The sudden outbreak of bushfires in our country has become a popular topic in the news since early this year. It has raised many questions about what we should have done in order to prevent them, who is to blame for the loss of many houses and forests, and what needs to be done to ensure our future safety. These questions have caused a recent stir in the public resulting in a number of different opinions which have appeared numerously in the newspapers. Some people believe that the Greens are to blame for influencing the Government in restricting logging and the limited number of prescribed burns which took place in the affected areas. Others say that we shouldn’t be looking for people to blame as logging and prescribed burning doesn’t reduce the risk of fires at all and that they would have happened anyway due to other occurrences such as drought and hot winds.In analysing three texts with respect to the issue, we must firstly consider the contention put forward by each author. The contentions of the texts vary – Andrew Bolt asserts in his piece published in the Herald Sun on the 30th of January entitled Greens gone mad, that the Greens and the government should be blamed for setting up “deadly firetraps”; Michael Hampton in his letter titled Apologise to Greens published in the Herald Sun on the 5th of February, and Luke Chamberlain in his piece Casting for a green hearing published in The Age on the 23rd of February on the other hand, contend that we should be reassessing the bushfire situation, instead of trying to find someone to blame. Each of the three texts share basically the same audience, the general public. They are also more specifically directed at the Greens and the government or those who blame them, depending on who is being attacked or supported, however Michael Hampton also aims his piece specifically at Andrew Bolt.
Although we can find similarities between the three authors persuasive writing techniques, there are a few that Andrew Bolt uses which are not found in the other two texts. Repetition and emphasis are two examples of this. Bolt’s use of these two strategies in particular are in an attempt to help persuade his audience of exactly how serious this matter is because of the Greens. When Bolt refers to the fact that the fire fighters haven’t seen many green activists helping them, he says it “is a shame. A real shame…” He also repeats the word “lunacy” when referring to the Green activists who wanted to leave the forests untouched and states that this is what would have made the fires “worse – much worse…” Bolts use of repetition and emphasis aims to reinforce his point and help the readers to remember it.
