This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Scott Morrison has dismissed suggestions his government has not acted to address climate change while acknowledging climate was “one of many factors” that fuelled ferocious bushfires in Queensland and New South Wales.

Speaking at Canungra in the Gold Coast hinterland on Friday, the prime minister was asked about climate policies after a bushfire that had burned into nearby subtropical rainforest.

“It’s quite uncommon for rainforest to burn as the fireys here were telling me … They have been there for 25 years and never seen a fire,” he said.

“So we are dealing with challenging conditions. It is very dry at the moment. That’s what happens in droughts.

“[Climate change] is one of many factors going to these incidents.”

When asked about climate policies, Morrison said the government had “exceeded” its targets under the Kyoto protocol. The government has been accused of using carryover emissions credits from Kyoto targets to meet its next tranche of commitments, made at the Paris climate conference in 2015.

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“The government believes we need to take action on climate change and we will continue to do that,” he said. “We are one of the few countries that will actually exceed the Kyoto 2020 targets. We make commitments and we keep them.

“We have already responded and we will continue to respond, to take action on climate change. I do not accept any suggestion that we do not, because we do.”

On Friday the state government warned that Queensland’s bushfire and cyclone seasons could collide this year, as the state cops a battering from climate change.

Queensland’s emergency services minister, Craig Crawford, said he had appointed a team to make sure volunteers called on in times of disasters could cope with what lay ahead.

Queensland Fire and Emergency Services (QFES) workers were acutely aware of the dangers climate change was throwing at them, he said.

“My people are very much on the side of the converted,” he told ABC radio.

“They know what they are seeing is a heightened fire danger but at the same time we’re expecting probably a heightened cyclone season so we’re getting it from both ends.

“But there are a lot of people in this state and in this country that don’t even believe climate change exists.”

Crawford feared what might happen if the bushfire season continued the way it had begun, if fatigue set in among volunteers and employers who released them from work during emergencies.

“Are we going to be able to sustain those numbers? What happens if we have a fire season like we had for the last week for the next three to four months?

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“How do we manage that? How do we keep their employers happy, their families happy, and still be able to tap into them?”

He has appointed a QFES team to look at how the state can best manage volunteer fatigue and other risks, including limited interstate help once fire seasons kick in elsewhere around Australia.

Hundreds of firefighters have travelled to Queensland over the past few weeks to help.

The danger is not over yet – dozens of fires are still burning and a wind change expected on Friday afternoon could spark flare-ups.

The police commissioner, Katarina Carroll, said conditions next week were unlikely to match those of the past seven days when dozens of properties were destroyed or damaged in the south and south-east. But some fires would continue to burn for the foreseeable future.

“We will not put some of these fires out unless we get a lot of rain, and there is no rain in sight,” she said.

The fire danger in the south and southeast has returned to very high for Friday and Saturday, and could reach severe to extreme levels by the middle of next week.

The QFES assistant commissioner, John Bolger, said crews had used the last couple of benign weather days to strengthen containment lines.

“We have 100 firefighters from Victoria and South Australia,” he told the ABC on Friday morning. “As a matter of interest, we’ve got two New Zealanders flying in today. They are going into Rockhampton as air attack supervisors.”

Quick guide Climate change and bushfires Show Hide Does climate change cause bushfires? The link between rising greenhouse gas emissions and increased bushfire risk is complex but, according to major science agencies, clear. Climate change does not create bushfires, but it can and does make them worse. A number of factors contribute to bushfire risk, including temperature, fuel load, dryness, wind speed and humidity. What is the evidence on rising temperatures? The Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO say Australia has warmed by 1C since 1910 and temperatures will increase in the future. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says it is extremely likely increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases since the mid-20th century is the main reason it is getting hotter. The Bushfire and Natural Hazards research centre says the variability of normal events sits on top of that. Warmer weather increases the number of days each year on which there is high or extreme bushfire risk. What other effects do carbon emissions have? Dry fuel load - the amount of forest and scrub available to burn - has been linked to rising emissions. Under the right conditions, carbon dioxide acts as a kind of fertiliser that increases plant growth. So is climate change making everything dryer? Dryness is more complicated. Complex computer models have not found a consistent climate change signal linked to rising CO2 in the decline in rain that has produced the current eastern Australian drought. But higher temperatures accelerate evaporation. They also extend the growing season for vegetation in many regions, leading to greater transpiration (the process by which water is drawn from the soil and evaporated from plant leaves and flowers). The result is that soils, vegetation and the air may be drier than they would have been with the same amount of rainfall in the past. What do recent weather patterns show? The year coming into the 2019-20 summer has been unusually warm and dry for large parts of Australia. Above average temperatures now occur most years and 2019 has been the fifth driest start to the year on record, and the driest since 1970. Is arson a factor in this year's extreme bushfires? Not a significant one. Two pieces of disinformation, that an “arson emergency”, rather than climate change, is behind the bushfires, and that “greenies” are preventing firefighters from reducing fuel loads in the Australian bush have spread across social media. They have found their way into major news outlets, the mouths of government MPs, and across the globe to Donald Trump Jr and prominent right-wing conspiracy theorists. NSW’s Rural Fire Service has said the major cause of ignition during the crisis has been dry lightning. Victoria police say they do not believe arson had a role in any of the destructive fires this summer. The RFS has also contradicted claims that environmentalists have been holding up hazard reduction work. Photograph: Regi Varghese/AAP

The state government was turning its mind to recovery plans for fire affected communities, with a focus on rebuilding their economies.

A recovery taskforce was due to meet in the Gold Coast hinterland on Friday, along with another group focused on economic recovery.

Queensland’s development minister, Cameron Dick, said support would be offered to people whose livelihoods had been affected by the fires, including workers from the Binna Burra lodge, which was destroyed.

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Police were looking at 22 fires to determine if they were lit on purpose, and Carroll said a taskforce had found that 13 were caused by an accident, reckless behaviour or deliberate acts.

Authorities said there was an element of survivor guilt in parts of the Gold Coast hinterland, where some homes were razed and others left untouched.

In NSW, firefighters could get some reprieve with weather expected to be “reasonably benign” in coming days.