OPINION
Ah, the Australian summer! Christmas holidays, some jobs around the house, and shaving every day.
Because as you know, dear reader, to wear a half-face respirator you must be clean-shaven.
This fire season has seen the deployment of soldiers and reservists to aid in the firefighting efforts. Picture: Department of Defence
This summer has certainly tested our boundaries far beyond normality, even for those of us who saw this coming.
We have now seen our dystopian future, along with its military language: we have "ember attacks", "firefronts", "firegrounds", and towns and people "lost".
Witness the daily briefings by heads of firefighting agencies, like WWII generals preparing for battle. Witness the ACT Emergency Services Agency's cross-border raids into NSW, taking the fight to the enemy, like the Israelis, or Kissinger's bombing of Cambodia.
To me this recalls Henry Lawson: "And many a rickety son of a gun, on the tides of the future tossed / Will tell how battles were really won that History says were lost ... / How 'this was our centre, and this a redoubt, and that was a scrub in the rear / And this was the point where the guards held out, and the enemy's lines were here'."
But just like the Israelis, or Kissinger, we can't fight this war forever - not this way.
Another great shock was our incredible shrinking Prime Minister, unresponsive, unaware even that a response was needed. Morrison the Unready.
Here is the paradox of modern Australia: a highly capable, practical, versatile, adventurous people, forged from many nations, who can bridge effortlessly between Europe, Asia and the Americas; a nation of highly trained specialists. Yet we allow ourselves to be mismanaged by a clueless blokey managerial class, across government, business and all of our institutions.
If our responses are presided over by Australia's utterly incapable political class, we may not even survive as a people or nation-state.
We have just witnessed thousands of people rendered homeless, many for years; the entrapment and forced evacuations of tens of thousands of people under dire circumstances; 10 million hectares burnt and more than 1 billion native animals killed; widespread damage to livestock, agricultural systems and the economy; lethal air pollution in several major cities; long-lasting impacts on our drinking water supplies; and exposure of major gaps in our communications, electricity and transport networks, fuel supplies, air pollutant monitoring systems and fire reporting. A national tragedy which no terrorist or adversary could have dreamt possible!
Yet no representative of Australia's security state, its media champions, or the well-funded security industry, has sought to make any comment or undertaken any act of leadership.
This is the problem of poor risk assessment: the risks catch up with you in the end. Deny the existence of some severe risks, or exaggerate some risks at the expense of others, and your entire risk assessment - hence your response - will be skewed.
Perhaps this explains our Prime Minister's caught-in-the-headlights response in December. Did he seriously believe his election rhetoric?
This is the most shocking dimension of the problem: a security Prime Minister had not imagined that climate-change risks are a matter of national security.
I don't claim to speak on their behalf, but I certainly think Australia owes our protesting schoolchildren an apology.
Can the Australian people see through the mirrors? Despite the vast sums spent on Australia's security over the past two decades, especially on terrorism and asylum seekers, Australia's security and defence apparatus seems antiquated and unfit for purpose. Is it just an edifice, an ornament used to win elections?
READ MORE:
Could the $10 billion spent on onshore and offshore detention since 2006 have been better spent on climate action and preparedness?
What is the future? We can be sure that Australia's adversaries will have noted our newly exposed vulnerabilities - and exploit them. If this summer wasn't apocalyptic enough, imagine a new hybrid warfare with AI weapons, cyber disruption, influence campaigns and climate change? Sci-fi, cyber-fi, info-fi, cli-fi.
If our responses are presided over by Australia's utterly incapable political class, we may not even survive as a people or nation-state. We don't have time for another ten years of denialism, or failure to act on climate change. This is war.
As the first step, we must face up to Australia's incapable managers and talking heads across our society: the directionless political class, the press and talkback toadies, the rent-seeking business leaders, the public servant sycophants in suits. They must all be removed as a matter of national security.
We cannot continue our current stupidity as if nothing has changed.
It is time, and beyond time, to allow Australia's underlying capability, technical expertise and resolve - visible now in our emergency agencies, charities, brave reporters and local mayors - to shine through to our national leadership.
- Associate Professor Robert Niven is an academic at UNSW Canberra, with expertise in environmental contaminants and risk assessment.
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