These graphs from the Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology show how hot and dry Australia has become. Ironically, they were reported by an American newspaper – The New York Times. The only Australian news source to report the record-breaking heat and drought was The ABC. I cannot find another Australian report of it. Please correct me with a link in the comments if I’m wrong.
I did, however, find the story in The Guardian, Wired UK, The NY Times, and believe it or not, The Daily Mail. There is surely something amiss with Australian media when a statistic as important as this goes unreported?
Also in The New York Times is this graph which shows how unprecedented the 2019 bushfires are.
It’s true that the Australian Prime Minister is coming under a lot of pressure at home with firefighters refusing to shake his hand and bushfire victims shouting at him in anger. This is promising but I confess I have become cynical. All that will happen is his party will replace him with another inept climate change denier. The Australian conservative party has been fighting against meaningful climate action for decades and they seem to win most of the elections. I truly hope I am wrong, of course.
Also in The New York Times, this story by Richard Flanagan – Australia is committing climate suicide.
Since 1996 successive conservative Australian governments have successfully fought to subvert international agreements on climate change in defense of the country’s fossil fuel industries. Today, Australia is the world’s largest exporter of both coal and gas. It recently was ranked 57th out of 57 countries on climate-change action.
And something a bit light-hearted that I saw on Twitter:
rachel.blog 
Hahaha – good tweet(?) Does Australia even rank behind the USA on climate change action? I read recently that it was sixth from the bottom of the rankings, but it could have changed since that ranking was published, of course.
Yes, Australia is worst for climate policy according to the latest 2020 Climate Change Performance Index.