Resilience NSW could be axed in bid to appoint specialist deputy police commissioner
State recovery agency Resilience NSW could be axed as NSW Police prepare to create a new executive role to handle emergency and disaster situations.
NSW
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The NSW Police Force will create a new deputy commissioner’s role to deal exclusively with emergencies and disasters, clearing the way for the government to scrap Resilience NSW.
The Daily Telegraph understands NSW Police will appoint a dedicated senior officer with supporting staff, which will effectively replace the expensive emergency response authority run by former RFS commissioner, Shane Fitzsimmons.
The NSW Police Union, in a submission to the Flood inquiry in June, called for the dedicated deputy position to be created in the wake of their work on the Covid-19, bushfire and flood response.
“The NSWPF is the only organisation with the capacity to deploy large numbers of officers to anywhere in the State, at any time of day, month or year, and with the skill set needed to get the job done,’’ Police Association of NSW boss Kevin Morton said.
“We submit therefore that the NSWPF be formally allocated the responsibilities of co-ordination early in the process, rather than being called in to fix a situation when it has already gotten beyond the capacity of others, and valuable time has already passed.”
These duties would duplicate many of those currently being carried out by Resilience NSW.
In recent weeks, a number of staff have left the organisation as rumours swirled about its demise.
NSW Opposition police spokesman Mr Walt Secord said he “wholeheartedly” supported a proposal to appoint a senior police officer to be the “combat” person and the initial responder to the management of major natural disasters.
“During our recent parliamentary inquiry, we received repeated evidence from flood victims. They said once Deputy Commissioner Mal Lanyon was appointed on March 1 as the Northern NSW Recovery Coordinator, there was a complete turnaround with the response moving into top gear,” Mr Secord said.
“We heard evidence that tonnes of rotting garbage were suddenly removed; services were restored; and people got food and supplies as soon as a senior police officer took charge. Before that, nothing was happening on the ground under Resilience NSW.
“Police officers from their earliest days of training are taught how to respond to emergency situations. It is in their veins. They know how to secure a scene; collect evidence; support people and get things moving.”
Mr Secord added: “Senior police officers don’t make excuses in an emergency; they just say: ‘stop the finger pointing, roll-up your sleeves and let’s work together to fix things.’
“Put simply, police officers know how to deploy resources to help struggling victims. We saw that with Deputy Commissioner Mal Lanyon on the North Coast. The praise from flood victims was universal. He had a laser-like focus on helping flood victims.
“It has been proposed by many groups including the NSW Police Association that we must now take this learning and implement it as standard practice in future responses to natural disasters.”
Former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian created Resilience NSW to lead the state’s disaster and emergency response, handing it a massive annual budget which recently has been costed at $777 million.
Resilience NSW spent almost three times as much on 24 fewer staff than the agency it replaced the Daily Telegraph reported in April this year.
The body employed 15 “fat cats” at executive level, and another 105 staff at Resilience NSW which cost the state $19.2 million in the 2020-21 financial year.
Emergency Management cost just $7.4 million in the year before the agency was taken over in May 2020.
It cost $576 million to run Resilience NSW in 2021 headed by Shane Fitzsimmons, three times as much as the $182 million of the Office of Emergency Management it repleaced.
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