Friends of the Earth has a new open letter to be sent to the Fed Govt. FOE says:
For decades, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA have shared firefighting equipment and personnel when fire seasons overwhelm local capacity.
During Black Summer (2019/20), hundreds of overseas firefighters came to help, and 11 of the 12 large air tankers used were sourced from overseas. The arrangement has worked because northern and southern hemisphere fire seasons had historically occurred at different times of the year.
As was noted by the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action in their recent report Prepare or Pay, things are now changing. Between 1958 and 2000, dangerous fire weather in eastern Australia and western North America overlapped only once. Since 2000, it has happened at least seven times, and the length of that overlap has been growing by one day each year since 1979.
Since Black Summer, governments have invested in Australia’s own aerial firefighting fleet. However, national capability for large air tankers still relies almost entirely on contracted arrangements with private aircraft companies based in the northern hemisphere.
As fire seasons lengthen and overlap across both hemispheres, that contracting model will come under increasing pressure. It is most likely that increased competition to secure Large Aircraft (which are increasingly now also being deployed in Europe) will see lease arranges becoming harder to secure and more expensive.
A key option for boosting Australians’ bushfire preparedness will be to develop an Australian fleet of large firefighting aircraft suited to our landscapes and conditions.
As fire seasons get longer and more intense and competition to lease large aircraft increases, now is the time to establish a publicly opened fleet.
Please sign our open letter [details in link] to the federal Emergency Services minister, Kristy McBain, urging the federal government to get on with purchasing a publicly owned fleets of LATs.
Casual reminder that we sold our hundred-year old profitable and world-class national airline for pennies in the dollar in the 90s. Then during Covid we literally gave them $2.7 billion - to an entirely privately-owned business. It will not be paid back. It was a gift.
That was ~1/3 of their value at the time, and they were facing bankrupcy - we likely could have taken back 50% of Qantas simply by demanding equity for the $2.7bil - for no added spend. But instead we demanded nothing at all, because “we wouldn’t want to interfere with how a business runs”.
Our pollies think we’re so dumb, and judging by how most of Australia votes - they’re not wrong.
Privatised firefighting capability may be some of the worst examples of where privatisation is a scourge in society. Wow.
I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am.
Thanks for sharing.
I’m just surprised anyone would be dumb or corrupt enough to let something like firefighting be privatised …
Sharing expensive resources with other countries seems good and eco friendly, does it not? In light of changing weather patterns you may need more off season fighting but I feel like sharing relocatable resources is good.
Nothing about that requires it to be outsourced to private companies.
Private equity starting fires for profit, stonks !
Having it be state owned would leave it corruptible as well. How do you share resources across state boundaries? I feel like our inherent bias against property on here may Cloud our judgement.
Well seemingly, sharing them across borders as far away as Australia (which is the context of this post), isn’t working anyway.
And I disagree that bilateral agreements aren’t possible.
The problem with privatisation is that we end up paying far more than if we’d just taken out a loan and done it ourselves.
The cost on society is the profits extracted.
They are not writing about that it isn’t working at all, but warning that it is breaking apart right now. I.e. it has worked before.
Has worked before when fire seasons didn’t overlap like they do now
Its a lesson we should have learned with Crassus back in roman times. I dunno if think they still did, just the wrong lesson.
Their logo is fucking with me especially since this was below an onion post for me
