On 25thApril 2006 the Beaconsfield gold mine in Tasmania collapsed. One man was killed and two others trapped nearly a kilometre below the ground

Recognising the incident as a moment of national importance and tragedy, then-AWUleaderBill Shortenflew back from Canada to get to Beaconsfield. Although Shorten wasnt involved in the mechanics of the rescue effort, he understood that one key aspect of political leadership is presence being there allowed Bill Shorten to understand what was going on, use his profile to communicate with the press and above all show that the people he represented were on the ground, physically and emotionally vested in trying to manage a story that captured the nation.

Politics is politics, but leadership is often symbolic. When tragedy strikes, leaders need to be there representing the nation, showing basic empathy with a hug or a shoulder to cry on. No-one expects a leader to man the pumps or the fire-hoses. Being there tells a nation were with you. But the nation needs leadership.

For politicians, this should be simple. When New South Wales experiencedhorrific fire,Tony Abbottdonned a fire-fighters outfit. When Queensland wasflooded,Kevin Ruddwaded into the water.

Which makesScott Morrisons performance this summer all the more remarkable.

Australia is experiencing its worst and most intense fire season in living memory. Although matters have dramatically intensified in December, the East coast has been experiencing fires sinceearly August. To date, at least eight lives have been lost, along with over 700 houses. Fires have burned over 3,000,000 hectares,

The fires have emitted 250-million tons of CO2 - nearlyhalfof the nations annual carbon emissions. Perhaps that number should be factored into the alreadycooked booksthe government has been spruiking in an attempt to prove that our nation is a leader when it comes to addressing climate change, rather than a pariah.

Fire is a fact of life in Australia, but climate change is real and its here and now, and this years fires were both predictable and predicted. Fire chiefs asked Prime Minister Scott Morrison for an urgent meeting back inApril. The invitation remains yet to be taken up.

Natural disasters often require emergency funding.$11m extra fundingwas recently announced, which sounds substantial, but compare that to the $500m spent on awar memorial, $27m to keep one Sri Lankan family onChristmas Islandor $250m for the Prime Ministersplane. Australia is spending forty-five times as much money memorialising the dead than defending the living.

When Australias students marched to protest climate change in September, Scott Morrison said they should have stayed in school, and that climate concerns give children unnecessaryanxiety. Two months later kids were beingsent homefrom school because the air wasnt safe to breathe. Which might have made them anxious.

Perhaps Morrison is more symptom than cause here. As Ive discussedpreviously, he almost certainly owes his position to the intervention of acoal magnatein the recent election. AsUpton Sinclairnoted, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. The dysfunction of our political system is being laid bare by this stress test, but when energy companies and fossil fuel interests are among the nationslargest political donors(many of whom pay little or notax), you could hardly expect any other outcome.

Despite this, its hard to escape the idea that much of what is happening revolves around the conduct of Scott Morrison, the man who brought apiece of coal into parliament to taunt the Labor party and their flimsy concerns about climate change. As the fires have ravaged the East coast, Morrison has found time to defend his embattled energy minister, go to court to try to allow the government todeport aboriginal people, announce a huge increase in anti-terrorism funding at our airports, cut off medical care to people trapped in offshore concentration camps and tried to weaken unionised labour. Who would ever have believed you wouldreada sentence like this.

_As smoke brought the citys air quality to more than 11 times the hazardous level,_Scott Morrisonspoke in Sydney about the religious discrimination bill.

Imagine these were your priorities. Imagine holding the highest office in the land, seeing your nation literally on fire, and thinking today would be a good day to discuss religious discrimination.

If you want an opinion on the political malfeasance on display here, perhaps we can turn to Scott Morrison in 2010, whoexcoriatedVictorian police chiefChristine Nixonfor eating dinner at a gastro-pub during the Black Saturday bushfires. What might Morrison have said had Nixon got on a plane for a family holiday overseas instead of stopping off for an evening meal?

Perhaps if Morrison had been seen to take Australias fire emergency seriously before he left, we would begrudge him his holiday less. But that hasnt been the case. Instead, with the nation ablaze, the Prime Minister has left the country to be led byMichael McCormack, whose party received 4% of the votes at this years election and who just a month agosaidthat _climate is only an issue for inner city loony lefties._When two people died in the fires, hispredecessorcallouslysuggestedthat the victims were probably Green party voters. The lunatics are taking over the asylum.

Behind all this is Scott Morrisons chronicrefusalto acknowledge that climate change is linked to this years events. Morrison has said that Australia could increase our emissions without making the current fire season worse. This extraordinarily disingenuous statement has proved axiomatic the worst fire season on record has dramatically increased Australias emissions. The Morrison government remains firmly encamped within the3% of scientistswho dispute the link between CO2 and climate change as recently as September, theministerresponsible for drought and natural disaster questioned whether climate change is manmade.

Sceptic or believer, the smoke that engulfed Sydney these last few weeks has made no distinction. The smoke was so thick that smoke alarms in buildings went offspontaneously. Five million people in the nations largest city were affected by air qualityeleven timesworse than official hazardous levels. And Scott Morrison chose to hold a press conference about his religious discrimination bill.

The argument that Australian CO2 emissions (around 1.3% of world totals) are so small that nothing we do can will make a true difference is belied by Australias proud history of getting involved in world problems,a gutlessand cowardly abrogation of our duty to take moral leadership on the world stage. We can and must do better.

When disaster strikes, the Prime Minister turns up. Leaders put on hard hats or waterproof boots. They give people a hug or a shoulder to cry on. They go on television and tell people that the country is united in shared grief, and that everything is being done to address the tragedy.

What leaders dont do is disappear on a nice family holiday overseas and refuse to tell people where theyve gone. Scott Morrisons already disastrous summer has become abjectly negligent and illustrated this mans profound unfitness to lead the country. Morrison has abandoned his post as Australia burns.

George Grundy Independent Journalist and Blogger