Lynne, you are a psychologist.Psychology is not a science and doesn't do science very well at all.
You have some emotional baggage from your family battles with the CSG industry. As a result, you do not come to the AGW/CC bush fire situation with a clear and unbiased mind.
Quoting from an Australia Institute "study" published in the Guardian is not a good place to start.
I could also find a cohort of 1000 people and come up with 100% effected by the bush fires. I could also come up with a similar sized cohort and 100% "that's life, we get on with it".
A look at a map of Australia will show you that whilst widespread, only a small part of Australia was directly impacted by the bushfires. But the television news video was dramatic and looked totally devastating. The closest the majority of Australians came to the bushfires was the television news and colourful sunsets.
Your hatred of fossil fuels is not based on objective science and abandoning it would see you never going home to the western Darling Downs in a comfortable and convenient manner. Get out of Melbourne and find that there is a real world outside that city.

Dear Big Nana,

You really don't know what you are talking about sometimes. Indigenous burning practices are being taken up by the CFA and councils here in Victoria. Two of the chiefs of local brigades have gone north to do training and I have spoken to both of them about their experiences. They were very impressed and have already trialed the methods against normal practices. They definitely see a role for employing the techniques they have learned and are keen to work further with indigenous practitioners of landscape burning. The managers of a local reserve are looking to hand control of a portion of it to local indigenous members to use for training of more of their people in these practices.

A trial near me involved a proscribed burn on one half of a section of council land and an indigenous burn on the other and the same day and looking at the differences. The indigenous burn was far cooler and the damage to standing trees almost nonexistent. It did take longer and with more man power on the day but the CFA had to return to the standard burn again to deal with embers from the hotter burn.

This type of management is not the whole answer but it will most certainly be part of the way we deal with the fire threat down here in Victoria in the future. As Victorians we live in one of the most fireprone areas in the world and really the last thing we need is to be told by a bunch of pontificating northerners that we are 'alarmists' or that we are being 'hysterical'.

The author seems not to understand that Australia can do nothing to make a meaningful reduction in global atmospheric CO2 levels and absolutely nothing that will reduce the climate's impact and influence on bushfires. Accordingly, her recommended actions are completely inappropriate and wasteful.
Conversely, if Australia is to make a difference globally in the actions we take after the fires, it should be in the area of R&D and commercialisation of the new technologies that the world, especially developing nations, desperately need if we are to become a global, low-carbon economy, because at present suitable technologies to solve the world's problems simply do not exist.

Good to see Big Nana bringing out the truth of aboriginal burning, which had nothing to do with anything but food. No relationship to preventative burning. Of no use whatever in dealing with bushfires. Of no use to anyone or anything, these days. Aboriginal culture is of interest as part of the continent's history, but totally irrelevant to modern day Australia.

ttbn. Best if you read Bill Gammage's book The Biggest Estate on Earth as he can totally refute everything you believe or understand about Aboriginal fire.

Big Nana,
I keep beating the same drum as you, but the aboriginal lobby seems to be obsessed with the notion that their use of fire was about looking after the land. It was all about looking after themselves Keep plugging away, sooner later some more people will listen.
David