Yep, Canberra will (excuse the pun) cough up $11 million for aerial firefighting efforts. Just how far that will go given the scale of the emergency remains to be seen but the suspicion is it's too little too late.

If anything, the federal offering compounds what is becoming a huge political problem for the Prime Minister, whose public handling of the crisis is on par with his disastrous Where The Bloody Hell Are You? tourism marketing campaign. As public relations exercises go, it's more than a minor (excuse the pun again) bingle, it's a horror pile-up.

When at short notice 20,000 people pour onto the streets of Australia's largest city to demand action on climate change and the bushfires, the PM has a huge problem.

The wildfire of discontent with his lack of action, his cavalier comments that volunteer firefighters wanted to be battling blazes, his skirting of the key issue - climate change - is spreading as fast as the fires bearing down on communities in NSW and Queensland.

On social media, ScoMo has been rebranded as SmoKo, a tag that's likely to stick.

However, it is unfair to lay the blame for this tin-eared inaction solely at Scott Morrison's feet.

In a case of appalling timing, Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese is up in Queensland, trying to win back support for Labor in coal-mining areas. When he should be putting the acid on the government to do more about climate change, Albo has been championing the cause of coal exports - one of the biggest contributors to the worsening crisis.

On both sides of the political ledger, doing nothing has become the default and the country is getting angrier and more anxious as each day passes.

The distressing sight of mothers protesting outside preschools because they're worried for the health of their children as smoke smothers towns and cities ought to make our national leaders take notice, call an emergency meeting and get the ball rolling.

There's no room for politics in this, only action and leadership. So far, we've seen very little of either.