Bush fuel loads must be reduced: expert

Three factors combine to create a bushfire crisis and authorities have not done enough to reduce the one they can control, a Melbourne-based researcher says.

David Packham, a Research Fellow at Monash University, says the weekend's devastation across Victoria could have been reduced had a proper regime of fuel reduction burns been in place.

UK environment czar looking at limiting holiday trips to save CO2

The proposal was strongly condemned by FlyingMatters, a UK-based coalition of airlines, airports, aerospace manufacturers and other aviation- and tourism-related groups. "One always suspects with these half-baked proposals that the people who put them forward really intend them to apply to ordinary people, many of whom have only recently gained access to air travel, rather than to themselves," the organization said in a statement.

Turner's remarks came as a report from the TaxPayers' Alliance revealed that the UK government spent £18.5 million ($26.9 million) on flights last year, a figure that does not include travel by the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence, according the Daily Mirror.