Cyclone Fina exposed a government communication breakdown that put public safety at risk

A bit like George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, government departments now have communications teams whose objective is to prevent the engagement in any communication, writes Matt Cunningham.

There’s an old saying that self-praise is no recommendation.

So we might treat with some scepticism the back-slapping that followed in the aftermath of Cyclone Fina last month.

Yes, it was excellent news that there were no deaths or serious injuries, and that damage was kept to a minimum.

And yes, many frontline workers went above and beyond to ensure this was the case.

But as a communications exercise, this was nothing to crow about.

If our different levels of government and their various departments are serious about ensuring our we provide the best possible response to natural disasters, then Fina has provided plenty of lessons (or “learnings” as they like to call them in carpetland).

It was just after 7.30am on Friday two weeks ago when the weather bureau declared a cyclone warning for Darwin.

In previous years this has been the trigger to prompt a series of events including the closure of government services including schools.

But as time ticked on that Friday morning, there was no word about whether this would happen.

Wurrumiyanga, Tiwi Islands, is beginning the work of cleaning up and restoring power in the wake of Tropical Cyclone Fina. Pic: Fia Walsh.

Confused parents dropped their children at school wondering how long it would be before they were told to pick them up.

Yet there was radio silence from the people in charge.

Media organisations who contacted SecureNT were told to send an email, before being informed the incident controller would not be giving interviews and nor would anyone else. This situation was only rectified after some wiser heads in the Chief Minister’s office and the NT Police intervened.

It’s hard to believe that during an emergency event, when the most important job is to communicate to as many people as possible what is happening, the communications department running the operation was refusing to communicate.

Its excuse was that it was providing messaging on ABC radio, the national emergency broadcaster.

The ABC no doubt does a good job, but there were probably 10 people listening to Hot 100 and Mix FM on that Friday morning for every one dialled in to Aunty, and the ones listening to the ABC had probably enacted their cyclone plans in September.

The communication after the cyclone hit wasn’t much better.

Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro and Superintendent Kirsten Engels at the Secure NT Emergency Response command centre discussing with key controllers the tracking of Tropical Cyclone Fina. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

People started cleaning up on Sunday and heading to the Shoal Bay tip, only to discover the tip wasn’t open.

Apparently a deal had been struck between the NT Government and the City of Darwin after Cyclone Marcus, meaning the tip would be closed and green waste would be accepted at Hidden Valley.

This probably wasn’t a bad idea.

The only problem was it was never communicated to anybody.

Not when the decision was made.

Not at the start of the cyclone season.

Not once in the days as Fina approached.

And not on the morning after the cyclone had passed.

So come Monday, instead of giving important information about what was going on post-Cyclone, Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro and Lord Mayor Peter Styles were instead locked in a slanging match about who was to blame for the tip being closed.

And then there was Power and Water.

Again, we should be grateful for the tireless efforts of the organisation’s frontline workers who were able to get power restored to most areas within a couple of days.

But their communications were a disaster.

As people’s food started to rot on Sunday, all they wanted to know was when their power was likely to come back on.

But little information was forthcoming.

2025 Cyclone Fina Darwin at Fannie Bay. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

There were no press conferences, no media releases and scant detail posted on social media. “It would be good to update the webpage with some ETA for when power might come back on,” one customer said on Facebook on Sunday afternoon, sharing the frustration of many. “Right now, it just says there’s been no update since 6.30am. That was 7 hours ago and there’s NO new info. This is very frustrating and poor communications management.”

The poor communication around Cyclone Fina is the result of a problem that’s been getting worse for more than a decade.

A bit like George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, government departments now have communications teams whose objective is to prevent the engagement in any communication. They will ask for all requests to be put in writing, and then respond with meaningless answers attributed to nobody, sometimes days later, after all the relevant people have provided their “sign off”.

This might be a useful approach in ordinary times when the objective is to prevent the flow of information and ensure as many arses are covered as possible.

But it all falls apart in a dynamic, emergency situation when providing relevant, up-to-date information could literally be a matter of life and death.

In the end we were lucky.

Cyclone Fina was a category 3 system when it passed Darwin, but it took a line almost half-way between the Territory capital and the southern tip of the Tiwi Islands.

The winds we felt in Darwin were the equivalent of a category 1.

If Fina had made a direct hit, we might be telling a very different story today.

Originally published as Cyclone Fina exposed a government communication breakdown that put public safety at risk