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 prepare a workforce plan and resulting recruitment and training to build strong capabilities in climate services, knowledge brokering, communication and user engagement.

That the Australian Government review ACS initiatives and work program and decide which should be continued to support the planned National Climate Service's scope and objectives. Start a phased wind back (over 4 years) of the funding commitments to ACS partners.

The Committee recommends that insurers devote additional resources to providing vulnerable customers with assistance. Insurers should evaluate the effectiveness of this assistance after each declared event.

The Committee recommends, in alignment with recommendation 3 of the 2023 Deloitte report, that insurers be required to build into their staff resourcing plans, strategies to adequately increase resourcing for key services, including call centre and claims management staff, when significant or catastrophic events occur.

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.

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”.

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.

Australian, state and territory governments should develop an Australian-based and registered national aerial firefighting capability, to be tasked according to greatest national need. This capability should include:
(1) a modest, very large air tanker/large air tanker, and Type-1 helicopter capability, including supporting infrastructure, aircrew and aviation support personnel, and
(2) any other aerial firefighting capabilities (eg Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), line-scanning, transport, and logistics) that would benefit from a nationally coordinated approach. 

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority applies a project management approach to the completion of all Civil Aviation Safety Regulation Parts not yet in force, with drafting to be completed within one year and consultation completed one year later, with:
a. a Steering Committee and a Project Team with both CASA and industry representatives
b. implementation dates established through formal industry consultation.

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority establishes a safety oversight risk management hierarchy based on a categorisation of operations. Rule making and surveillance priorities should be proportionate to the safety risk.

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority establishes small offices at specific industry centres to improve monitoring, service quality, communications and collaborative relationships.

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority changes its organisational structure to a client-oriented output model.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau transfers its safety education function to the Civil Aviation Safety Authority.

The next Director of Aviation Safety has leadership and management experience and capabilities in cultural change of large organisations. Aviation or other safety industry experience is highly desirable.

The committee recommends that all meetings between the ATSB and CASA, whether formal or informal, where particulars of a given investigation are being discussed be appropriately minuted.

The committee recommends that an expert aviation safety panel be established to ensure quality control of ATSB investigation and reporting processes along the lines set out by the committee.

Licensees and rig operators should be astute in ensuring that corporate systems and culture encourage rather than discourage raising of well control issues. For instance, do performance bonuses or rewards actually encourage or discourage reporting of issues? Is there a system in place to enable anonymous reporting of well control concerns? What whistleblower protections are in place?

Supervision/oversight of well control operations (within licensees, rig operators and by regulators) must occur without assuming adherence to good oilfield practice. The opposite assumption should prevail: namely adherence to good oilfield practice may well be compromised by the pursuit of time and cost savings.

Achievement and maintenance of well control should be written into the job responsibilities of key personnel, at every level up to and including CEOs. That is, a functional line of accountability for well control must exist up to, and including, CEOs.

Achievement and maintenance of well control should be written into the job responsibilities of key personnel, at every level up to and including CEOs. That is, a functional line of accountability for well control must exist up to, and including, CEOs.

That National Offshore Petroleum Safety Authority critically review its regulatory manning levels based on its current workload and the recommendations for additional areas of focus and increased auditing presented in this Report. To meet these requirements, we estimate that National Offshore Petroleum Safety Authority requires up to 50 inspectors in total plus associated support staff to bring overall staffing from about 55 to 75. RET should help facilitate the necessary ongoing levy funding in consultation with industry.

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.

The ANAO recommends that EMA maintain the Internet site to ensure that material is appropriate, current and readily accessible for users.

The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth seeks to ensure that the proposed Council of Australian Governments review of the bushfire management initiate with the states, as a priority, a review of the
responsibilities and potential liabilities of fire controllers with a view to developing principles of indemnification for reasonable, responsible and informed decision making. This review should extend to defining responsibility for occupational health and safety requirements in a way which allows practicable compliance where a reasonable degree of risk taking is urgently required to prevent the loss of life, property and environmental amenity from wildfire 

The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth seeks to ensure that the Council of Australian Governments implements arrangements in which greater flexibility is devolved to local brigade captains in the
issuing of permits to burn for fuel reduction and other purposes in the context of local fire management 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.

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.

Effective planning, organisational and training capability be maintained at regional level and developed, as appropriate, for the future. [Reference paragraphs: 260 to 261]

There be a close integration of the responsibilities of the Minister under the State Disasters Act and the State Disaster Plan, thereby strengthening overall counter—disaster management, direction and control. To this end, the organisational arrangements shown in Annexures “J” and “K” should be adopted. The main features of these are:
• A Disasters Advisory Unit
• A State Disaster Committee
• A State Disaster Planning Committee, with an Executive Sub—Committee reporting direct to the Minister/Co—ordinator— in—Chief Ministerial responsibility for direction and control of counter—disaster preparedness, combat and relief activities. [Reference paragraphs: 264 to 285]