This whole issue of fires allegedly being deliberately lit seems to have been seized on in support of a quite separate argument.
The reality is that how the fires were started is not relevant to the argument at all. There are a range of ways fires have started.
The important point is that however they are started, fires won't get going, and then get out of control, without fuel .When you have a buildup of twigs and dead leaves and other litter, and it is really dry, and the temperatures are at record levels, that is a recipe for a big fire, easily started by any number of different sources of ignition, whether lightning, a dropped cigarette, powerlines shorting, a hot catalylic converter on a car, even Army live firing, or arsonists.
Eucalypts tend to drop a lot of twigs, strips of bark and leaves, and even bigger branches, and this stuff is great for getting a fire going. You can't start out with trees burning, you need the kindling to get a fire going. However, if there's dry litter to get it going well enough, and it gets up into the crowns of the trees, it'll build up its own momentum and then can progress rapidly, even into areas where the leaf litter etc on the floor had already been burned. Once it has got to that stage there's little chance you'll stop it - these big fires send showers of embers ahead, and can even create their own lightning.
The big argument here is about doing regular control burns in cool season, where you can manage a low intensity fire to clear out all the fallen leaves and twigs and such. It seems to be more or less an agreed fact that not nearly enough of it is done. There is argument about why, and this includes barriers put up by "green" types including some in the agencies responsible, as well as from the risk-averse and penny-pinching, which makes it just too hard to get it done. As well as control burns there has also been green influence in relation to maintaining fire trails and firebreaks, especially in national parks.
FWIW our native forest evolved for fire. Some species actually need fire, for their seeds to germinate. It also returns minerals to the soil, and many species recover very quickly after fire. The evidence is that for tens of thousands of years the indigenous people burned the land regularly, usually doing it in cool seasons and it a patchwork, so it created areas of fresh growth to attract the game animals, as well as keeping the land more open. The burning was noted by white explorers, and the first white settlers also described the land along the east coast as open parkland, where you could see for hundreds of yards. Much of that is now covered in eucalypt forest, because the "firestick farming" of the old people wasn't kept up.
But there again, what would I know? I only live here, spend time in the bush, and talk to people here about this sort of stuff. I've only been involved in a few control burns, and a bit of firefighting. Clearly I'd have to defer to the experts 9000 miles away who know so much better than us here about what is going on.
