That the NSW Government introduce a formalised governance structure at the State level to provide leadership and better assist local coastal councils with the management of catchments, funding and administrative constraints in relation to their Coastal Management Plans.

That the NSW Reconstruction Authority continue to work with the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, NSW Treasury, the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water and the emergency services organisations under the State Emergency and Rescue Management Act 1989 to minimise any duplication and improve efficiency between the work of the Authority and these agencies, particularly with respect to disaster preparedness and mitigation activities, data, modelling and information sharing.

By August 2024, the NSW Reconstruction Authority should determine a timeline for demobilising the temporary housing villages and transitioning tenants out of temporary housing

By August 2024, the NSW Reconstruction Authority should review the temporary housing waitlist to determine the current extent of unmet need

By December 2024, all audited agencies should develop internal plans for implementing whole-of-government responsibilities under the Welfare Functional Area Supporting Plan and any plan developed as a result of recommendation one. This may include, as appropriate, the agency's:
- role in whole-of-government governance arrangements, including key interactions with other agencies
- procurement process, including analysis of appropriate options
- process for identifying appropriate sites for temporary housing
- relevant communication activities, including engagement with Aboriginal communities.

By August 2024, the NSW Reconstruction Authority should develop a whole of government plan for temporary housing to coordinate future temporary housing responses to emergency events

By December 2024, all audited agencies should: finalise evaluations of their role in the provision of emergency accommodation and temporary housing for the Northern Rivers and Central West flood events, and incorporate lessons learned into future planning and continuous improvement. These evaluations should be undertaken in conjunction with other agencies where appropriate.

By August 2024, the NSW Reconstruction Authority should develop a process for a state-wide recovery lessons learned process and facilitate this being completed each year in coordination with the State Recovery Committee.

By August 2024, the NSW Reconstruction Authority should develop a strategy to manage the transition of people into long-term accommodation, taking into account recommendations from relevant reviews

That NSW develop and prosecute with the Commonwealth Government a platform of priority initiatives and reforms the Commonwealth should pursue to better support emergency volunteering and build community capability, in partnership with other States and Territories.

The Minister for Emergency Services establish a new state-based emergency volunteering award, to improve recognition of emergency volunteers.

To promote integrity and transparency, the Department of Regional NSW should ensure that for all future grant programs it: documents all key decisions and approvals in line with record keeping obligations. 

To promote integrity and transparency, the Department of Regional NSW should ensure that for all future grant programs it: ensures regular monitoring is in place as part of funding deeds.

To promote integrity and transparency, the Department of Regional NSW should ensure that for all future grant programs it: ensures staff declare conflicts of interest prior to the commencement of a grants stream, and that these conflicts of interest are recorded and managed.

To promote integrity and transparency, the Department of Regional NSW should ensure that for all future grant programs it: ensures a communications plan is in place, including the communication of guidelines to potential applicants.

To promote integrity and transparency, the Department of Regional NSW should ensure that for all future grant programs it: establishes and follows guidelines that align with relevant good practice guidance including accountabilities, key assessment steps and clear assessment criteria.

Relief and recovery capability: The Inspector-General for Emergency Management recommends that Emergency Management Victoria and the entity referred to in Recommendation 13, or otherwise responsible government department – in collaboration with the relevant relief and recovery organisations:
(a) identify the core capabilities required for operational relief and recovery roles at state, regional and incident levels
(b) coordinate capability development opportunities to develop a consistent level of capability in relief and recovery for relevant agencies at the state, regional and incident levels.

That, to ensure mobile generators are sourced and distributed on a priority basis during natural disasters, the EUSFAC work with the NSW Telco Authority, relevant NSW government agencies and commercial stakeholders to develop a mobile asset deployment strategy. The strategy should reduce duplication in purchasing, maintaining and housing mobile generators and improve agility in deployment.

That, in order to prioritise early suppression and keep fires small:
a) Government set a KPI for NPWS regarding the percentage of fires that start on-park and are contained within 10 hectares, and consider whether 70% is an appropriate KPI for the NSW RFS and NPWS
b) NSW fire authorities deploy remote area fire fighting resources based on enhanced research and predictive modelling. In some circumstances, this may require prioritising the deployment of RART to enable rapid initial attack of new remote area ignitions over ongoing suppression operations, where supported by a relative risk assessment.

That, in order to minimise communication outages and extend basic communication coverage during bush fires, the NSW Government work directly, or together with other Australian governments and/or their relevant power and telecommunications regulatory, policy and market bodies, to:
- ensure there are sufficient redundancy options available (e.g. backup diesel generators, deployed temporary telecommunications facilities, etc.) to supply power to essential telecommunication infrastructure or alternative telecommunications infrastructure
- ensure that the telecommunication entities’ and electricity network providers’ Bush Fire Risk Management Plans are updated annually and reported on in the NSW RFS Commissioner’s annual statement to Parliament on the upcoming bush fire season and include details of all actions taken to mitigate those risks including maintenance of APZs and access roads
- ensure there is appropriate auditing of distributors’ preparedness for risks arising from network assets being affected by bush fire, as well as the risk of networks initiating a bush fire
- facilitate cross-carrier roaming arrangements between carriers and the public for basic text, voice and data during the period of emergency in areas directly affected by fire
- enable NSW RFS to require carriers to provide regular information on the status of outages and areas affected by fire.

That, to ensure updated resource-sharing arrangements are in place, the NSW and Victorian Governments progress and finalise a multi-agency Memorandum of Understanding before the 2020-21 fire season commences.

That, in order to maximise the protection of critical infrastructure in a bush fire, Australian governments revise the regulatory framework for the provision to government authorities of information about all critical infrastructure (public and private) including a possible change to compel the owners of critical assets to provide all needed metadata, updated annually, for appropriate planning, preparation and response for bush fire. This would include information about location, ownership, access, details of service the infrastructure supports, and fire treatments of building and surrounding zones.

That, in order to improve response times to Triple Zero calls, the NSW RFS implements the integrated dispatch system before the 2020-21 fire season commences.

Implement a fully integrated civilianised single call and dispatch centre, that includes a redundancy option outside the Sydney CBD, which will adopt an agnostic approach to deploy the quickest most suitable resource to an emergency. Such a centre should be managed by either a non uniformed public servant staffed organisation like the Office for Emergency Management, or the NSW Police Force

I recommend that the New South Wales Police Force, in conjunction with NSW Health, establish a Fixated Threat Assessment Centre to identify and gather information about fixated persons, assess the risks they pose, and attempt to mitigate such risks through early intervention.

I recommend that the Premier of New South Wales consider whether the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act 1998 and the Health Records and Information Privacy Act 2002 should be amended to ensure that there is appropriate access to health related information available to ASIO (consistent with recommendation 12 of the report of the Martin Place Siege Joint Commonwealth—New South Wales review)

Government Communications Coordination
In future events, a more coordinated communications structure across Government, where
planned Government announcements relevant to the region in recovery are developed in
conjunction with the recovery team, would be beneficial to ensure recovery teams are aware
of, and can plan for, decisions that impact on the work of the recovery team.

Telecommunications and Power Infrastructure
Noting the high reliance within the community on power and telecommunications
infrastructure, there would be benefit for Governments at both State and Federal level to
work with power providers and telecommunications companies to better define disaster
response and recovery responsibilities, and to identify options for increasing redundancies in
networks in order to improve surety of service

That the NSW Government improve the protection of media and telecommunications towers around New South Wales by:
- increasing the asset protection zone around the towers on Mt Cenn Cruaich and other comparable sites to a radius of at least 100 metres
- conducting an audit of all New South Wales media and telecommunications sites to examine their fire safety in respect of land clearance, fire trails and fuel loads
- implementing a strategy to ensure that licensees of these sites fulfil all their hazard reduction obligations.

That the NSW Government consider enabling the default position during catastrophic and extreme fire danger periods to be the same as for section 44 fires, so that fire control centres have the same systems and resources ready to deploy should a fire break out.

That the Department of Primary Industries address the forthcoming potential shortage of veterinary pathologists and agronomists within its testing facilities by positive recruitment actions over the next five years such as offering scholarships or training existing professional staff to develop skills in pathology.
The Committee encourages the Department to continue with these efforts to use the skills of private sector vets to strengthen the emergency response in the Australian Veterinary Reserve and the Accreditation Program for Australian Veterinarians.

All signal telephones must be maintained by RailCorp in proper working order.

The RMC should be equipped by RailCorp with a transcriber system, or mimic board, or such other system as is necessary to enable identification of the precise location at any time of any train on the RailCorp network.

A dedicated telephone line should be established by RailCorp between the RMC and any Emergency Services Control Centre for use during any emergency.

All accredited rail organisations should be required to re-apply every three years to ITSRR for accreditation.

There should be interoperability of communications equipment between all trains operating on the New South Wales rail network.

The ITSRR should ensure that OTSI, as a division of ITSRR, co-operates and assists the ATSB in the conduct of any independent investigation by the ATSB of any rail accident or incident in New South Wales.

There must be compatibility of communications systems throughout the rail network. It is essential that all train drivers, train controllers, signallers, train guards and supervisors of trackside work gangs in New South Wales be able to communicate using the same technology.

The New South Wales Government should make the necessary arrangements with the Australian Government, including any necessary legislation, for the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) to have the power to investigate all rail accidents occurring on the New South Wales rail network the investigation of which may advance the knowledge of the causes of rail accidents in Australia.