Fighting natural disasters

Australians have endured floods, bushfires and hailstorms and more over the last two years. The government is better aligning policy to deal with disasters, but its plan is somewhat half-baked.

A new dawn for disaster management

Effective disaster risk reduction focuses heavily on prevention and preparedness capacities, but it also implies coordination between state and federal agencies.

Building research capacity for a disaster-resilient Australia

Australia needs a networked consortium of teaching universities and regional research centres helping our emergency and disaster management services face the myriad dangers we face.

Do we need a bushfire royal commission?

The prime minister has announced that the cabinet will consider a royal commission into aspects of the ongoing fire disaster once the bushfires are under control, so how might this be organised to ensure it produces results?

Rethinking Australia’s food security

Australia needs to adopt a more coherent approach to the critically important convergence of food security, climate change and national security.

Planning Darwin’s future as a “resilient city”

Darwin’s development of its own resilience plan would strengthen the city’s importance as a viable, vibrant and secure state capital.

Australia’s north needs people and people need a resilient economy

Defence and security will always make Darwin a priority from a national perspective but, as our northernmost capital city, different ideas to make the city more economically resilient need to be supported.

The art of avoiding technological traps

The Federal Government should create an Office of Technology Assessment to provide timely and targeted advice to Ministers, officials and public agencies to ensure they understand the risks, rewards and implications of new technology.

Rethinking Australia’s biosecurity

Deliberate or accidental biosecurity breaches, such as last month’s strawberry contamination scare, present very real economic threats to Australia.

Australia needs better disaster management and risk reduction education

While there have been some notable moves to improve management of national resilience issues, non-natural hazards pose a range of challenges that need to be factored into current thinking and practice.

Can the National Resilience Taskforce help protect Australia?

Australia faces a range of natural and man-made threats to its vital infrastructure. How should the government’s resilience taskforce tackle the challenges which lie ahead?

Australia’s fuel vulnerability is a problem of own making

Australia is a major energy exporter, yet our lack of domestic refining capacity leaves us evermore reliant on potentially vulnerable maritime supply chains to deliver imported supplies.