They should also be including previous years data - I’ve seen a lot of people who appear to think arson was invented this summer. And a mind blowing few who think it was invented by people desperate to keep the climate change hoax going :/
I'm sure it does, to people who don't realize what the usual numbers are. That's why it should only be presented with the context of data from previous years. And that data says
>The Australian Productivity Commission has calculated that between 2001–02 and 2006–07, [there was] an average of nearly 54,000 fires per year (SGRSP 2008). ... It is estimated that 50 percent of fires are either deliberately lit or suspicious in origin as shown in Figure 1.
edit: and to compare arson charges specifically, the same article says that between 2001 and 2006 there were 133 convicted bushfire arsonists in New South Wales - or about 20 per year convicted in a single state. Since there probably isn't a 100% conviction rate, I'd expect the total number charged each year for the whole country is along the order of 50 people.
That's pretty crazy... if there's 133 convicted in that time span then the actual number of folks doing this might be considerably larger. This seems like a subject worth someone doing a documentary about given this is likely, if it's happening in Australia, happening in many other places.
Of course it's larger, its tens of thousands of fires deliberately lit each year. There are books, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a documentary somewhere.
