Are the Australian bush-fires the result of climate change and global warming?

Is there any credible evidence that the bushfires are the result of climate change instead of being an unlucky draw from the same conditions/risk level that would have existed since the early 19th century?

This is an interesting question I have asked a couple of friends who have lived in Australia their whole lives, and none of them could find or give any argument to suggest that climate change is a definitive reason for the bush fires.

Here's a couple of notable reasons why :

1. It is difficult to quantify how much climate change is contributing to the onset of bush fires because they happen at very high frequency all the time. If the fires were in some way anomalous to regular fires and a pattern can be established over time, then one could start drawing conclusions. Eg. If they're getting progressively bigger, or hotter, like something that an environmental factor is contributing to now that it hadn't as much in the past.

2. The fires happening right now are not the worst, infact no where near. The fires that have been happening since 19th century have been enormous and often magnitudes larger than the ones happening right now in terms of the area of land burnt. (Order of 10 times larger)

3. The conditions to start fires happen rather innocuously, eg, something as simple as a guy throwing a cigarette butt out the window with the right conditions can allow for the fires to grow.

4. The fires this time round have been highly political because the PM has been cutting funding and not allowing preventative measures to be carried out.

Some of the other concerns which were brought up are that arson is a very legitimate source of blame. In 2009, a man was convicted for arson and though the fires were already on-going, he was convicted for lighting a significant fire. It was highly publicised because it resulted in a number of deaths.

One thing that was interesting to hear was that though it was difficult to pinpoint the exact contribution or if any to the fires from climate change, the amount of rain experienced is significantly less. Summers used to be rain and storm season, and it was noted that from 2000-2010, the summers were predominantly thunderstorms nearly everyday, not the case in the last decade or so.

The headlines marking hottest ever records are happening more frequently too. Only recently a report of the temperatures hitting over 50 degrees was reported. But perusing some of the historical records for average temperatures for the last 200 years have not showed any increase in average temperatures.