Australia’s ferocious summer – exacerbated by climate change – and its propensity to dish up fast-moving catastrophes is now a major test of political competency,with recent history replete with lessons for governments to ignore at their peril. When a large-scale disaster rocks a community,Australians are not interested in a bureaucratic squabble between layers of government over who is responsible for what,only the speediness and adequacy of the response.
“One of the outcomes of Black Summer and then the floods in Lismore,in particular,has been that people do expect more of their federal government than they used to around disaster management,” Watt says.
“When an event is significant,and people’s lives are lost and there are significant property losses,they have an expectation that their political leaders will be there to help. We’ve tried to be very visible and very present when disasters are happening.”
Since being sworn into the Albanese cabinet in June 2022,Watt has overhauled the operations of the nation’s disaster response agencies into one body called the National Emergency Management Agency. He says it has enabled a more streamlined,rapid federal response to natural disasters and better co-ordination with state and territory governments and their emergency services.
The agency’s nerve centre operates from a concrete bunker,called the National Situation Room,beneath the Australian Federal Police headquarters in Canberra,where a small team of at least six people work around the clock to monitor developing threats,ranging from weather events to protests and cyberattacks. It is plugged directly into state and territory emergency centres.
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When a crisis hits,the National Emergency Management Agency’s operations can expand to accommodate hundreds of people across the federal bureaucracy,including defence and national security officials,as well as state government representatives and key private sector businesses,such as telecommunications companies. As the flood crisis peaked last week,the agency’s Canberra operations swelled to 30 people,with a further four working from Queensland.
When Watt stopped by the situation room early in December to give this masthead a tour of the facility,things were relatively calm. In the centre of the room,a large floor-to-ceiling screen displayed a map of Australia with the potential threat activity,including about 30 fires burning across the country. There was also a watching brief on Cyclone Jasper,which at that point was still a week away from making landfall.
While the country is again facing a difficult bushfire season as El Nino conditions take hold,a concern at the forefront of the minister’s mind this summer is heat waves.
“There will definitely be areas where we have bushfires despite all the work that’s happening to prepare,and we have to be on guard for those and they could be quite serious,” he says.
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“But the thing that people aren’t talking about that is really serious is heatwaves because there will be large parts of the country that don’t necessarily experience bushfires,but have day after day of very hot weather. We have more people die in Australia every year from heat waves than from any other form of disaster.”
Watt,50,who entered the Senate in 2016,is one of two Queenslanders in the cabinet (the other isTreasurer Jim Chalmers). As a senior figure of the Labor Left faction,Watt is a close ally and friend of the prime minister. The Black Summer fires and the Lismore floods both occurred during the three-month summer window,albeit two years apart,while Labor was in opposition and Watt was the shadow minister for disaster management. He cites theLismore flood in February 2022,which was compounded by a second flood weeks later,as having a profound impact in shaping his approach as minister.
The floods killed five people and rendered 4000 homes uninhabitable in a trail of destruction across NSW’s Northern Rivers unmatched in scale in Australia sinceCyclone Tracy flattened Darwin almost 50 years earlier.
“I remember thinking it was like a war zone. It was carnage. There was mud everywhere,furniture was strewn through the streets,glass was shattered and the people were shell-shocked,” Watt says,recalling landing in Lismore in the days after the initial flood.
“We were talking with people who had literally thought they were going to die.”
Slow to declare the situation a national emergency,Scott Morrison’s government found itself again under siege over its disaster management on the cusp of the May 2022 federal election – just two years after the Black Summer fires – and the prime minister’s ill-advised decision to holiday in Hawaii as parts of the country’s east coast burned.
As he met with locals and toured evacuation centres,Watt not only saw firsthand the community’s rage at the federal government – he was also a relentless critic in media interviews from the disaster zone,laying down a standard against which he would be measured as a minister when Labor was returned to power after nine years in the political wilderness.
“There’s a lot of disasters that occur that states and territories are completely capable of managing on their own without federal intervention,” Watt says. “But increasingly,because of the number and severity of the disasters,they do need and ask for Commonwealth support. Our first answer shouldn’t be ‘no’,and that was the situation I think we used to have.”
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By the end of Labor’s first year in office,almost 70 per cent of Australians were living in an area that had been disaster-declared during 2022 as major flooding events continued throughout the year,hitting Sydney and the NSW coast,Victoria,South Australia,Tasmania,and parts of Queensland. The new year provided no relief,with Western Australia’s Kimberley region devastated by record floods in January. And in September this year,a massive fire scorched more than 10,000 square kilometres of bush in the Northern Territory.
The bill has been expensive. The federal government has ushered $1.2 billion out the door in disaster recovery funding since July 2022,including financial assistance payments,clean-up grants,temporary accommodation and mental health support. A further $500 million in federal funds is likely to be spent on the Far North Queensland flood recovery.
One consequence of this period of rolling natural disasters has been the cementing of a public expectation that the Australian Defence Force will be deployed to rescue communities in their hour of need and help pick up the pieces once floodwaters subside and bushfires are extinguished.
Watt has a delicate tightrope to walk in managing this expectation after numerous defence experts and reviews have warned that the over-reliance on the ADF is detracting from its core mission to defend Australia. This year,he commissioned a consultation process to find alternative ways for the Commonwealth to support states and territories in emergencies while ensuring the ADF remained a last-resort option.
“We will always make sure that the ADF is available for extreme events,but if we’re going to focus them on being a last resort rather than a first port of call,then we have to consider what else we need in terms of personnel and in terms of equipment,” he says.
One alternative model already being explored is Disaster Relief Australia,a volunteer organisation supported by federal funding that is led by military veterans who provide on-the-ground relief in the aftermath of a natural disaster.
“I’ve seen them in the field in a number of disaster locations,doing the clean-up and recovery work that we’ve tended to rely on the ADF for,and so we made an election commitment that we’re now delivering to them to expand their operations and attract more volunteers.”
Ultimately,Watt says he wants the review to land a more considered understanding of the role of the Commonwealth in disaster scenarios.
“We’re not seeking to kick out the states and territories from doing disaster management. We do think it’s important that they retain primary responsibility. They’ve got the skills,the capacity,the experience,but the question is how can we best supplement that at a federal level that helps them cope with particularly extreme disasters.”