Independent Review

The core task of this Review of Australia’s National Natural Disaster Governance was to determine if Australian national natural disaster governance arrangements are fit-for-purpose, including into the future. Given the pressing need to prepare for a rapid and dramatically changing climate, it is critical to look beyond the present. In this respect the governance arrangements require major changes. The Review identified several ways to improve current practice.

The overarching conclusion in this Review is that our governance arrangements do not adequately take this threat to our national resilience into account.

The Review recommend the following steps to strengthen national coherence in this critical area:

Recommendation 1: The National Cabinet should take a leadership role in coordinating resilience initiatives across the Federation.

Recommendation 2: The National Cabinet should task Ministerial Councils to include resilience activities in their annual reporting, with the NEMMM contribution focussing on natural hazards.

Recommendation 3: The First Secretaries, on behalf of the National Cabinet, should oversee (via a subordinate Deputy Secretaries Group) the development of an annual Australian National Resilience Report (ANRR) that combines the Ministerial Council resilience reporting, existing resilience strategies in jurisdictions and new initiatives.

Recommendation 4: The ANRR should be a National Cabinet product focused on climate and disaster risk as well as other key resilience risks agreed by the Commonwealth and the jurisdictions.

Recommendation 5: The Commonwealth together with the States and Territories should identify their shared high-level resilience objectives and develop indicators to monitor national progress in achieving them. The ANRR should also provide annual updates on progress in achieving the objectives.

Recommendation 6: At least once each year, coinciding with the production of the ANRR, the National Cabinet should evaluate progress in bolstering national resilience.

Recommendation 7: The Commonwealth Government should direct the Secretaries Board to ensure the overall coherence and efficiency of the Government’s resilience efforts, spanning both the climate adaptation/disaster risk reduction and the national security domains. A Secretaries Sub-committee on Resilience should be established to support this work.

Author: National Emergency Management Agency, Australian Government