Malcolm Turnbull joins calls for national response to bushfire emergency

Former PM Malcolm Turnbull has joined Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese in calling for national leadership to combat Australia’s bushfire crisis.

There are growing calls for a co-ordinated national
response to this year's bushfire season.

“When Australians’ lives are at risk, when they are being threatened, when their families and their homes and their crops and properties and everything they hold dear is being put at threat, that’s the national security issue,” Mr Turnbull told the ABC’s Q&A on Monday night.

“If it isn’t a national security issue, what is? The national government has to provide leadership.”

On the same program, Mr Albanese said he had written to Prime Minister Scott Morrison three weeks ago seeking a national response to the fires. He said it was clear Australia was not fully in control of bushfires and that fires “don’t recognise state boundaries”.

“He wrote back to me saying [a national response] wasn’t required and that everything was in hand,” he said.

“Quite clearly, it’s not.

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