Australia’s national disaster governance arrangements need major changes to grapple with the increasing size, intensity, cost and complexity of climate-fuelled natural disasters.

These findings were arrived at by the Independent Review of National Natural Disaster Governance Arrangements, led by Dr Robert Glasser (ASPI Senior Fellow, Climate and Security Policy Centre).

The Review, which the Government released publicly last Friday, was commissioned in 2023 by the National Emergency Management Ministers’ Meeting, a Ministerial Council reporting to the National Cabinet.

“ Climate change makes it fundamentally necessary to discard the notion that national-scale natural disasters happen only infrequently; they will rapidly become annual occurrences, with less and less “down time” for first responders to recover, relief supplies and emergency equipment to be replenished, infrastructure to be re-built, and for communities to re-establish their resilience .” the report noted.

“ The litmus test of the effectiveness of Australia’s emergency management planning, investments, capacities, and governance arrangements, at every jurisdictional level across Australia, should be the extent to which we are mitigating the risks of intensifying, increasingly national-scale, year-round hazards, in which emergency preparedness, response, relief, and recovery will be required simultaneously. ”

The overarching conclusion in the Review is that the governance arrangements do not adequately address this emerging environment. This is reflected in a variety of ways described in the report:

• Siloed approaches to address risks and threats that should be integrated;
• Agendas and discussions in governance meetings focused on immediate challenges, to the detriment of emerging, more fundamental, and therefore more urgent, challenges;
• Underinvestment in risk reduction and resilience;
• Insufficient consideration of the sweeping changes and innovations required to address the emerging risks.

The findings emerged from extensive consultations with dozens of experts and decision-makers in the private sector, foundations, civil society, and the hazards research community – as well as Ministers, senior officials, Commissioners, and Chief Officers from Commonwealth, State, and Territorial Governments.

“ The climate is continuing to warm rapidly. We are now entering uncharted waters, where our historical experience in a broad array of areas, including our experience of disasters, is no longer a reliable guide for what lies ahead. This has enormous consequences for how we prepare for these extreme events and for how we structure and manage our national governance arrangements ,” the report states.

Click here to read the Review