As one writer from Victoria said to me, “This situation has been compounded for years as dopey MPs of all persuasions stroke the Greens”.
Well, through all this horrific tragedy in Victoria, deadly infernos, people coming to terms with huge losses, they can’t go home, there is no home.
What do they do?
Where do they go?
Nature has turned on them with such ferocity, aided and abetted by the bushfire equivalent of the terrorist.
He’s called the arsonist.
As a letter writer from Western Australia wrote to the newspapers yesterday, “Arson meets all the criteria of current day terrorism, including the lack of clear objectives other than to cause random destruction, injury or death. Why does our nation choose to treat the two so differently?”
As The Australian editorial wrote so elegantly yesterday, “Every home lost to these wildfires is a wicked waste; every life extinguished by the flames a desperately cruel reminder that while we’ve settled the continent, we have not, and cannot, bend it to our will”.
Mind you, there are broader questions in all of this, primarily about how Australians interact with the bush.
The TV footage showed burnt out houses surrounded cheek by jowl by trees.
As one writer from Victoria said to me, “This situation has been compounded for years as dopey MPs of all persuasions stroke the Greens”.
He said, “If I stop on the Newstead/Maldon road and remove fallen tree limbs and put them in my Ute, I’ve committed an offence. Ditto going into a State Forest and removing fallen timber, not cutting down trees.”
As he wrote to me, “This is very seriously crazy stuff”.
That issue will be addressed, no doubt.
The notion of communities virtually built within a forest of trees.
But of more significance was the report by the Victorian Country Fire Authority that fires were being deliberately relit.
And as The Australian newspaper reported yesterday, a report by the Australian Institute of Criminology last week estimated that of all Australian bushfires, 50 per cent were either known to have been deliberately lit or there was suspicion that they were.
Only six per cent were naturally caused, rightly described as appalling numbers
Now according to the Australian Institute of Criminology, little is known about arsonists.
It’s said that arson appears to be a crime mainly committed by young, poorly educated men, generally out of work or in unskilled jobs.
But as an editorial in The Australian said yesterday, it’s clear the crime is increasing.
In Victoria the arson rate, we’re told, per 100,000 people was 55.7 in 2004 and 57.9 per 100,000 people next year
According to the Australian Institute of Criminology only a small proportion of arsonists are ever caught.
But between 2001 and 2005 276 people were convicted of arson in Victoria, where the maximum punishment is 15 years in prison.
But as The Australian newspaper reported yesterday, for the third who did go to gaol, the most common sentence was one year.
And nearly half the people convicted of arson received a suspended sentence or a community service order.
But it’s time we saw this for what it is.
John Brumby, the Victorian Premier and the South Australian Premier, Mike Rann both described arsonists as terrorists.
And as the correspondent yesterday to the newspaper wrote of arson, “It meets all the criteria of current day terrorism, the lack of clear objectives, other than to cause random destruction, injury or death.”
The community are now asking, why do we choose to treat arson and terrorism differently.
Surely any arsonist who started any of those fires that killed people at the weekend is guilty of murder.
Arson is not new.
The Royal Commission on the 1939 Victorian fires found they too were lit by human hand.
But not only do we have to increase our efforts to stop people from starting fires, we have to get fair dinkum about punishing those who do.
And surely to God it’s more than a year in prison.
Some of these fires need not have happened.
They were deliberately lit and arson is a destructive and devastating crime.
It must be treated on the statute books as just that, and these people must know that the community at large is out and after them.
As J Hewer of Darlington in Western Australia wrote, “Arson meets all the criteria of current day terrorism including the lack of clear objectives other than to cause random destruction, injury or death. Why does our nation choose to treat the two so differently”?
Why indeed.
It ought to be possible to alter the statutes immediately so that there can be no doubt how an arsonist will be treated at law.
