I think this is great news, and probably should have been done years ago.
$10 mill is a lot of money. If it's effective, (and chances are it will be) it will pay for itself easily before the season is halfway through.
We get bushfires/scrubfires in NZ, but not quite on the scale of those of our neighbor. I could never understand why governments (and/or the insurance industry) of countries that seasonally suffer massive damage from this threat haven't funded for a number of these aircraft, as a sort of ready-reaction force, able to be anywhere in the country in an hour or three.