Australia’s politicians face a crisis of legitimacy as fire and smoke chokes the country

Is the fire and smoke enveloping our country Australia’s Chernobyl moment?

Scott Morrison and his predecessors have failed in their
primary duty: to keep Australia’s citizens safe.

On the 20-year anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, Mikhail Gorbachev reflected that the meltdown was a “historic turning point” after which “the system as we knew it became untenable”. The catastrophe laid bare the rottenness at the core of the Soviet Union through overwhelming human and economic loss and terrifying spectacle. It was a crisis of legitimacy from which the regime did not recover.

Today Australia’s regime potentially faces its own historic turning point. The scale of the fires is colossal, with appalling loss of human life and property and the destruction of world heritage. The smoke haze is vast and toxic and Sydney is smothered in a poisonous plume 11 times worse than hazardous levels.

It is the primary duty of government – and the principal source of state legitimacy – to keep citizens safe. The bushfire crisis has spectacularly exposed the failure of Scott Morrison and his predecessors to keep faith with that fundamental duty. Evidently our leaders are prioritising propping up their power rather than acting to prevent vast human suffering.

Read the story from The Guardian by David Ritter - “Australia’s politicians face a crisis of legitimacy as fire and smoke chokes the country."