Ken_L,

You find "attempts by extremist interest groups to push their obsessive ideological and political barrows by exploiting human tragedy to be tasteless and offensive"? That'd be the green left pushing their claims that all this is caused by global warming, right?

Hell, who needs to pay any attention at all to the facts? We've had arguably the worst bushfires in recorded history and all you can do is try to score political points by telling us whom you don't like.

If you can't accept that fuel reduction can reduce the intensity of bushfires - and that is the main point being made about these fires and the previous fires which have all resulted in similar recommendations from inquiries and royal commissions - then you are an idiot, and I use the word advisedly with reference to the Stanford-Binet scale.

Ken_L
The right of people to life and property is not some kind of 'extremist interest group'.

The extremist interest groups are those who believe they stand for some kind of value over and above human values, who regard human beings as some kind of noxious pest to be controlled, who believe that any social problem can be solved if only we can bring enough force to bear, and whose ideology is the ever-failing superstition that more and more centralised government control of everything will bring us the ideal society in harmony with nature.

The defenders of the greens so called ecologically sustainable management practices "read green lazy and obsessive fuel loads" are trying to defend the indefensible.

Many people are saying we should give ourselves time to grieve, lay off the blame game, and leave it to the commission. But as far as I understand, ANGER is part of the grieving process. And given that similar findings and recommendations have been made time and time again, and seemingly largely ignored, perhaps this time its worth getting BLOODY ANGRY, and maybe soemthing will be heard. Of course, I don't endorse Miranda Devine's thoughts of greenies hanging from lampposts, any more than I want to see arsonists hang either, but I can empathise with the anger in both cases. Wherever management of these things is disastrous, you can be fairly sure Green policies aren't far away. And that they now try to distract from what's right in front of us with Global Warming horse crap is appalling. Why in the last week have we suddenly heard all sorts of new scieintific findings dropping out of the heavens. It's spin, timing, politics and playing on fear and misperception. As if it was a miniscule increase in global temperatures over a hundred years that caused this. Not conditions similar to 1939. Not a bloody heatwave, bloody high winds, arsonists, and bloody foolish greenie policies, mixed with delusional stay or go evacuation protocols. It's time activist bodies backed the hell off and left it to foresters with professional knowledge and experience.
KenL, Canberra is an entire city of people living nearby national parks.

And as the alleged Churchill arsonist is a Mother Earth worshipper, should we be talking about our first major case of eco-terrorism?

It seems that "fuel reduction burns" are the buzz-word du jour, but as is the case with many buzz-words, it often seems that people are just parrotting it without really thinking about what it means. Many people seem to have the idea that if you just go out and burn the stuff during the year, it won't be a problem come summer.

The truth, as always, is far more complex: Fuel reduction burns are not a panacea.

The local ecology has to be suitable, for a start. Repeated burning in the wrong sort of ecosystem could have the opposite effect to that intended, and actually make the landscape even more fire-prone than it already is, by drying out the soil and encouraging fire-dependent plants.

In areas where they are appropriate, they're still incredibly difficult. I recall the CFA area group where I was a member trying to carry out a much-needed burn in my home town. The site was a nature reserve, between houses and a large caravan park.

The burn was scheduled, and cancelled, several times, while waiting for the optimum weather conditions. Even when weather conditions were favourable, managing the fire was still a very tricky business.

With a sizeable contingent of tankers and crew on hand, there were still a few touch-and-go moments: We had quite a problem with spotting, even after the incident controller had carefully judged the wind conditions. Imagine the uproar (not to mention legal bills) from homeowners if the fire had escaped and burned a few fences, not to mention houses.

But Australia's is a landscape that essentially has to be managed. In many ways, as has been noted, the Australian landscape is a man-made artefact; partly shaped by human activity over the past 30000+ years.

But finally, with all due respect to the recent tragedy, Australians just have to learn that, as the advertising campaign said, "if you live in the sticks, remember they burn".

The bitter truth is that mega-bushfires hit south-eastern Australia in a fairly predictable, roughly 30-year cycle, and that's something we're just going to have to live with.