People with Purpose: The firey on the front line of climate action

Greg Mullins is an internationally recognised expert in bushfire and disaster response with more than 50 years’ experience as a firefighter, including 14 years as the Commissioner of Fire and Rescue NSW.

After stepping down from that role, he rejoined the Terrey Hills fire brigade, which he had first joined aged just 13. He also founded Emergency Leaders for Climate Action (ELCA), a coalition of former senior emergency service leaders. Mullins is an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) and a recipient of the Australian Fire Service Medal (AFSM).

You experienced your first major bushfire aged just 12. Tell us more.

Where we lived, every summer there were bushfires, and my dad, Jack, was a volunteer firefighter. The fire station was over the road, so some of my earliest memories were of watching orange glows on the hills at night, wondering where Dad was.

1971 was my first big fire. Some friends of ours had a fire coming up the hill towards them, and there were no fire trucks because they were all on the other side of the fire. Dad said, “Come with me.”

[Mullins travelled with his dad to the inferno in an old Hillman Hunter, battling the 10m flames with wet sacks and rakes.]

It was pretty scary – but exciting. I was fascinated by how the weather impacted the fire and how different types of trees burned.

What’s it like to be in a bushfire?

Well, I’m probably different to most people. Just this week, we had a bushfire in Ku-ring-gai Chase, and I was on the first fire truck to arrive. People who had pulled over and called 000 were panicking, saying, “Oh my God, look at the flames in the tops of the trees! Are we safe?” But I just saw it as a challenge – how can I cut this beast off?

I go out regularly. I’m a volunteer firefighter now, back where I started with Dad in 1971.

Being in a fire is terrifying if you don’t know what’s happening. You can’t hear yourself talk – the sound is incredible. Flames, sparks, smoke, dust – it’s hard to breathe. If you don’t know what’s going on, it can be overwhelming. But for me, I know where the safe spots are, what I can do to protect myself, and when it’s time to leave.

In 2019, at the height of the Black Summer bushfires, Prime Minister Scott Morrison went to Hawaii and later told a journalist, “I don’t hold a hose, mate.” Did that trigger something in you?

Oh, absolutely. I had tried to engage with him for months before that.

Twenty-three former fire chiefs from every fire service in Australia had written to him twice, emailed his office, and said, “Please meet with us – there’s a bushfire catastrophe coming. You need to act, Prime Minister. You need to support the states and fund additional firefighting aircraft.” And he just wouldn’t engage.

Look, everyone’s entitled to a holiday – I said that at the time. But what got me was that he tried to keep it secret. He knew it was the wrong thing to do. Leadership is about being there when Australians are in trouble, and he decided to leave.

That was a huge mistake. But when he came back and said, “I don’t hold a hose, mate” – to say I was furious would be an understatement. Firefighters had lost their lives. People had lost their homes. I had nearly lost my life a couple of times in those fires. It was just a put-down, and he and his government didn’t have a bloody clue about what was going on, what they should have been doing for the last 10 years, and what they should be doing in that moment. They were rotten.

What has the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action (ELCA) group achieved?

When we set up [in early 2019], we didn’t know what sort of impact we’d have. We’d written to the Prime Minister. We’d written to the Opposition Leader – who was Anthony Albanese at the time. He got straight back to us. The Liberal-National Coalition government just refused to speak to us until it became a media issue – after hundreds of homes had been lost. Then they gave us a 20-minute meeting and basically told us to bugger off while disparaging us publicly.

We were surprised by how much [ELCA] captured everyone’s imagination. I think people wanted to know the facts. And we weren’t frightened. What were they going to do, sack us? We were retired. We just told the facts as we knew them. The facts we weren’t allowed to say when we were employed by governments. I got beaten up when I was Commissioner of Fire and Rescue [NSW] for talking about climate change during fires. They said, “No, don’t do it, that’s political.” But it’s not political – it’s numbers and science.

And we’re living it. My people were putting their lives on the line needlessly because governments and politicians wouldn’t bloody listen.

I remember Michelle Grattan writing a piece saying that Scott Morrison really miscalculated when he didn’t listen to the former fire chiefs, and that we changed the national dialogue on climate. And I think that’s true. Reader’s Digest does a survey every year on the most trusted professions. Firefighters are always number one or two. Politicians? Last time I looked, they were in double figures, way down the track with used car salespeople. So people listened to us. And we were telling the truth.

The Murdoch press and the coal lobby got stuck into us. But we didn’t care.

You’ve supported Zali Steggall’s call for a $10 billion climate resilience fund. Why do you think that’s a good idea?

Look, the horse has bolted in a way. During 10 years of Coalition government … action on climate pollution emissions reduction was lacking. Now it’s starting in earnest, but we’re already living the impacts of climate change.

We’re getting worse and more frequent bushfires. We’re getting record floods almost every year. We’re getting droughts. We’re getting cyclones. We’re living it.

Insurance prices have gone up 75% in 10 years – that’s $30 billion more today than it cost Australians a decade ago.

We have to adapt. We’ve got to move homes out of floodplains. We’ve got to renovate homes in bushfire-prone areas to meet current bushfire standards. We need to educate people.

We need to put in microgrids, so towns have refrigeration, sewerage, drinking water when they are cut off.

And it’s great that this is happening. But it’s sad that it took an independent to push for it – this should have been government work, but they’re lagging because of the ongoing climate wars. If the Coalition ceased to exist, I know Labor would step up, but they’re frightened of them, because the Coalition comes out with vacuous statements like, “We’ll go nuclear. We’ll stop emissions” – which would add a climate bomb of two billion extra tonnes of CO₂ while we’re waiting (for nuclear power to come online).”

Are you concerned that climate action has fallen off the agenda, with the conversation now all about the cost of living?

Of course cost of living is huge. I’ve got two kids with mortgages, and they’ve got kids – it’s tough. But what people don’t realise is that inaction on climate for over a decade has made things worse.

If we had more than 46% renewables in the grid, power bills would be far lower. I’ve got solar panels, a battery, two electric vehicles. My wife and I made that decision because we could afford it. And you know what? My power bill is about $400 a year.

Climate action lowers energy costs. And if we took action on adaptation and disaster mitigation, insurance bills would be lower. Climate change is also pushing up food prices. It’s wiping out agricultural production – droughts, floods.

The war in Ukraine has also sent coal prices skyrocketing, and now we’re paying a fortune to keep ageing coal-fired power stations going. We need to shut them down as soon as possible.

People can rub their tummy and pat their head at the same time. Just because they’re worried about cost of living doesn’t mean they’re not worried about climate change.

People are worried about bushfires, floods, tropical cyclones, heatwaves.

A UN climate survey found that Australians are still really worried about this – a majority of Australians want government action.

What should the nation’s 600,000 not-for-profits do?

I just heard a speech from Matt Kean, the former NSW Liberal Treasurer and Energy and Climate Change Minister, now head of the Climate Change Authority. He said, “People will eventually get mugged by facts.”

People who went through Black Summer. People who went through the floods, the cyclones, they’re getting mugged by facts. And that means insurance costs too much, they lose their homes.

Sound grabs by politicians aren't always backed by fact. The Teal independents tried to put through legislation saying you shouldn't be able to lie in election campaigns, and the big parties were horrified, so there's a wake-up call for all of us.

I recommend going to credible organisations like the Climate Council [Mullins is now a council member] which have a whole lot of free materials online that people can read.

It’s explained simply and written by experts who will tell you: What's the cheapest electricity? What does nuclear do? What is the climate impact on extreme weather? Are bushfires impacted? Groups can get that information out to their constituents to lift that level of knowledge, and to highlight the fact that people's votes matter, and they can influence national policy.

Would a minority government help drive climate action?

I think it would be a good thing.

If we get a hung Parliament, a minority government in the next election, it's almost certain that independents will hold a balance of power – and they will influence the national agenda. And they're very much on cooling climate. Votes matter.

We saw during Julia Gillard’s government she had to negotiate with independents. That led to real progress.

Nothing was more disruptive than a decade of having the Coalition and them doing nothing but spreading misinformation and putting forward lies from the fossil fuel industry.

The Coalition has no credible climate policies whatsoever. It’ll be even worse if they get in and we’ll have no pathway forward to a climate future.

Tell us about Climate Action Week in Sydney earlier this month.

There was a big focus on how Indigenous people, such as Pacific Islands people, have been ignored by Western society for so long – but they’re bearing the brunt of the worsening climate crisis.

At the same time, they have a lot of solutions – being one with nature, using traditional fire management, that kind of thing.

There was also a discussion about the responsibility of wealthier Western countries to help Pacific Island nations, which are on the frontline of climate change.

Emissions reduction is not just about humans. We talk about climate in terms of the cost of living, but we don’t talk enough about the extinction crisis – things like logging of native forests, which are our best carbon sinks.

We need more trees and we need Indigenous fire management to be a bigger part of how we handle bushfire risk. So, there are solutions out there, but it takes people demanding action from their governments.

Australia is bidding to co-host COP31. What impact could that have?

I hope we get to co-host COP31 with Pacific Island nations.

They’re on the frontline of climate change, and world leaders need to listen to them and need to understand that we have an obligation. We caused this problem since the Industrial Revolution. They didn’t benefit from that prosperity, but they’re paying the price.

So, I hope hosting COP31 will highlight the plight of Pacific Island nations and the need for serious investment in their future.

But I also want it to be an opportunity for us to say, “Here, from one of the world’s biggest climate hotspots – this is what climate change looks like.”

I want to be there. I want to talk about bushfires, floods, storms. I have a fire chief colleague from California who I hope will come over.

And I want to tell the world: Stop the talkfests. Get on with it.

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Community Directors Intelligence: The green edition