Extreme weather increase to create ‘dire’ choice for authorities, fire royal commission hears

The national disaster chief warns an increase in global warming-related events may force authorities to choose which incidents they respond to.

The inquiry into the Black Summer bushfires has heard global warming-related extreme weather events may put Australian emergency services in the ‘dire position’ of having to choose which incident they respond to. Picture: AAP

The head of the national disaster management organisation has warned an increase in global warming-related extreme weather events may put Australian emergency services in the “dire position” of having to choose which incident they respond to.

Giving evidence to the government’s landmark inquiry into the Black Summer fires on Wednesday, Emergency Management Australia Director-General Robert Cameron stressed the importance of ensuring resource-sharing across borders remained “safe in a governance sense”.

“If you take the impact of the changing climate into account we’re going to have, again regrettably, more disaster impacts which will stretch our capacity,” Mr Cameron said.

Robert Cameron.

“If you take that to its ultimate end, we could be faced at some future point with a decision that needs to be made collectively where resource element A can be applied to incident B or not C, but not both and that requires very safe governance arrangements to make those sorts of decisions”

Mr Cameron said the impact of such a decision would ultimately be “dire” for the community that didn’t receive assistance.

He told the inquiry he held some concerns about arrangements surrounding the sharing of fire fighting resources, which are currently brokered by the National Resource Sharing Centre.

The centre, which is managed by the Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council (AFAC), is a non-government organisation and Mr Cameron said it was his view that while sharing across jurisdictions should continue, those arrangements should “probably be in the province of governments” rather than that of a not-for-profit company.

Also giving evidence was Vice Chief of the Defence Force and Lieutenant General Greg Bilton, who told the inquiry the ADF’s Operation Bushfire Assist cost a total of $66 million with the bulk of that sum spent on “reserve salaries and conditions of service for their service”.

More than 6500 ADF members, including 3000 reservists, provided support during the Black Summer in the largest Defence mobilisation for domestic disaster relief in Australia's history.

It was also heard the ADF had begun helping with last year’s bushfires effort as early as September with its contribution “modest, ongoing and largely confined to aviation and logistics”.

Mr Cameron reiterated the importance of developing a nationally consistent information systems for bushfires because something as simple as a national fire map currently involved the manual collection of jurisdictional information.

“This is probably one of the areas most ripe for progress, where we can achieve the biggest gains,” he said.

Mr Cameron said communities should be able to access as much accurate information as possible about the risks they face in a readily-consumable way.

It was heard that the national crisis committee held just two meetings over the 2019/20 bushfire season with the first held on November 11 and the second on January 10 because it “wasn’t particularly needed” as there was “frequent and ongoing engagement at an operational level”.

The hearing continues.