To increase shared understanding of risks and enhance capability integration and collaborative planning, both Local Disaster Management Group (LDMG) participate in the exercising of the Paradise Dam Emergency Action Plan. 

The Australian Department of Health and Ageing consult with members of the general public or representatives of health consumers in the pandemic planning process, including in pandemic exercises designed to test the ability of government to respond to a pandemic event. Consumer involvement should include testing the ability of any communication strategy designed to inform and engage consumers about a pandemic event.

The Australian Government test Australia’s ability to respond to a widespread outbreak of infectious disease other than influenza, by undertaking a pandemic exercise across the relevant Commonwealth, state and territory government agencies.

Emergency Management Queensland should ensure its staff, SES members and disaster managers are familiar with the directives it develops in relation to these matters.

Emergency Management Queensland, in consultation with councils, should develop clear directives about: • the communication and reporting that should take place between the SES and disaster managers, including in relation to task allocation and completion, once disaster management groups have been activated • the communication and reporting that should take place between the SES and disaster managers, including in relation to task allocation and completion, once disaster management groups have been activated • the process for dealing with requests for assistance that exceed an SES unit’s capacity to respond them • the process for seeking extra support for an SES unit that has been overwhelmed by a disaster (whether by way of Emergency Management Queensland or the disaster management arrangements or both) • the role of SES liaison officers in communications with disaster managers about SES disaster operations • the role of incident controllers, and their teams, relative to those SES (or Emergency Management Queensland) personnel charged with the command of SES operations.

Emergency Management Queensland should ensure its staff, SES members and disaster managers are familiar with the directive when it is developed.

Emergency Management Queensland, in consultation with councils, should develop a directive that makes clear the authority of an officer of that agency to command a major SES operation. This could be expected to occur when a deployment of additional SES members is made to a region because the response needed is beyond the capacity of its local units. The directive should make clear the powers of the officer and his or her reporting responsibilities to disaster managers in these circumstances. Emergency Management Queensland must also ensure that any officer who assumes such a role has adequate training and skills in the conduct of disaster operations.

The fire service should ensure that station officers are familiar with the procedure for contacting management when requesting the calling in of additional staff; and, in particular, that they have available to them the names and current telephone numbers of the officers to be contacted in the first instance, with alternative contact details in the event that those officers prove unavailable.

the state ensure that any new systems and equipment purchased by state emergency management agencies are interoperable with other relevant agencies to the fullest extent possible. This should involve the state establishing a procurement gateway process with input from the Emergency Services Commissioner.

the state take the necessary measures to upgrade existing manual stream and rain gauges and ensure that all future gauges provide a seamless transfer of data from the gauges to the Bureau of Meteorology.

DPI should formalise the approach and framework for evaluating simulation exercises and response to Emergency Animal Disease incidents with guidelines to define the nature of the review process. This should include:
• developing a standardised internal evaluation framework to provide guidelines on the review process
• introducing periodic external evaluations of simulation exercises to enable comparison over time and to demonstrate independence and rigour
• developing guidelines for commissioning external evaluations of response to EAD incidents
• recording the implementation of recommendations from simulation exercises and response to EAD incidents
• introducing a system-level review of lessons learned.

To improve response preparedness, DPI should clearly link the selection of simulation exercises to the risk management framework to target coverage of high risks.

That the officer responsible for the importation of horses ensure that:
(a) up-to-date copies of operating procedures or manuals setting out the procedures to be implemented are available both in soft-copy form on the AQIS intranet site and in hard-copy form at any premises where tasks associated with horse importation are ordinarily performed
(b) AQIS personnel involved in the importation of horses are trained in all relevant aspects of procedures relating to the importation of horses
(c) AQIS personnel taking up duties involving tasks related to horse importation and not having performed such tasks for more than 12 months undergo proper training in the relevant procedures before commencing their duties.

We recommend that NSW Health continue with its good work and continue to develop and test its surveillance systems for early detection of infectious diseases.

We recommend that NSW Health continue with its good work and formally establish and oversight a comprehensive program of training, testing and evaluation of plans at the state, area and facility level.

We recommend that NSW Health continue with its good work and apply the lessons learnt from Exercise Cumpston to further improve preparedness for major infectious disease emergencies.

We recommend that NSW Health continue with its good work and continue to develop and test the capability of its contact tracing system to deal with a public health emergency.

That the Department of Primary Industries should ensure that it retains the services of a specialist poultry industry liaison officer in the future.

That the Department of Primary Industries should endeavour to improve its knowledge and skills base in the pig industry by recruiting a specialist pig industry liaison officer.

That agencies assess the cost-effectiveness of establishing a dedicated and proven asset management information system which is integrated with the other information systems used to manage drainage assets.

That agencies integrate condition information into their asset management decision-making practices and use it as the basis for validating asset valuations and depreciation calculations.

That PSB’s enforcement procedures are consistent with those of the rest of the department.

That DPI negotiates access, as and when required, to an AQIS PC4- accredited laboratory.

That DPI improves monitoring and surveillance of high priority threats and improves the quality of information provided to the Commonwealth.

That DPI makes arrangements to use contract labour for fruit fly trap monitoring and surveillance before the predicted fruit fly outbreak season.

That DPI develops a consistent approach to recording and enforcing breaches of the certification and verification system.

That the recommendations of the 2000 DPI report into the reference collection’s storage facility be implemented, to secure the collection in a purpose-built facility.