In the lead up to this year’s federal election I’m going to be detailing and analysing the disaster and emergency management policies of the two major parties and the minor parties:
(links will appear above as I write each page)
I’ll continue updating these pages as more is announced in the lead up to the election. I’m going to focus on actual announcements and content of policy documents. Speculation on possible post-election policies is probably futile given the general non-partisan nature of disaster management. This post will be on:
The ALP
Well quite a bit has changed since my last post, though with all the changes and announcements, significant new disaster policies aren’t one of them. Labor hasn’t rolled out many disaster policies in advance of the election or during the campaign to date. There are some new Government initiatives which I outlined in my budget coverage, but these aren’t exactly election policies. Here’s the election announcements:
Weather Forecasting
The ALP have announced $58.5 million to improving the Bureau of Meteorology’s extreme weather response. This funding will go towards the recruitment of additional severe weather meteorologists and hydrologists, which will go some way towards improving the Bureau’s response to disasters and give it better surge capacity (something that has been criticised in recent inquiries). I imagine that these would be based in the BoM’s regional offices where are large amount of the severe weather response takes place, though there’s no clue as to what the breakdown of these positions across the states and territories (it may be a decision for the BoM itself). The funding will also establish a National Centre for Extreme Weather to be based in the Bureau’s head office in Melbourne. The NCEW will develop state of the art flood and storm surge modelling and conduct research on severe weather forecasting and warning dissemination.
Casus Calamitas 