The bushfire crisis is a wake-up call we can't afford to ignore

So far, the lives of more than a billion animals have been extinguished in the bushfires. A billion. Gone. Millions of hectares of native forests are burned, along with tens of thousands of dead livestock. Hundreds of family homes are now ash and dozens of families will forever mourn loved ones who died trying to protect either their homes or their communities.

The fires burning across Australia demand a whole-of-society response. 

The loss is almost unfathomable. And summer isn't over yet.

A British MP described the bushfire crisis as a "wake-up call for the world" on global warming, but the Australian government is still asleep at the wheel. 

The Prime Minister was desperately trying to convince everyone that the Coalition government has always acknowledged the link between the bushfires and climate change - while his backbencher Craig Kelly was on Good Morning Britain denying any link. It was only a few weeks ago that our Deputy Prime Minister dismissed anyone who linked climate change and bushfires as "inner-city raving lunatics". 

Read the opinion piece from The Canberra Times by Ebony Bennett - “The bushfire crisis is a wake-up call we can't afford to ignore.”