After Greta Thunberg condemned the Australian government for their failure to recognise climate change’s role in the bushfires, the country’s prime minister Scott Morrison has responded.
Morrison was on the rough end of public opinion last week after jetting off to Hawaii for a holiday – meanwhile, Australia continued turning to ash, with wildfires raging across the country, killing koalas and at least 10 people in the process.
After Thunberg’s comments on the crisis Down Under were widely shared online, Morrison has since responded, saying: ‘We’ll do in Australia what we think is right for Australia.’
The 16-year-old activist called out the Australian government for failing ‘to make the connection between the climate crisis and increased extreme weather events’.
Retweeting a video of a ring of fire around Sydney, Thunberg wrote:
Not even catastrophes like these seem to bring any political action. How is this possible? Because we still fail to make the connection between the climate crisis and increased extreme weather events and nature disasters like the #AustraliaFires. That’s what has to change. Now.
However, the prime minister has brushed off the teen’s advice, noting that he’s not in power to ‘impress people’ overseas and that he’ll do what is right for the country, as per the MailOnline.
At a press conference this morning, December 23, Morrison said:
Australia and the Australian government will set our policies based on Australia’s national interests, on what Australia needs to do. That’s where I keep my focus.
It’s not for me to make commentaries on what those outside of Australia think that Australia should do. We’ll do in Australia what we think is right for Australia. And that has always been my guiding principle.
I’m not here to try to impress people overseas. I’m here to do the right job for Australians and put them first.
After returning to the country from his holiday – amid a sea of outcries from political leaders – Morrison apologised for the ‘great anxiety’ caused by going to Hawaii.
In response to claims that there’s been a lack of action from the leadership in Canberra, Morrison advised that ‘ministers that are responsible for the issues have already been meeting. They met just a couple of weeks ago.’
Morrison added:
Our fire services are responding to this fire better than last time, and the next time it will be better still with the resources and the technology and the other things that we can put in place. So there’s no need for knee-jerk responses.
However, blazes continue to spread across the country. New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons estimates that hundreds of buildings and dozens of homes have been lost as a result of ‘widespread damage and destruction’. In NSW alone, more than 105 bush and grass fires are burning – with 59 yet to be contained.
If you have a story you want to tell send it to UNILAD via story@unilad.com
After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.