What is the role of bushfires in the Australian landscape?

Should you be wondering a) what the ongoing conflict over the role of bushfires in the Australian landscape is about, and b) what a key part of my PhD is investigating, then read this wonderful quote from Stephen Pyne's book 'The Still-Burning Bush' (2006:9):

‘…Australia’s bushfire [debates are] inextricably bound up with questions of identity. What is nominally about flame very quickly…becomes a discussion about something else. The practices of Australian fire quickly morphs into the politics of identity; geographic, professional, national. The fissures are many and cross one another, like veins in granite. City v. country; greenies v. farmers, graziers, and loggers; ecologists v. foresters; those who live off the land v. those who visit it; those who believe bushfire is ultimately an expression of a nature beyond human contrivance, and those who believe humanity can, for good or ill, profoundly alter fire’s regimes. All perceive the contemporary fire scene as inappropriate; all demand that they be heard; and all recognise that bushfire forces society to choose, thought what that choice means, or implies, is often as fluid and intangible as flame itself. Nowhere is this truer than when discussion touches upon ‘hazard-reduction burning’, which can escalate into synecdoche not only for the political debate about fire policy but for the whole trajectory of Australia’s environmental history.’