Scott Morrison’s office first denied he was in Hawaii. Then a picture surfaced on social media showing the Australian prime minister posing with other tourists on a beach, apparently with a beer in hand.
That was the low point of a bad week in December 2019. Bushfires in eastern Australia had killed six people since September, destroyed more than 700 homes and smothered cities including Sydney in smoke. New South Wales had declared a state of emergency for the second time in two months. And the country’s leader was on a family holiday nobody had announced.
His office said opposition leader Anthony Albanese had been told. Albanese said the prime minister was entitled to a holiday but attacked the “lack of information and transparency.” Online, #WhereisScoMo and #FireMorrison trended. Critics pointed out that Morrison had once criticized a fire commissioner for the same thing, going missing in a crisis.
A holiday cut short
On Thursday, two volunteer firefighters, both fathers of young children, died when a tree hit their fire engine on the way to a blaze in Sydney’s south-west. They were the first firefighters to die in the crisis. The next day Morrison confirmed he was in Hawaii and said he was coming home.
“Given these most recent tragic events, I will be returning to Sydney from leave as soon as can be arranged,” he said in a statement. He added that the country had been well managed in his absence, and then: “I deeply regret any offence caused to any of the many Australians affected by the terrible bushfires by my taking leave with family at this time.”
Funding and climate
Morrison has called the fires a “national disaster,” but he has often been accused of playing down how bad they were. He rejected calls for more money for firefighters, most of whom are trained volunteers, saying existing resources were enough and that volunteers “want to be there.” He later pledged an extra A$11 million for aerial firefighting.
The anger spilled into climate policy. Protests drew thousands of people onto Sydney’s streets, where air quality had hit hazardous levels. One woman left the remains of her burned-out home outside Parliament in Canberra with a message written on them: “Morrison, your climate crisis destroyed my home.”
The Bureau of Meteorology has said rising heat made drought worse, which in turn made dangerous fires more frequent and more intense. Australia has warmed by slightly more than 1C since 1910. A group of former fire chiefs and emergency leaders, Emergency Leaders for Climate Action, accused the government of being “missing in action” on climate and of ignoring calls for a crisis summit.
Morrison held his ground. He said that at 1.3% of global emissions, Australia doing more or less would not change this season’s fires, a claim he said did not “stand up to any credible scientific evidence at all.” He has acknowledged climate change as one of “many other factors,” but rejected any direct link between the fires and his government’s policies. “Climate change is a global challenge,” he said on Thursday.
Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack waved off the criticism as the concerns of “raving inner-city lefties.” “We’ve had fires in Australia since time began,” he said.
Not everyone blames emissions. Others point to a severe drought, the sheer amount of dry land available to burn, and what they see as natural weather cycles.
Sources
- Why Australia's PM is facing climate anger amid bushfires
- Why Australia's PM is facing climate anger amid bushfires
