The rebuilding Australia after the Floods & Fires & now the floods again will take some time. The Process could be speeded up by having a Five year Moratorium on Over Seas Aid. Except for emergency situations in the South Pacific only.

$8.5 Billion would "per year over" Five years would put Australia back to where we were in the 50's, in comparison with the After WW11 development.

Just think. The Towns that are to be rebuilt could be Fire & Flood proofed. Dams that have been forced to be built in areas with no Catchment by the Greenies can be torn down, & another built where the Catchments really are.

The Bradford Scheme could be built as it should have been in the first place. The Wonky Holes on the Reef could be tapped to provide fresh water to Towns. This would have the Add On effect of stopping fresh water going onto the Reef. One for the Greenies. Ay.

Imagine having one Rail Standard for "All" of Australia. National Roads that aren't falling to pieces. An upgraded NBN to International Standards, instead of one that is 15 years out of date. A Hospital System that works. A School Syllabus that actually teaches what Businesses need, not some Airy fairy feel good programmes to please the Socialist agenda.

But, I can only dream.

One thing that puzzles me is that if the temp has risen 1.5 deg
everywhere why has the bush all suddenly all over Australia burst
into flame ?
You would expect it to happen in Queensland this year, in NSW in a few
years and Victoria a few years later as the temperature rises.
But all at once in one few months ?
It has to be spontaneous combustion.
After all the temperature difference between the states is significant.
There HAS to be some other factor in it.

Loudmouth, stop chanting the same crap, even Alan Jones has given it up! We've been here before dude.

1. WHO IS IN CHARGE?
Don't join with Barnaby Joyce and blame "The Greens" — it's just not a political party or authority that authorises fuel reduction burns in the first place!

"He said the suggestion that The Greens had a “controlling voice or are an influence in any way” was not true. “It’s sort of wishful thinking because the reality is the Greens don’t have much power over fire management,” he said."
http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/the-debate-over-hazard-reduction-burns-after-catastrophic-fires/news-story/c06b3e6f9bc7429128d03bdf18a40486

Fuel management burns are the responsibility of State public servants in Parks & Wildlife or Fire Agencies themselves.
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/12/is-there-really-a-green-conspiracy-to-stop-bushfire-hazard-reduction
http://www.ladbible.com/news/news-fire-brigade-dispels-the-rumour-that-greens-are-to-blame-for-bushfires-20200105
http://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/conservation-programs/hazard-reduction-program
http://parks.des.qld.gov.au/managing/pdf/fire-mgmt-brochure.pdf

2. THE SCIENCE SAYS SOMETIMES BURNING DOESN'T WORK!
Uninformed broad-scale hazard reduction burns can change ecosystems, threaten species, and make future fires hotter!
http://theconversation.com/our-land-is-burning-and-western-science-does-not-have-all-the-answers-100331
http://theconversation.com/a-surprising-answer-to-a-hot-question-controlled-burns-often-fail-to-slow-a-bushfire-127022
Paragraph B of 1939 Royal Commission, here.
http://www.voltscommissar.net/docs/Leonard_Stretton-1939_Bush_Fires_Royal_Commission_Report.pdf

3. LIBERAL GOVERNMENT RECALCITRANCE!

The retired Fire Chief's with many lifetimes experience between them tried to meet with Scott Morrison back in April and May 2019, and warn him that these fires would be unlike anything Australia had EVER seen in scale, and were asking for more services and aircraft. They were rejected.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-14/former-fire-chief-calls-out-pm-over-refusal-of-meeting/11705330

A strong negative Southern Annular Mode was detected in Sept 2019, taking our rain and giving it to Madagascar.
http://theconversation.com/a-hot-and-dry-australian-summer-means-heatwaves-and-fire-risk-ahead-127990

EVEN IN DECEMBER SCOTT MORRISON ACTED LIKE EVERYTHING WAS NORMAL!

10th December 2019: "The prime minister has rejected calls for more help for firefighters as the New South Wales bushfire crisis is expected to worsen.... Asked about concerns over how long the tens of thousands of volunteer firefighters – many who have been away from work for weeks now – were expected to continue without pay, Morrison said they “want to be there”.
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/10/scott-morrison-rejects-calls-for-more-help-saying-volunteer-firefighters-want-to-be-there

If anything, I blame our Prime Minister and his Liberal party for neglecting these catastrophic fires for so many months.

Max,

I'm not a great fan of burning, since it produces CO2, which is so bad for the climate. But clearing in other ways:

* . allowing animals to graze, especially along road-ways;

* . clearing out dead trees, especially those near road-ways;

* . spraying (with organic sprays) of weeds and their removal and mulching;

* . fire-breaks, cutting up parks into a mosaic of parks;

* restricting cool-burns to the most inaccessible areas where the above techniques may not work.

Clearly, since NP are mainly state responsibilities, this will need far more funding for states - and perhaps a slashing of their bureaucracies. Maybe Individual's notion of National Service could be modified to include engagement of the unemployed in all of the aspects of park maintenance. Of course, this all may require changes in environmental policies away from do-nothing.

Perhaps you could consider some of those as well as just burning.

Joe

A note on waterbombers. We should definitely maintain our ownpermanent firefighting fleet http://www.nafc.org.au/?page_id=168

But what if we face more climate catastrophe mega-fires like this year more regularly into the future? Is there a cheaper way to quickly top-up our firefighting fleet, rather than hire a DC10 from overseas for $5 million, and rather be subject to the whims of competing international fire seasons or delayed by overseas natural disasters like the current mess! We'd be ready.

The alternative? The ADF already owns 12 Hercules C-130's out at the Richmond airbase in NSW. These all purpose workhorses can use short dirt (unsurfaced) airstrips in the bush, can carry ADF personnel or cargo around Australia to weird out of the way locations using these tiny airfields, and can run all sorts of humanitarian aid as well.

The Hercules can have a Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System or MAFFS installed for about $100,000, turning each Hercules into a water-bomber with about a quarter of a DC10's capacity. Once the MAFFS is installed, the Hercules goes back to regular duties moving people and cargo around. But the moment we have a bad fire season, the water tank is installed in an hour.

The bottom line? If the ADF can spare 4 of their 12 Hercules for the fire season, that's $400k to BUY and OWN 4 MAFFS for 4 Hercs that would equal a full DC10. It would save Australia MILLIONS every year, money we could save to buy MORE HERCULES in the future.

A new Hercules will set you back $20 to $40 million, depending on what model is MAFFS compatible. (I'm not sure on the finer details.) A new DC10 is $110 million and it can't do other duties the rest of the year the way the Hercules can.

What do we want to do, lease expensive DC10's every bad fire season or buy and own MAFFS that can gradually save us enough money to buy and own more Hercules all-purpose, flood and fire-fighting assets?

Dear Max Green,

I'm not sure if you are a science fiction fan but Asimov was one of my favourites.

Here he is in a video discussing climate change in 1988;

http://lybio.net/isaac-asimov-climate-change-and-humanity-1989/people/

This is a transcript of the first part;

I had written an article on the greenhouse effect. It was a year-end article. They wanted me to pick out the most important scientific event of 1988. And I really thought that the most important scientific event of 1988 would only be recognized sometime in the future when you get a little perspective. But I thought that the most interesting scientific event of 1988, was the way everyone started speaking about the greenhouse effect just because there was a hot summer and a drought.

So I explained, what was meant by the greenhouse effect, and I also explained that not only were we constantly pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, because we’re burning fossil fuels, coal and oil and gas. So that the content of the atmosphere as far as carbon dioxide is concerned has been going up steadily, not very rapidly but steadily ever since 1900.

And it’s continuing to do so. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now is 50% higher than it was in 1900, it’s still only a little over 300 – 0.035% which is not enough to bother us as far as breathing is concerned. But it’s enough to trap the infrared waves that Earth reflects into space and to raise the temperature of the Earth slightly.

The temperature will keep on going up. And not only are we piling in more and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but we are chopping down the forests of the earth at a great rate.

End.

Thirty years on and here we are still debating the issue with closed minded fools. Who would have thought.