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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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

Australian, state and territory governments should conduct multi-agency, national-level exercises, not limited to cross-border jurisdictions. These exercises should, at a minimum:
(1) assess national capacity, inform capability development and coordination in response to, and recovery from, natural disasters, and
(2) use scenarios that stress current capabilities. 

Australian, state and territory governments should work together to develop a program for national level recovery exercises, building on the work currently underway through the Community Outcomes and Recovery Subcommittee of the Australia-New Zealand Emergency Management Committee. 

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.

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, pursue the adoption of a more strategic approach to determining the National Capability Development Exercise Programme so that:
a) the exercises conducted better address the areas of greatest priority and maximise their contribution to the enhancement of a basic, viable nation-wide capability;
b) synergies with other exercises and reviews can be better taken into account; and
c) the rationale for the setting of the programme, including the individual components, is clearly documented.

The ANAO recommends that the Attorney-General’s Department, in consultation with the National Counter-Terrorism Committee, strengthens the reporting on the National Capability Development Exercise Programme through:
a) the provision of clearer guidance on, and monitoring of, the quality of reporting required for the exercises; and
b) a review of the exercise umpiring process to maximise the contribution umpires make to effective performance measurement and reporting and hence to continuous improvement.

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:
a) clearly distinguish between the testing/evaluation components and the training components for the exercises conducted under the National Capability Development Exercise Programme; and
b) ensure that the National Capability Development Exercise Programme, and each of the exercises conducted, places sufficient emphasis on evaluation.

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, pursue a more strategic and systematic approach to the measurement of performance via the National Capability Development Exercise Programme by:
a) the setting of broad exercise objectives and supporting performance indicators that are aligned with the priority areas of the national arrangements to be tested;
b) the consistent setting of objectives and performance indicators that allow for the measurement and reporting of performance over time; and
c) encouraging agencies to set objectives and performance indicators that are more aligned with those of the broad exercise and those of other relevant participating agencies.

The ANAO recommends that the Attorney-General’s Department, in conjunction with the National Counter-Terrorism Committee’s exercise management advisers, explore options for the incorporation of more contemporary and varied testing and training aids in the National Capability Development Exercise Programme.

The Working Group recommends that Emergency Management Australia and the jurisdictions through the AEMC develop a three year rolling national exercise strategy aimed at testing the response and recovery aspects of large scale disasters. 

The Working Group recommends that the results of the scenario modeling be presented to the Australian Emergency Management Committee (AEMC) upon completion, and that AEMC form Sub Working Groups of State/Territory emergency management representatives as appropriate to be tasked with considering response and recovery capability (both state/territory and national) against the identified consequences. 

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 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.