CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
As smoke from the Australian bushfires continues bellowing into the atmosphere, so much so that New Zealand’s ice caps are being tainted grey, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the mining lobbyists that makes up his environmental and energy cabinets have urged Australians to avoid any needless anxiety about the current state of our eastern seaboard.
The state of New South Wales in Australia is battling over 90 bushfires, with several combining to create a “mega blaze” on Sydney’s outskirts.
In Queensland more than 40 additional fires are burning, each day closer to major rural and metropolitan centres.
More than half of the fires in NSW are not contained, and the Bureau of Meteorology — Australia’s government agency responsible for providing weather services — has said that some of the fires are “too big to put out.”
“The massive NSW fires are in some cases just too big to put out at the moment,” the area’s Bureau of Meteorology tweeted on Friday. The agency said that the fires are “pumping out vast amounts of smoke,” which has turned the skies orange, and appears like “significant rain” on weather radar.
However, despite the 1000 homes that have been destroyed and the critical damage caused to the wildlife that once lived inside the 15% of Australian National Parks that have already been burnt to the ground, Prime Minister Morrison has told reporters he acknowledged “how deeply people feel about this issue” but said the public debate was replete with disinformation about Australia’s climate change policies.
“I do understand that people feel strongly about this, but I think we also have to take stock, we have to ensure we get a proper context and perspective,” Morrison said.
“I want children growing up in Australia to feel positive about their future, and I think it is important we give them that confidence that they will not only have a wonderful country and pristine environment to live in, that they will also have an economy to live in as well.
“I don’t want our children to have anxieties about the fact that no one on the Eastern seaboard has seen the sky for three weeks, and that we ignored the advice of RFS chiefs for years because their reports were using the words ‘climate change’ leading into an election”
“The Quiet Australians don’t need to be made to feel anxious because of these inner city-elites”
The interview was cut short, as Morrison was running late for Christmas drinks at Lachlan Murdoch’s Bellevue Hill mansion with the Sky News directors and Crown Casino executives.
