The deputy leader of the Australian Greens Party, Adam Bandt, has defended suggesting the climate change strategy of Australia’s conservative Liberal-National government could lead to more devastating bushfires like those raging across New South Wales.
As fierce blazes threatened thousands of homes across the state, Mr Bandt accused the Prime Minister Tony Abbott of risking lives by taking the country “backwards” on efforts to combat global warming.
“Why Tony Abbott’s plan means more bushfires for Australia and more pics like this of Sydney,” he said on Twitter, alongside an image of bushfire smoke enveloping the NSW capital, Sydney.
AAP Newsagency reports the remarks sparked a backlash online, but Mr Bandt denied it was an act of political opportunism.
The Victorian federal MP claimed Mr Abbott was “failing” his duty to protect Australians by refusing to talk about the consequences of climate change and its link to extreme weather events.
AAP reports Mr Bandt conceded his comments could be “uncomfortable” for some, but he was worried about the threat global warming posed to the Australian way of life in a year when heat records had tumbled.
“Tony Abbott has picked this time to say he’s going to rip up action on global warming and in fact allow more pollution, which is going to mean these kind of fires we will see happening more often,” he told ABC TV today.
“I don’t think that talking about protecting the Australian way of life and stopping fires from happening in the future is startling,” he said.
Australian Greens leader Senator Christine Milne also criticised the prime minister, saying the latest report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned of more extreme weather events as a consequence of global warming.
“IPCC says more fires, hottest winter leads to horrific early NSW fires, Abbott boasts dumping climate action, time to face nation,” she said on Twitter today.
Mr Bandt denied that his Twitter comments were politicising a bushfire event or attempting to gain political advantage.
He told Fairfax Radio it was concerning that bushfires were starting in Australia as early as October, well before the traditional start of the fire season.
Mr Bandt said unless global warming was under control, bushfire events would become a regular occurrence in Australia.
The new Liberal-National Environment Minister Greg Hunt criticised Mr Bandt’s comments during a visit to the Queensland state capital, Brisbane.
“There has been a terrible tragedy in NSW and no one anywhere should seek to politicise any human tragedy, let alone a bushfire of this scale,” he told AAP.
4 Responses
That sounds like an outright threat from Mr Bandt & the Greens.
What a disgusting opportunist using this situation for Political power…….
Ohh but the Greens are so LOVING – aren’t they?
Bandt is spot on. Of course people like Maat will describe it as opportunism. But if we can’t talk about climate change when the effects are staring us right in the face, then when is a good time? Perhaps it would be more convenient to keep sticking our heads in the sand, being polite, celebrating endless growth and mining expansion.
But as the IPCC report shows we are in a state of global emergency – the time for being polite and shy about this stuff is over…
Here we go again, the greens and their alarmist rubbish. I am sure that as the last ice age was finishing ( not really that long ago ) they panicked about global warming! YES the planet is warming up, how many times in the last 50 million years has this cycle been around? After this cycle of warming and it returns slowly to another ice age are the greens going to want us to get our heaters going so we can warm up. We are in Australia, do you get that point, as much as we can be concerned we are actually, as Paul Keating once put it, ” piss ants” in the overall scene of the world.
We are in the southern hemisphere and no one around the world including our nearest neighbors really give a rats about what we think, do you understand that? Every time we rattle our tongues all we do is piss off those countries around us. Do you Tim, think that by taxing average Australians to the point of poverty and creating a situation where our companies move their operations offshore, ( increasing the polution there ) putting even more Australians out of work and forever increasing the welfare burden will somehow cool the temperature of the earth? If you do then you are unrealistic and dillusional ! When I went to school they taught us that nature needed CO2 for the trees and vegetation to grow, now they tell us they don’t, they also taught us in science that cars etc emitted carbon monoxide, now science tells us it is CO2, convenient that the new science tries to make us older folk look uneducated.
The greens are morons who wish to ban almost everything, at what cost?
Just my 2 cents worth!
Lionel is spot on!
Tim – the IPCC report is the bucket of sand buddy – they are a Political organisation – an arm of the UN to restrict human activity on behalf of Corporate and Globalist lobbyists. They don’t care about you mate, and would have you poor and on welfare in a second. All the UN bodies WTO, World Bank etc don’t care about the average Joe……its a Top down model of centralised control – not a democratic model ‘for the people’.
The Greens advocate & defer to many UN policies in the Greens own Policy statements on their Website – they are also for mandatory medication of the public. I was a greens voter for 15 years until i actually read their policies.