This may be its first airing in parliament, but the theory has swirled around Australia's right-wing internet circles since the beginning of the country's deadly bushfire season.



It joins other widely spread false and misleading information — including debunked claims that the Australian Greens were responsible for a downturn in hazard reduction burning and that arsonists are to blame for the severity of the bushfires — that has in recent months sent a virulent and powerful message denying the effects of climate change.

Representatives from the NSW Rural Fire Service and Victorian Country Fire Authority have said lightning strikes caused the majority of the most destructive blazes this season. Arson accounted for 1% of the land burned in NSW, and less in Victoria, the ABC reported.

Of the arson arrests that have occurred, police have not alleged fires were lit as part of environmental activism.

Australian Strategic Policy Institute's Cyber Centre researcher Elise Thomas said variations on the ecoterrorist theory had been spreading online for months.



"Online, we know that these theories have been spreading through social media and have been propagated by a range of fringe conspiratorial and right-wing media outlets, many of which are not even Australian," she told BuzzFeed News.

Only a few weeks after Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro claimed that environmental NGOs were lighting fires in the Amazon, commenters on Australia's far-right Facebook pages began to mention the theory.



Facebook page Rite-ON published a post blaming arson rather than climate change to its 11,500 followers on Sept. 10. One of the top-voted comments said, "Makes you wonder if these arsonists are setting these to assist their colleagues with their claims of climate change."