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While I was at a beach house in Byron Bay for New Year’s Eve, my family were trapped in Narooma, surrounded by thousands of evacuees grappling with the possibility that they just lost everything.
We’d gone to Narooma for a family holiday, the same place my parents have visited for more than 30 years. It’s a beach town. The house we stayed in was maybe a five minute walk to the water. Fire doesn’t belong anywhere near there.
I was due to fly out to Byron on Monday morning, but the smoke made it impossible for the plane to land. We ended up having to go to an airport two hours away to take off.
Tracey and her family ran for their lives from the NSW bushfires. Post continues below.
The next morning, my family woke up to black skies. There was no power. Mum said she tried to read a book, but found it was too dark at midday to make out the words.
My brothers were meant to go to a music festival, but were turned back half an hour into their trip because all the roads were closed.
They all watched burning leaves land in the backyard and thousands of cars congest the town. People were fleeing to the beach or the golf course, leaving homes they didn’t know were even in danger 24 hours ago.
Top Comments
I'm really sick of people saying 'I know that there's nothing that Scott Morrison can do about the bushfires', there's plenty he can do in the short term, for starters don't ignore that problem at it's outset because it doesn't spin well for his climate policy vacuum. Stop being so sneaky. Sneaking off to Hawaii. Stop releasing self-promoting and partisan videos.
The Australian is still barely covering this unprecedented disaster...in the hope that people aren't noticing? What is going so nuts and wrong at the Australian?
Morrison can have the courage to say that his party has got it wrong on climate change policy and that things will be change rapidly. He can have the courage to spend some of the political capital that he received winning the unwinnable election in bringing the rogue right elements back to climate policy lead by science, not a policy first laid down by Howard 'instinctively' feeling that climate change doesn't exist. The glaring problem being that Morrison shares climate change denying, or at best, dubious views.
Scott Morrison can do plenty, starting with engendering hope that there's someone with some common sense in the wheelhouse. Morrison can lead and not sneak.
The PM is just tone deaf, to make those comments about Australia being the best place to live when people were literally submerging in water to keep themselves safe from fire??
He has had SO many opportunities. To show some empathy, to show some leadership, to talk about - like you said, a fire plan - and he has failed every single time. And failed miserably - comparing his trip to Hawaii to that of a plumber taking in an extra job; forcing the RFS volunteer to shake his hand after he explicitly said that he doesn’t want to; smiling in photo ops in fire damaged zones; hosting the tea with the cricketers while the NSW south coast and VIC were crying for help - I could go in.
He must be a sociopath on some level, I can’t think of any other explanation for his apathy and lack of interest.
Yes, they were voted in, but I think this lack of leadership is next level and no-one expected this.