It's sad to see how these fires are automatically linked to climate change. Until the mid 2000's Australia burned down small patches of forests to prevent large disasters like these we have now. But that changed when burning down forests (mind you to prevent larger forest fires in the future) were deemed too bad for the environment.

So now the policies and fire prevention techniques changed (for the worse) and exactly what many firefighters predicted has happened: mass fires covering the east coast. It doesn't matter how much the climate changed when the whole part about prevention has been screwed up.