Morrison's government on the bushfires: from attacking climate 'lunatics' to calling in the troops

From describing bushfire warnings as the concerns of “inner-city raving lunatics” to calling in the defence forces, the following is a timeline of Scott Morrison’s government’s evolving stance on the fire crisis.May 2018 The National Aerial Firefighting Centre sends the commonwealth government a business case requesting a permanent increase of $11m to its annual budget. Payments are made on a top-up basis only.April 2019 The Emergency Leaders for Climate Change, a group of 22 former emergency services leaders led by former commissioner of NSW Fire and Rescue Greg Mullins, writes to the federal government alerting them to the threat of “increasingly catastrophic extreme weather events and...