By Mike Foley
Key findings from the natural disasters royal commission have been ignored and not put into practice, according to former emergency services chiefs, who say the federal government must take a more active role in preparing the nation for greater damage under climate change.
Deadly floods have ravaged NSW and Queensland, leading to accusations the federal and state governments have been too slow in their responses. The latest escalation in the public slanging match came on Monday when NSW claimed it had to wait five days for a response from the federal government to its request for Australian Defence Force personnel to assist in Lismore.
Severe flooding hit Lismore on March 1.Credit: Elise Derwin
Emergency Management Australia director-general Joe Buffone defended the Commonwealth’s disaster response and argued the federal government enacted its Disaster Response Plan on February 25, which enabled the state government to make its request for support directly to the ADF.
In February 2020, the federal government commissioned the Royal Commission into Natural Disaster Arrangements, directly after the Black Summer bushfires. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said at the time the commission would be “focused on practical action that has a direct link to making Australians safer” and gave it a six-month turnaround “so recommendations can be acted upon before our next bushfire season”.
The royal commission made 80 recommendations, with many focused on state and local government. Only 15 were directed at the federal government.
“Of the 15 [recommendations] that are purely federal you could not say they have all been implemented”, said Major General Peter Dunn, a retired senior army officer and former ACT Emergency Services chief.
“The ones they have implemented, for example, the National Recovery and Resilience Agency [NRRA] headed by Shane Stone, I would say hasn’t been completed because it hasn’t done its job. Its fund has grown to $4.8 billion and almost no mitigation works have been undertaken to date.”
NRRA said it had completed 12 of the royal commission’s recommendations and three were still under way.
Former deputy director-general of the NSW State Emergency Service and flood expert Chas Keys cited a Productivity Commission finding that across Australia 97 per cent of natural disaster funding goes to recovery efforts with only 3 per cent to mitigation and prevention, and said spending was “completely out of kilter”.
“There is no more manageable hazard in Australia than flooding. We know where it will occur, we’re usually warned ahead of it and we can predict what its effects will be,” Mr Keys said.
Major General Dunn, an expert witness at the royal commission who also battled the Black Summer flames when fire hit his South Coast home town of Conjola, reviewed sections of the final report and said other recommendations for the federal government had not been delivered, such as the creation of a national disaster advisory body.
Major General Dunn is a member of the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action group, which said on Monday the federal government’s creation of the NRRA to sit alongside the existing Emergency Management Australia agency was “a recipe for duplication and administrative hubris”.
The royal commission called for common communication systems to be used across the country, such as radio frequency for emergency services. The federal government has said this should be a state responsibility, but the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action said “the federal government controls radio spectrum and this cannot happen without national co-ordination”.
“My advice to the Morrison government and state and local governments is to get off their backsides and collect all the reports from the royal commission and read the recommendations because the lessons have not been learned,” Major General Dunn said.
Emergency Services Minister Bridget McKenzie’s office was contacted for comment.