from becoming the constant victim of anthropogenic global warming.

Good on ya Soot. We're relying on ya mate!

Remember Soot, this is what will either make or break you come the next election. So get out there Soot and start protesting. (PS You might be able to get a few pointers on what to do by watching little Greta Thunberg.)

" it would be nice if he said what the obvious evidence is [ that higher temps cause bushfire]".

Its obvious because it seems obvious. But when looked at statistically it becomes less obvious. Because other factors come to play.

"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

Its not obvious that higher temperatures cause higher bushfire risk. Indeed the global evidence is the opposite.

Climate change is the all-purpose scapegoat used to hide or deny all manner of political and ideological errors. Insufficient water? Blame AGW. Farmers failing to thrive? Blame AGW.
What's obvious is that our bush management processes have changed over the decades and we are paying the price for that. But admitting that is admitting that the past (and present) green shibboleths were/are astray. Much better to 'Blame AGW'.

I also want to endorse Don's point about forcing those who decide to live 'with nature' to self-fund their insurance. When the government decides to play sugar-daddy to those who build inappropriately and insure insufficiently or not at all you end up with two results. First, you encourage others to build inappropriately in inappropriate areas in the knowledge the government will make it all better if the inevitable happens. Second, you discourage people from insuring their property given that doing so leaves them no better-off than those who assume and receive government hush money following natural disasters.

Over the past year Australia has experienced low rainfall generating conditions in the surrounding oceans as well as unfavourable MJO conditions. All of these factors resulted in hot dry weather. What are the odds of that happening? Add to that the Green inspired "Action against climate change", namely a geoengineering exercise of increasing the amount of vegetation to absorb atmospheric CO2. The terrible bush fires were a consequence.

I propose another geoengineering experiment. Obviously not an ocean fertilisation experiment to warm the ocean surface in critical areas and potentially increase rainfall. That would have the Greens jumping up and down screaming blue murder. Instead, the Greens could organise volunteer exercises to clear undergrowth, then put the waste into pyrolytic reactors. The biochar generated could then be returned and dug into the soil. I don't think the idea practical, but it would reduce the fire risk and it would be nice to see Greenies doing some work.

Causes of bushfires, Australian Institute of Criminology:

Accidental. 35%

Deliberate. 13%

Suspicious. 37%

Natural. 6%

Re-ignition. 5%

Other. 4%

Typical Steele. Abuses the writer of the article and then throws a red-herring into the mix. This is how the mad left tries to bully us all into compliance.

Perhaps the reason that Marohasy and Aitkin did not quote that passage from the Royal Commission is because it is wrong. There's certainly no onus on them to quote passages just because it helps Steele's argument.

It is well settled that the Aborigines did burn this land and that is why the landscape was as it was when the first settlers arrived. To think that they didn't touch the land, and were more or less just like fauna is an old Australian racist trope.

If anyone wants to know about the extent of Aboriginal fire-stick farming this book by Bill Gammage is excellent https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-biggest-estate-on-earth-bill-gammage/book/9781743311325.html