ADF response to Covid, floods and Black Summer fires cost $366m

The cost to defence from responding to natural disasters including Covid, the Black Summer fires and east-coast floods over the last four years has risen to more than $350m.

The ANAO report found the additional cost to Defence of responding to the Black Summer bushfires in 2019-20 amounted to $68.4m.

The extra cost to Defence of providing support during the Black Summer bushfires, east coast floods and bolstering the nation’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic amounted to $366m, according to an Auditor-General’s report investigating ADF support to the civilian community.

From May 27, 2013 to June 30, 2022, the audit report showed, there were 748 emergency tasks in which Defence provided assistance to communities in need.

Operation Bushfire Assist in 2019-20 was the largest ADF mobilisation for domestic disaster relief in Australia’s history, and involved more than 6500 personnel, including 3000 reservists.

But the government found the ADF’s role in assisting the civilian community during and after natural disasters comes at a cost to force preparedness, readiness and combat effectiveness.

The joint standing committee on foreign affairs, defence and trade this month expressed alarm that more than half of all ADF members had been assigned to domestic disaster relief tasks in recent years.

Labor MP Julian Hill, the defence subcommittee chair, warned that states and territories could not continue to treat the ADF as “some sort of shadow workforce” and should more adequately resource their own capabilities.

The Australian National Audit Office report found that Defence established effective planning and administrative arrangements to facilitate provision of support to the civilian community. But it warned the effectiveness of these arrangements was reduced by shortcomings in implementation, monitoring and reporting.

The report comes ahead of the bushfire season, with Emergency Management Minister Murray Watt saying Australia might need to create a new paid firefighting service as natural disasters become more frequent.

Senator Watt said the Albanese government would “always make the defence forces available when they’re needed”, but they “should be used as a last resort rather than a first port of call”.

The ANAO report found the additional cost to Defence of responding to the Black Summer bushfires in 2019-20 amounted to $68.4m, while the costs imposed by Operation Covid-19 Assist over the three years from 2020-21 to 2022-23 amounted to $266m.

Responding to the March-April 2021 floods in NSW and the flooding in Queensland and NSW in the first half of 2022 imposed extra costs on Defence of $32m.

The Defence Strategic Review, released in April, said Defence was not structured or equipped to act as a domestic disaster recovery agency and that it must be the “force of last resort for domestic aid to the civil community, except in extreme circumstances”.

The government accepted this recommendation in principle and agreed to work with states and territories to develop other national resilience response mechanisms.

The ANAO made four recommendations, all of which were accepted by Defence, which included: improving the recording of costs; providing cost recovery advice to ministers; completing post-activity reports following tasks, and; recording lessons learned.

Of the 748 tasks in which Defence provided support to the civilian community, 744 (or 99.5 per cent) did not have a post-activity report lodgement date recorded.

The report also found that while Defence had established fit-for-purpose arrangements to identify “lessons learned”, it had “made limited use of the arrangements and has not complied with all requirements”. While 2828 individual tasks were recorded in the Defence Assistance to the Civil Community database between May 27, 2013 and June 30 2022, the Defence Lessons Repository included only 185 observations, 20 insights and one lesson related to DACC activities.