We've had to endure an expensive, divisive and completely unnecessary plebiscite on gay marriage thanks to the Christian right within the coalition refusing to do what they were paid to – to make and implement a hard decision based on the wants and needs of the majority of the population. And now, the bushfires apparently have little to do with the scientific fact of global warming but are merely God's will or part of His bigger plan – according to those few with too much power and not enough sense.

Well, bugger that I say! The citizens of this country did not elect your God, we elected politicians who are supposed to have minds, morals and opinions of their own. They should be able to judge on facts not fairytales, to lead the country to safety and prosperity – not to throw their hands in the air and believe our fate is the hands of a higher being. They are supposed to be sane, dammit!

Even Malcolm Turnbull, the former leader of the party which harbours these zealots agrees their beliefs come before our rights, declaring on the ABC's Q&A on Monday night that the situation is, well, "nuts". "The Coalition has a fundamental problem in dealing with climate change because there is a group within the Liberal Party and the National Party who deny the reality of climate change and will oppose to the point of essentially blowing up a government, my government in this case, if there is action taken to reduce emissions," Turnbull said.

"When Australians' lives are at risk, when they are being threatened, when their families and their homes and their crops and properties and everything they hold dear is being put at threat – that's a national security issue. If it isn't a national security issue, what is? The government has to provide leadership. Obviously the federal government can't do everything but the federal government's job is to lead and this is an issue that needs leadership."

Turnbull said the National Energy Guarantee plan he tried to push through "dared to contemplate that climate change might be real" thus making it "the lever the insurgents used to blow up the government", with policy "held to ransom by a group of deniers within the party and in the media".