Leeneia, Australia has an different style of Government, to the USA. We have three levels of Government with well-defined roles.

The Federal Government is mainly responsible for things like Defence, Social Welfare, Foreign Affairs amongst other things, They are also collect the majority of the Taxes in Australia, which they then give a large portion of it to the various State Governments.

Our State Government (which in general manage an area of 10 to 20 of your states), are responsible for Hospitals, Schools, Universities, Emergency Services, major Roads (except for funding of Major Highways), and other services, and of raft of other things, like Building codes, Electricity supply, Water and Sewage, National Parks (except of Ayres Rock and Kakadu are all run by the States), Forestry and management of land, waterways etc.

The third level of our Government is Local Government, these are responsible for collection of rates, local roads, Garbage collection, recycling, Building permits, local rules on land clearing, Hazard reduction burns, and other local issues. They also in many case, believe that they have a bigger say in the issues outside of Roads, Garage and Rates. I.e. Nuclear Disarmament, Climate Change, Illegal immigration, and many more issues Many of these local Government (Councils) are run my people who are either Socialists or Greens or even both.

Under the Australian laws, the big Pollical Parties can only be involved in State and Federal Levels, Local Government is meant to be free of any major political parties.

In the case of this Bushfires Emergency, the States had the control of how and where the employ both the Volunteer firefighters and the professional firefighters (the Professional Firefighters are responsible for towns and Cities). The Volunteer firefighters form thousands of small fire brigades across the county, they are in general provided equipment by state Governments but are not paid for their services.

The Federal Government couldn’t under the Australian Constitution intervene, in a state matter until asked by the State Government, they had to wait for the State Governmets to declare a State of Emergency first

Fighting these fires hasn’t been about lack of resources, money etc, many of the fires have been burning for months now. I saw the central Coast fires start in October and had to avoid area of Queensland and Northern NSW in September because of some of these fires. Many have been deliberly left to burn, for months now.

The major cause of the intensity of these fires is the fuel load on the forest floor, in many areas its been 10 to 20 years since the last major fire or Hazard Reduction Burn, Yes there is a major drought in Australia and a hotter than normal summer (Tropical Rain in Northern Australia has only just started. There are two weather causing events in the Indian Ocean and Great Southern Ocean which is disruplting our normal weather patten along with a weak La Nina in the Pacific. That what driving the drought and Australia’s hotter than normal temperature (we still haven’t reached our hottest day recorded in the 1860 & 1896 or 1939). CO2 levels have nothing to do with it.