The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet include in the Australian Government Crisis Management Handbook criteria for the publication of plans to appropriately inform stakeholders of crisis arrangements.

That the Australian Government formalise the National Partnership for Climate Projections as a sub-committee to the Adaptation Working Group and support it through the National Climate Service with appropriate resources to drive the broader co-ordinated work program and achieve national participation.

The Committee recommends that the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) appropriately use powers that it has as a result of the removal of the exemption of claims handling of insurance products under the Corporations Act 2001. The Committee notes that ASIC has only recently been granted such powers and they are as yet untested.

The Minister for Emergency Management should deliver an annual Statement to Parliament that:
- Defines the Commonwealth’s role in prioritising risk reduction, prevention, resilience, and mitigation against natural disasters.
- Outlines the national natural disaster risk reduction investment priorities.
- Reports against nationally agreed natural disaster risk reduction and resilience investment outcomes.
- Updates Parliament on the progress of disaster impacted communities where Commonwealth programs and investment are involved.

The Committee recommends that clearer demarcation of climate data and sharing responsibilities between the Bureau of Meteorology and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and state and territory and local governments be established to facilitate adequate warning and risk mitigation.

The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water develop a stakeholder engagement plan, including maintaining an up-to-date list of stakeholders, to ensure appropriate engagement in future wildlife and habitat disaster recovery programs.

ANZEMC’s core mission should be narrowed to:
1) Supporting the NEMMM, particularly to identify its five priorities for action and ensuring they are implemented; and
2) Providing a forum for key senior officials to address other nationally (e.g., cross- jurisdictionally) pressing, emerging and longer-term challenges.

ANZEMC should establish time-limited, flexible task forces, reporting directly to ANZEMC, to implement NEMMM’s five priorities for action and essential other initiatives, comprised of diverse membership (e.g., government, private sector, academia, civil society), determined by the requirements of the task.

Given the importance of NEMMM’s work, meetings should occur quarterly and be in-person at least twice yearly, be of sufficient length to allow for issues to be properly canvassed and discussed and be preceded by an opportunity for the NEMMM members to meet informally alone together.

ANZEMC should meet four times each year, including twice face-to- face, with one of the in-person meetings devoted predominantly to “Disaster Resilience and Recovery.” The face-to-face meetings should be preceded by an opportunity for the ANZEMC members to meet informally.

NEMA with CCOSC should investigate ways to better integrate and align CCOSC and the NRSC with the national coordination capacity.
- This should include building on the existing arrangements in exceptional circumstances to outpost NRSC staff as liaison officers to the Australian Government National Situation Room.
- This should also include identifying event thresholds that would trigger the need for greater integration.

NEMMM agendas should ensure that discussion of urgent tactical challenges don’t crowd-out consideration of the strategic challenges.
- NEMMM should request ANZEMC, facilitated by NEMA, to conduct “stress-testing” scenario planning of the consequences (e.g., exhausted emergency workers, insufficient emergency housing and shortages of trades people) of year-on-year increases in consecutive and intensifying national-scale disasters.

Each jurisdiction should be allowed a maximum of three senior officials on ANZEMC to enable the inclusion of these jurisdictional responsibilities (see Appendix F for Summary of State and Territory responsibilities).

ANZEMC’s Terms of Reference should be amended to reflect the recommendations above.

NEMMM should co-convene a joint Ministerial Council meeting with climate change adaptation ministers to promote greater coherence between NEMMM’s resilience work and climate adaptation—two key components of a future national resilience strategy. This should be a face-to-face meeting.

The government members of ANZEMC should be senior officials (Commissioners, Deputy Secretaries or Heads of Agencies) from agencies that have the lead jurisdictional responsibility for preparedness and response and resilience and recovery.

ANZEMC should map out the many existing time-limited working groups and reference and advisory groups and the communities of practice, to identify which are no longer required and should be discontinued, which should continue and be officially sanctioned by ANZEMC, which should continue as informal interest groups, and to identify potential gaps.

The ANZEMC workplan and meeting agendas should be explicitly organised under two headings: “Disaster Resilience and Recovery” and “Preparedness and Capabilities Policy”.

The current ANZEMC Sub-committees and other subsidiary bodies should be reconceptualised as “communities of practice” and important sources of expert advice, rather than as national governance bodies.

The Australian Government should make provision, in legislation, for a declaration of a state of national emergency. The declaration should include the following components:
(1) the ability for the Australian Government to make a public declaration to communicate the seriousness of a natural disaster
(2) processes to mobilise and activate Australian Government agencies quickly to support states and territories to respond to and recover from a natural disaster, and
(3) the power to take action without a state or territory request for assistance in clearly defined and limited circumstances. 

State and territory governments should, as a priority, adopt nationally consistent terminology and functions for the different sheltering facilities, including evacuation centres, Neighbourhood Safer Places, places of last resort and natural disaster shelters. 

State and territory governments should urgently deliver and implement thevall-hazard Australian Warning System. 

State and territory governments should ensure that those responsible for evacuation planning periodically review those plans, and update them where appropriate, including in relation to:
(1) key risks that essential service outages have on communities during a severe or catastrophic natural disaster (particularly communications an
power)
(2) availability of essential supplies, including food and water, and
(3) consequence management and compounding events such as the loss of essential services or health impacts. 

State and territory governments should expedite the development and implementation of the Australian Fire Danger Rating System. It should ensure that there is national consistency in the visual display of the AFDRS and action to be taken in response to each rating. 

State and territory governments should ensure that those responsible for evacuation planning periodically review those plans, and update them where appropriate, including in relation to:
(1) roles and responsibilities of state and territory governments, local governments and local communities
(2) education and signage about evacuations and evacuation routes, including education of seasonal populations
(3) the adequacy of evacuation routes; including contingencies if evacuation routes or centres are assessed as not being able to cope, and
(4) the potential inability to evacuate, either by reason of circumstances or personal characteristics. 

State and territory governments should ensure those responsible for evacuation planning periodically review those plans, and update where appropriate, to provide for coordination between states and territories in cross border areas and to provide cross-border access to evacuation centres. 

State and territory governments should provide information to the public on the closure and opening of roads. Information should be provided in real-time, or in advance based on predictions, where possible. 

State and territory governments should ensure those responsible for evacuation planning periodically review these plans, and update them where appropriate, to account for the existence and standard of any evacuation centres and safer places (however described) in the community, including:
(1) the capacity of a centre to handle seasonal population variation
(2) the suitability of facilities to cater for diverse groups, including vulnerable people, and those evacuating with animals, and
(3) the existence of communications facilities and alternate power sources.

Australian, state and territory governments should continue to explore the feasibility of a national, all-hazard emergency warning app. 

State and territory governments should include road closure and opening information on all roads within their borders on public apps. 

State and territory governments should provide further community education on the function and limitations of different sheltering facilities, including evacuation centres, Neighbourhood Safer Places, places of last resort and natural disaster shelters. This education should be nationally consistent. 

The Australian Government should facilitate state and territory governments working together to develop minimum national standards of information to be included in bushfire warnings apps. 

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority’s Director of Aviation Safety meet with industry sector leaders to jointly develop a plan for renewing a collaborative and effective Standards Consultative Committee.

The lines of responsibility be made clearer and some individual, perhaps the Regional Environmental Officer, or agency be given overarching responsibility to ensure recommended works related to bushfire mitigation on Defence Estate are carried out in accordance with the Bushfire Management Plan which the Manual for Fire Protection Engineering directs be prepared.

The Marrangaroo Training Area Regional Environmental Officer confer with the local Rural Fire Service at least annually and determine a hazard reduction regime capable of implementation. It is furter recommended all ranges be reviewed in relation to the same issue, that is, that personnel involved in the management of each range under Defence control be directed to confer with local firefighting authorities on at least an annual basis to assess hazard reduction responses to be pursued for that range in subsequent years. 

Range Control Officer Marrangaroo Training Area liase with the local Rural Fire Service units to develop a map indicating the areas of the range likely to contain unexploded ordnance. 

The committee recommends that the Australian Transport Safety Bureau retrieve VH-NGA flight data recorders without further delay.

Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) to work with the Triple Zero Awareness Work Group through Australian Communications and Media Authority's (ACMA) Emergency Service Advisory Committee to review Triple Zero awareness messages with regard to telecommunications outages.

Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy will work with the Communications Sector Group within the Trusted Information Sharing Network to develop best practice guidance for owners of critical communications infrastructure regarding public messaging during a prolonged telecommunications outage covering:
- the provision of early and accurate advice to the community;
- the dissemination of information to business, government, community service providers and critical industry sectors such as banks;
- engagement with emergency service providers and the appointed local incident manager;
- public communications over radio, by personal contact etc. - avoiding a reliance on phone and internet;
- communications with other wholesale providers including on matters dealing with compensation;
- public notices, such as the use of prominent notices on websites, explaining the outage to customers and clients outside the affected area; and
- the use of recorded voice announcements to inform incoming callers of the outage.

Governments and other stakeholders consider reviewing their existing emergency management arrangements to ensure public communications are clear and the public is kept informed of the incident response.

The Australian Government, in consultation with consumers and other relevant federal, state and territory agencies, develop a national communication strategy for consumers to be used in the event of an infectious disease outbreak.

The committee recommends that Australian governments specifically address issues of compatibility and capacity to facilitate the most effective interoperability of emergency service organisations and their key personnel, especially for fire services.

The committee recommends the government consider granting public broadcasters priority access to fuel during times of emergency for the purpose of broadcasting emergency warnings and information, and in a way that does not impede the ability of emergency service organisations to access fuel.

NOPSA’s prohibition powers should be extended such that a prohibition notice can be issued where a NOPSA Occupational Health and Safety Inspector believes, on reasonable grounds, that an activity is occurring or may occur at a facility involving an immediate threat to the health or safety of a person.

The Commonwealth Government work with the states and their agencies to ensure consistent terminology is used when communicating with the public.

The ANAO recommends that the Attorney-General’s Department, in consultation with the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the National Counter-Terrorism Committee, seek to create systematic mechanisms for better targeting and evaluating inter- agency coordination within the National Capability Development Exercise Programme and continuous improvement cycle.

The Working Group recommends that the Commonwealth Attorney General’s Department hold discussions with the Commonwealth Department of Communications, Information, Technology and the Arts regarding the Integrated Public Telephone Network Database (IPND) being made accessible for use in times of emergency where the need to disseminate community information and warnings to telephones within a specified area is identified. Discussions should also be held between the Commonwealth Attorney General’s Department and with the Federal Privacy Commissioner’s Office to identify any impediments to the use of the IPND in such circumstances. 

The Working Group recommends that Emergency Management Australia (EMA) facilitate national discussions into the capability of States/Territories to ensure thorough collaborative systems and plans for inter-jurisdictional resource interoperability exist, and where this has not already occurred at State/Territory level and appropriate agencies, committees or government departments can be identified, they should be tasked with progressing specific issues in the following areas:
• Communications equipment
• Landline and mobile telephones
• Response equipment
• National registration of health and other professionals
• Legal consistency in State/Territory disaster/emergency legislation and any other legislation that impacts upon the ability to deliver a national response to catastrophic disasters
• National resource sharing arrangements
• Acceptance and utilisation of international resources.

The Committee recommends that:
- As a short term objective, the use of ‘40’ channel UHF CB equipment be adopted for coordination and interoperability of communications at fire ground level.
- As a longer term objective a national communications plan be developed and incorporate the provision of low powered VHF channel allocations for the purpose of ensuring compatible fire ground communications between all agencies on a national basis.
- That the use of UHF CB between units on the fire ground be included in communications planning for intra-state and interstate deployments.

The Committee recommends that the state and territory bushfire agencies ensure that, on a district basis, communications are addressed within the district operations plans and that the plans are capable of easy adoption to incident action plans.

The Committee recommends that the Australasian Fire Authorities Council’s suggested evacuation protocol be adopted by all of the Australian States and Territories.

The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth investigate, and where necessary, require the urgent enhancement of the provision of emergency power and telecommunications services for the purpose of
restoring essential services expeditiously in areas affected by fire or other natural disaster and where necessary to place licence requirements on telecommunication providers to do so.

The Committee recommends that Emergency Management Australia and the Australian Communications Authority work with state and territory bush fire authorities to ensure that that district communication plans
have regard for the amount of radio traffic that may be generated under the most severe conditions.