When pointing out that large air-tankers are used overseas, it's also worthwhile noting that these same overseas areas still have destructive fires.
In California, for instance, we have a state with roughly the same land area as the state of Victoria, and a GDP which is the equivalent of the whole of Australia. Maybe they can afford more resources than any one Australian state.
Yet for all this, of the 20 largest fires in California's recorded history, over half have occurred during the last ten years.
http://www.fire.ca.gov/communication...s/20LACRES.pdf
It'd be interesting to see more detailed stats, and we can happily speculate why the last 10 years has seen so many large fires in California.... but the one thing it does not demonstrate is that the Americans are vastly more succesful than we are in the prevention of destructive fires. Not so much that we look stupid for not imitating them.