I wandered lonely as a cloud

If you had the misfortune to be burned to death in Victoria's bushfires on 7 February 2009, the smoke from your body is now part of a massive smoke haze circling over Antarctica at a height of 100,000 feet.

Public broadcaster Australian Broadcasting Corporation says on its public affairs program "Stateline" (Victorian edition) that state government lawyers seem to be blaming the victims for their misfortune. This has to be a courageous political move for Premier John Brumby, who instigated the Royal Commission process.

This is economic rationalism gone mad, when public officials talk like they are running a business corporation, and seemingly take NO RESPONSIBILITY as public servants to protect the lives of their citizens.

Please Mr Brumby URGENTLY tell all your departments to jettison all the weasel words of the neo-conservative business world, and of economic rationalism, and start talking as if they really took their duty of care to the public seriously.

An appalling failure of public officials to give the public an honest assessment of their RISK OF DEATH in the direct path of uncontrolled mega-fire fireballs is bad enough. But the way in which the "prepare, stay and defend, or leave early" policy was implemented in practice seems tantamount to enforced cremation of the living placed under virtual house arrest: Catch-22

Fire brigades were invented by insurance companies in Anglo cultures, to meet a clear commercial need. We are an Anglo culture. Are there, in Anno Domini two thousand and nine, no remaining links between the insurance industry , and the people who concocted the "stay-or-go" policy? In a society toxically infected with neo-conservative economic theory, this is a question which demands an answer. The Bushfires Royal Commission's Counsel Assisting perhaps is still investigating whether any links can be uncovered.

Or perhaps not!

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