CHAPTER 16
Emergency management in Australia: concepts and characteristics
Introduction
This chapter presents an overview of some of the key concepts and characteristics of Australian emergency planning and management. It does not attempt a comprehensive analysis or critical review. It aims to sketch out important elements. To do this it draws on some academic research, results of a recent workshop, government publications, and material of an anecdotal nature from volunteer members of emergency services.
Background
The physical threat
The most common natural hazard agents in Australia are floods, cyclones (hurricanes), severe storms, bushfires, drought, the various forms of land degradation, and earthquakes. The country also is subject to the usual range of biological and technological hazards. Over the last few years all have had a substantial impact in terms of economic loss and stress and anxiety. Insurance payouts can be used as an index of severity or importance, but as coverage is highly variable between hazards, their real value must be questioned.
In fact, the threat is probably best described as moderate, in relative terms. We never experience the winter storms commonplace in the northern hemisphere, destructive tornadoes are very rare, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis are yet to occur. We share the other agents mentioned above with the rest of the world. If this was being written two years ago, earthquakes would have been mentioned only as a very low probability hazard. But, following the devastating Newcastle earthquake of 28 December 1989, the perception has changed dramatically.
Nevertheless, the threat from technology and biological agents is probably underestimated. The public perception appears to be that the threat from natural hazards is severe and that from technology and biological agents rather less. This would form part of the popular mythology concerning the harshness of the Australian environment. The orientation appears in emergency planning too, where there is relatively more competency in the area of natural hazards. However, there has been no shortage of moderate-level industrial and transport accidents. These include a range of toxic substance spills, industrial plant explosions, bus and light plane crashes. In addition, there is no lack of low probability/high magnitude threats, including environmental pollution and dam failure. Various infectious diseases, of which Australia is currently free such as foot-and-mouth disease, pose a serious threat to our livestock industry. As with many other countries, influenza epidemics appear to pose the major ‘sudden onset’ biological threat to humans. In the 1970 pandemic there were some two million cases in Australia, 16 per cent of the total population (pers. com., P. Curson 1988).
Where natural hazards are concerned, Australia appears to have been extraordinarily lucky in at least one respect. Death tolls have been very low. For example, the destruction of Darwin in 1974 by cyclone Tracy resulted in some 50 deaths from a population of 40,000. The low population of the continent is undoubtedly a factor. To ensure that this continues it would be useful to know the reasons; or has it simply been our good fortune? The geographic position of Australia means that it is not subject to the same transborder hazards as the countries of Europe, for example. But we do not escape entirely, as the regular preparations to receive space debris witness, for example.
Of course, the events associated with these agents are not disasters by themselves. It is their interaction with human communities that result in emergencies and very occasionally disasters. According to Jones (1991), Director of the Australian Counter Disaster College, ‘it has been this recognition perhaps more than any other single factor which has influenced the evolution of current Australian management concepts and principles.’ However, in the view of some commentators it has yet to have much impact in practice (Buckle 1991).
Institutional context
As a federation, government in Australia would appear to be more complex than that of Britain, with the states providing a powerful third level. Government in Australia is regulated by the Constitution, which allocates specific legislative powers to the federal government. Those matters not allocated, remain with the states. In addition, various broad legislative areas are reserved for the Commonwealth, which also enjoys certain implied powers in its role as national government. The nature of the Constitution and the Australian political ‘culture’ have led to a largely cooperative existence between the states and Commonwealth, although this is not without significant tension.
States have the primary responsibility for emergency planning and management. Essentially they set many of the policies which local government is expected to implement. The federal government provides much of the states' finance, and may use its financial power to attempt to achieve its ends. They also have important roles in national resource provision and coordination, and in the development of standards and training.
The last several decades have seen an immense expansion of the role of government, which with the continuing process of national integration, has resulted in a significant shift in power away from the states and towards the central government (Scott 1983). It is in the environmental area that the shift appears to be most marked. However, a desire to reduce duplication by the different levels of government is also important. One prognosis is for the emergence of a different federalism with far more uniformity between states in many types of standards and legislation.
Although states have primary responsibility, local government is the key level for the implementation of many health and safety and emergency management policies. Local councils are generally seen as creatures of the states: they operate under state legislation and can be dismissed, or have some of their powers removed, by state governments. For example, planning power has occasionally been temporarily removed for failure to control development in flood-prone areas. There are over 800 local government areas throughout Australia, serving populations varying from a few hundred through to very large capital city organisations. Naturally, their ability and interest in emergency planning and management varies greatly, yet their cooperation is essential for success in this endeavour. Paradoxically, the smallest local authorities, and those with the fewest resources and least expertise, are also the most isolated. Thus, the failure of such an authority to establish effective emergency capabilities will be much more serious than in central Sydney, where regional ability to cope with emergencies is very large.
Evolution from civil defence
The modern territory/state emergency services (T/SES) organisations, which are general purpose emergency and disaster combating and support groups, developed from wartime civil defence. The initial driving concern was the potential for a gas attack against the Australian population (Jones 1991). This led to a conference in the late 1930s with the subsequent development of arrangements for civil defence in World War II based on the British model. The arrangements fell into disuse after the war, to be re-established in the 1950s as the cold war and associated threat of nuclear attack emerged. The various civil defence organisations were refurbished and ministerial meetings between 1950 and 1966 confirmed the new arrangements (Jones 1991).
However, a series of natural disasters and changing community attitudes saw the redesignation of these organisations in the early 1970s from ‘civil defence’ to ‘emergency services’. At the federal level a cabinet minute established the Natural Disasters Organisation (NDO) in 1974, within the Department of Defence. It subsumed the responsibilities of the Directorate of Civil Defence, and had an enhanced emphasis on natural disasters. The first Director General of NDO, Stretton, emphasised its coordinating role:
The main motivating reasons behind the formation of the NDO was the desire to ensure that the whole of the resources of the Commonwealth Government were made available on a coordinated basis to help mitigate the effects of a disaster…. (Stretton 1979.)
Stretton argues that this was based on humanitarian needs ‘with the appealing secondary motive’ that compensation claims on the Commonwealth would be reduced.
Civil defence has increasingly been seen as secondary to dealing with non-war related hazards and emergencies.
Legal and organisational arrangements
From a national perspective the Australian system has four elements:
1. The state/territory counter disaster organisations. These are built around state/territory counter disaster councils or committees, and in an operational sense are coordinated by an operations centre. The organisations involved in the councils and subcommittees include the State (Territory) Emergency Services (S/TES), police, fire and ambulance, mass media and so on. Many of these are based on volunteers, such as the bushfire brigades, the S/TESs, St. John Ambulance and many other welfare NGOs. An overview of the arrangements in each state/territory is contained in NDO (1990).
2. The Natural Disasters Organisation (NDO). This organisation maintains the Australian Counter Disaster College (ACDC) and a headquarters responsible for operations, policy and support. There is a total of 68 staff at NDO (including the ACDC). Most of its budget of eight million A$ is devoted to supporting state/territory counter disaster programmes. It also runs a public awareness and information programme and services the Australian Coordination Committee for the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction. The support programs for the states are designed to increase state and local commitment towards, and capacity to undertake, emergency planning and management. The programs, with the approximate annual NDO budget in brackets, consist of the following:
– training through the ACDC and the production of associated manuals (about $3 million).
– a salary subsidy for some 80 regional T/SES officers. This subsidy is paid to the state organisations to help ensure that a key person in each T/SES region spends a significant part of their time on counter disaster planning (about $2.8 million).
– purchase of rescue related equipment for the T/SESs (about $1.3 million).
– a building subsidy for local T/SES units, to encourage local government to provide an appropriate base for T/SES training and operations (about $3 million).
At least partly because of the training and other support provided by NDO, the states have become more self-sufficient in emergency management. As a result NDO's role has evolved since the time of Stretton (above), and it now also acts ‘as the operational agent for the Australian International Development Assistance Bureau (AIDAB) within the South West Pacific and Papua New Guinea.’
Originally it was intended that NDO would provide a lead in coordinating the Australian disaster related research effort (Stretton 1979). It has not achieved this, although researchers have become more involved in the activities of the ACDC, and the college's newsletter The Macedon Digest is a valuable avenue for information exchange.
3. The Commonwealth-states agreement for financial relief under the Natural Disaster Relief Arrangements. These arrangements set out a formula for calculating relief payments to the states. The basic procedure is that each state, in any given year, meets a preset sum for all disaster payments from their own resources. When payments exceed this base amount, assistance is funded jointly by the federal and state government. The base amount is related to the state's budget and to grants for the previous two years (Handmer and Smith 1989). Over the last 30 years drought payments to farmers have been responsible for 57 per cent of the total payments under joint federal-states scheme. Recently, the federal government has decided that drought is no longer eligible for relief under the scheme.
4. The Commonwealth Counter Disaster Task Force. This is a federal interdepartmental committee with coordination responsibilities during the recovery phase. It consists of senior bureaucrats. However, it has been used only twice.
The key operational groups are the various state organisations. Many of these are locally based on volunteers, for example the S/TESs of which there are about 1,000 units nationally. There has been considerable mental activity recently at the state level concerning the role of the emergency related organisations. In some cases this has resulted in new legislation and organisational arrangements. Activity at the federal level has been less obvious.
Operations at the local level can be quite complex. Generally, the emergency will be within one or more local government areas, so local authority resources will be employed, and the local SES is likely to have close links to the authority. However, this and other volunteer based organisations may also receive directions from regional and state offices. Many emergency-relevant organisations, such as the police, career fire brigades, welfare and medical services are actually state authorities under state control, although they work through local branches. Federal agencies may be directly involved in local emergency response through, for example, the use of the armed forces, Telecom, and aviation or sea safety agencies. In some circumstances international organisations may be involved, especially if the incident has a major impact on the natural environment. The mass media exhibits a similar hierarchy of agendas and controls from local to international, ‘community media’ through to government and commercial enterprises. Resources from the private sector may be utililised, and if a major industrial plant is involved it would normally have some response capability of its own.
Legislation
The S/TES organisations in all states/territories apart from Western Australia and the Australian Capital Territory have a legislative base. The statutes specify the structure of the organisations, what they are to do and how they are to be run; and importantly provide broad immunity from liability for actions taken under the act (Handmer and Partlett 1988). In general, the legislation prohibits the S/TESs from taking action to end industrial disputes or to control civil disturbances. The emphasis is on the protection of people and property, rather than on protection of the state itself.
Over the past few years several states have introduced new legislation concerning the T/SESs and other emergency services. These include Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales and Queensland. Some of the acts place a statutory duty on local government to undertake emergency planning of a non war-related nature. For example, the New South Wales State Emergency and Rescue Management Act 1989 specifies:
28. (1) There is established by this Act a Local Emergency Management Committee for each local government area …. (2) Each such Committee is to consist of: (a) a senior representative of the [local government] council [and various other emergency related organisations] …. (3) … who has the authority of the council to coordinate the use of the council's resources … 29. (1) A Local Emergency Management Committee is responsible for the preparation of plans in relation to the prevention of, preparation for, response to and recovery from emergencies in the local government area….
However, while there are inducements, there are no enforcement provisions and some local councils ignore the requirement.
Reviews and restructuring
Over the last few years the majority of states have reviewed or are presently reviewing their emergency services. There has been no formal inquiry at the federal level, although there may have been internal reviews. The steady evolution away from a civil defence role has continued, but control of the NDO and S/TESs is still dominated by military minds. This is a source of constant attack by critics; however, unequivocal evidence for its deleterious effects has yet to be produced.
Restructuring as a result of the reviews has been substantial in New South Wales. In Tasmania, change has been steady rather than revolutionary. Overall, change is in the direction of consolidating and rationalising emergency services. One result may be some clarification of roles in the interests of financial savings and conflict reduction. A rather more radical proposal suggests the abandonment of single-function emergency service agencies in favour of a fully integrated service (Britton 1991). In the present economic climate, such suggestions will be assessed as much on cost-effectiveness grounds as on potential mission performance. Strong resistance to any attempts at genuine integration are likely.
Queensland has established a Bureau of Emergency Services. This includes all the various fire services (now consolidated), ambulance, state emergency services (SES), State Counter Disaster Organisation, the Chemical Hazards and Management Unit, aviation related emergency services, and related activities. But the Bureau excludes the police at present, although both the Bureau and the police are in the same ministry. Tasmania has created a Department of Police and Emergency Services, which includes the ambulance service. Internal restructuring has placed the operational heads of police, SES, fire and ambulance at the same level. Other moves include a requirement that all full-time SES officers enroll in a diploma programme. This should greatly enhance inter-agency cooperation, and should gradually produce a shift in the organisation's ‘culture’. New South Wales as well has reorganised in an apparent attempt to deal with the intense rivalry between emergency service organisations. New legislation has created a State Disasters Council, the State Emergency Management Organisation, the State Rescue and Emergency Services Board, and a series of inter-organisational committees at state, police district and local levels. The Act also requires the preparation of a state disaster plan.
A very positive trend is seen in the attempts to link hazard and emergency management through institutional reform, and to be proactive in hazard identification and reduction. The Tasmanian SES director estimates that over three quarters of his organisation's time and resources are now devoted to hazard assessment and mitigation.
Concepts
One of the more positive aspects of the Australian counter disaster scene is the development of an explicit set of concepts and principles to guide disaster planning and management (NDO 1989). A national conceptual framework has many benefits. It helps to structure thinking, set priorities, promote efficiency, ensure a national ethically based approach to public information, identify gaps in the system, and to coordinate resources regionally and nationally. The NDO cannot make the framework mandatory. However, it is generally accepted as a guide, and key elements of it are being written into new state legislation; in effect making it mandatory.
It sets the context for the hierarchical approach to planning. There are national disaster plans, each state or territory has or is preparing a disaster plan, below this are regional plans, and there are local plans. Ideally, plans at the various levels dovetail with other plans at the same level and with plans at lower and higher levels. At present many gaps exist, but this is the goal.
The four concepts are set out below followed by the key principles.
The all hazards approach
Measures to deal with specific hazards will often vary considerably. Nevertheless, it is considered desirable to establish a single set of management arrangements capable of coping with all hazards (including a capability for the performance of civil defence tasks as defined in the 1977 Protocols to the Geneva Conventions). Such arrangements would deal with, among other things: hazard assessment; media relations; warning and evacuation; rescue; provision of essential utilities; mass casualty provision; and an effective planning process.
A key reason for the approach is to avoid the situation of numerous plans with their own, potentially conflicting, arrangements and planning processes. In any case, developing separate plans for every hazard in a major city, for example, would be far too cumbersome and time consuming a process. Another reason is to build into the arrangements the flexibility needed to deal with the unexpected (Jones 1991).
Comprehensive approach
This consists of four elements: prevention (or in this context mitigation); preparedness; response; and recovery. Cast very broadly this would include most of what is normally known as hazard and disaster management. It attempts to show that all stages from hazard assessment through to recovery from disaster are closely related. The lack of attention to hazard management and prevention is of major concern to many senior emergency managers, and recent restructuring of administrative arrangements in some states is an attempt to address this concern. Of course, there are some outstanding exceptions. In the case of flooding much effort has gone into hazard mitigation through structural measures and more recently land use planning.
Nevertheless, many authorities with emergency management responsibilities have been preoccupied with response. This is still very much part of the Australian emergency management ‘culture’. Unfortunately, this means that preparedness in the sense of planning may be seen as inappropriate or irrelevant. Much attention is being devoted to overcoming these attitudes, including specification of the comprehensive approach in legislation.
The ‘all agencies’ or integrated approach
Counter disaster arrangements should involve an ‘active partnership’ between all relevant agencies, levels of government, non-government organisations and the community. Many different organisations play important roles in one or more of the elements of the ‘comprehensive approach’, and so ‘will need to be represented in the [appropriate] planning and management structures’. In Australia integrated planning is usually achieved through committees. Ideally, these would have representatives from the various ‘combat’ agencies (police, fire, ambulance, SES), welfare, media, local government, agencies with major resources and other expertise such as the Bureau of Meteorology.
The history of inter-agency cooperation in Australia does not give cause for optimism. Nevertheless, over the last five years or so positive changes have occurred. For example, volunteer welfare organisations used to engage in intense competition in some metropolitan areas. Now, through committees and agreements specific tasks, such as emergency housing, have been allocated to the various groups. Competition continues to occur between emergency planning and response agencies, even at the scene of accidents. Unfortunately, some arrangements designed to assist cooperation actually ensure the failure of emergency management. For example, one committee had to be physically called together to be activated, and this where only an hour or so of warning time was available (Handmer et al 1989).
Despite these problems the adoption in principle of a more cooperative approach is essential to the development of an effective capacity.
The prepared community
A strong emphasis in Australian emergency and disaster planning is self-help by the local community. As mentioned above, much responsibility for hazard and emergency planning and management rests with local government. In addition, it cannot always be assumed that outside assistance will be available. In any case as outside help takes time to arrive, the initial response, and often the most effective response, is by the local community. The government's document sets out some basic requirements for a prepared community. According to NDO (1989), the community and individual members of that community should: be aware of local hazards; take appropriate precautions, including land use planning, to deal with the hazards; be actively involved in local volunteer emergency-related organisations; and make sure that their local government has effective arrangements in place. The expansion of community input and responsibility also has the considerable advantage of being very cost-effective.
Principles
NDO has set out a number of principles which it believes must be followed if the counter disaster arrangements based on the concepts outlined above are to be successful. A first step is the identification and evaluation of natural and technological hazards in the particular community: hazard analysis.
The principles are: an appropriate organisation; roles and responsibilities to be clearly established, including authority for resource coordination; information management at all stages of emergency planning and management; capability for timely activation; and a formal record of the interagency arrangements and agreements. This last point is to take the form of written, simple, properly disseminated and regularly tested and revised plans.
NDO indicates that allocation of responsibilities cannot be left to chance or until the emergency occurs. It argues that ‘most problems of dealing with disaster in Australia centre around resource management issues.’ (NDO 1989). One reason for this may be the often doubtful power of the coordinating authority. When refusals to cooperate occur during emergencies, for example an apparent refusal by one authority to provide critical information to the SES, senior politicians are generally able to resolve the problems more or less immediately. The lesson here may be that the coordinating authority may need to be more formally linked to the office of a senior politician. For example, instead of being within the Department of Defence, NDO could be located within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. This would also have the beneficial effect of removing NDO from the influence of the Defence agenda, where it has a low status.
Characteristics
These concepts and principles form an excellent basis for emergency and disaster planning and management. However, results often fall well short of their promise, and change can be a very slow and painful process. Here we consider some characteristics of the Australian scene which may offer great strength, but bring their own problems as well.
Strategies
This section is drawn from a recent workshop on managerial strategies for emergency management in Australia, conducted by Drabek (1991). At this meeting some 150 senior emergency service personnel and others involved in the area were asked to consider the relevance to Australia of fifteen strategies found important in the United States.
In general, the groups emphasised cooperative strategies; that is those designed to build cooperation and relationships between groups and organisations. Some of these are also strategies which are basic to an effective planning process. This is in contrast to strategies which might better enhance personal or organisational profiles. The emphasis is commendable, but may seem strange to those familiar with the conflicts which seem to characterise many inter-agency relationships in the Australian emergency management scene. On the other hand, given the existence of these poor relationships the emphasis on cooperation is highly desirable.
The strategies selected were: committees; building and maintaining good media relationships; coalition-building to ensure broad-based support; and constituency support to build relationships with groups with useful expertise. Agenda control was also seen as very important, but appeared to be interpreted in many different ways. Committees were seen to be able to make the system work. They ensured inter-agency contact, and ensured that ‘our people are there’. There is no question that there is a massive proliferation of such committees, and one could question the extent to which they are simply manifestations of the Australian tendency to bureaucratise (Caiden 1990).
Strategies which were seen to be inappropriate included: entrepreneurial actions, in large part because the bureaucratic context makes such actions pointless; mergers between agencies; regulation; and flow of personnel between agencies, primarily because of the relatively limited career opportunities in Australia.
Australian emergency management was seen to exhibit a number of features which were unusual – some suggested unique to the continent. Again, these emphasised cooperation. The most general agreement concerned the involvement of the community through the reliance on volunteers. At the institutional level, people talked about the cooperative nature of government – the non-confrontational approach. The concept of ‘mateship’ was mentioned by many groups. However, a few questioned this and highlighted the tendency for competition and conflict between organisations. An optimist suggested that institutional innovation was important because of the lack of material resources.
There was general concern over the relative lack of hazard analysis.
Volunteers
Weighed against the strong tendency for bureaucratisation is the system's dependence on volunteers from local communities. An active volunteer element firmly links the community concerned into the system, and is an essential part of developing community preparedness – an important part of the official conceptual framework for dealing with disaster in Australia. In general, senior-level Australian counter disaster planners and managers see the community basis as a major strength of the system (Drabek workshop). According to Britton (1990) some 400,000 Australians, or about 2.5 per cent of the total population are permanent volunteers with emergency organisations. The largest proportion are in bushfire brigades. Other groups include the state/ territory emergency services, St. John Ambulance, surf life saving clubs and other rescue services, plus the various welfare groups. By way of comparison there are approximately 64,000 paid career personnel mainly in the police, ambulance and fire services. The degree of involvement of the different groups depends on the location and on the type of threat. In addition, many other people may act as ‘casual volunteers’ during specific events, without being members of an emergency-related organisation.
Many other countries appear to rely more on para-military organisations, such as the US national guard, in the emergency response phase. In Australia there is no tradition of using the military as the first line of response in domestic affairs. They are, however, used extensively in a support role.
This massive reliance on volunteers clearly has a very significant financial impact. The ratio of volunteer to career members may be as high as 200 to 1 with an annual saving in salaries of thousands of millions of dollars nationally.
Despite all the various advantages, however, the widespread use of volunteers brings certain problems. Two obvious categories of problems concern tensions between volunteers and career officers, and tensions between volunteers within a specific group. At this stage data are not available, but some anecdotal material is presented to illustrate the problems.
Tensions between career and volunteer emergency workers may surface over resource allocation, and over the attitudes towards volunteer workers held by career officers. Many bushfire brigades have struggled at the fire front with the most antiquated trucks and other equipment. According to the New South Wales central coast newspaper, The Gosford Star, ‘two obsolete 1944 Studebakers are still used in dire emergencies’ (April 23, 1991: 1). Bushfire brigade trucks in New South Wales are exempt from normal motor vehicle registration requirements, and may therefore operate at a lower standard. Many brigades rely on trucks which are over 20 years old, while the fire ‘controllers’ drive around in expensive new four-wheel-drive vehicles. The controllers are career officers. This issue of resource control and its apparent allocation in favour of administrative rather than operational functions is a major concern in Australian government and is not restricted to emergency services. This may reflect attitudes held by the various groups.
Britton (1990) reports the results of a survey of career S/TES officers, who had previously been volunteers in their organisations. Forty per cent of this surveyed group felt that as volunteers career officials displayed attitudes of superiority. A perspective by a member of a specialist volunteer mountain rescue group is provided by Bowman (1990). He relates two experiences. One concerned a hang glider pilot who fell and was trapped halfway down a cliff. After the alarm was raised local mountain rescue volunteers rushed up to the mountain.
On the advice of a doctor we effected the rescue in the dark using my equipment…. Meanwhile … the police search and rescue unit was mobilised, but as they had been involved in a rescue elsewhere they were delayed. The desperately sick hang-glider pilot was driven the 30 kilometres to the local airfield. As he was about to be flown out the police arrived. They were unimpressed that their professional act had been usurped…. Prior to us getting the pilot off the cliff the police safety and rescue radioed through instructing us not to act. It was the doctor's judgement that we should. (Bowman 1990).
Tensions within volunteer groups may result from different interpretations of the group's mission, and from different expectations of group behaviour. One specific example concerns alcohol consumption. The storage and base of one New South Wales bushfire brigade became known as ‘the pub’ by locals; ‘training’ nights were spent drinking. However, many members in particular the newer arrivals to the district objected. They saw the brigade as a fire-fighting unit, and not a social club: they socialised with their families. These people had the numbers to vote the base alcohol-free. But, this was not accepted by the old guard and after a confrontation which saw the involvement of state officials, the non-drinkers resigned to be welcomed by an adjacent brigade (per. com., Bruce Handmer, 6 April 1991). Bowman (1990) also discusses tensions between established district residents and newer arrivals within a rural fire brigade.
A related issue concerns the ‘culture’ of these organisations, which as mentioned above has been entirely response oriented. In some cases change would require an almost revolutionary shift, which may be achievable only through large-scale recruitment of a different type of volunteer.
Fragmentation and competition
Counter-disaster planning and management in Australia is fragmented. But to a large extent this is inevitable when the emphasis is on the local level – there are over 800 local government entities in Australia – with the additional involvement of powerful state agencies, such as the police. Fragmentation by itself may not be the problem, however it may exacerbate the coordination of material and human resources. Problems at organisational ‘boundaries’ are not limited to situations where there appear to be numerous organisations involved. They can be just as great an impediment when only a few groups are involved, and exist between groups within apparently homogeneous agencies. Certainly, the system is particularly bureaucratised with the problems that this brings in terms of centralised control and a tendency to pursue administrative means and ends rather than mission objectives – the ‘bureaucratic imperative’ (Britton and Wettenhall 1991). We are reminded of the tensions between the need for operational flexibility and central control developed by Perrow (1984).
Concluding comment
This chapter has not attempted a comprehensive review of emergency planning and management in Australia. Rather it has sketched in the conceptual and organisational basis of Australian activity and briefly reviewed some of the key characteristics. The conceptual framework is sound, and with the principles provides a national basis for developing an effective counter disaster capability. But many problems and tensions exist. Some of these may be inherent in the Australian approach to government, such as the tendency to bureaucratise and inter-agency conflict; while some, such as those concerning volunteers, may be irresolvable. Others, such as the wasteful competition between agencies, are being addressed in some jurisdictions.
Key points are the: emphasis on non-war related emergencies, with civil defence playing a minor subsidiary role; development of an effective planning process; and the movement towards the integration of hazard and emergency management. This is becoming more than rhetoric and shows an increasing ability for institutional learning. Nevertheless, the lack of hazard analysis and planning remains a major concern of senior Australian emergency managers. We watch with interest the gradual development of flexible and adaptive organisational arrangements, with the necessary incentives for cultural change. Any changes must occur in a context of declining resource availability and pressure for increased accountability and performance.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank those who offered helpful comments on a draft of this chapter: Roger Jones (ACDC), Chas Keyes (NSW SES), Dennis Parker (Middlesex Polytechnic), Dingle Smith (CRES), Peter Winchester (Middlesex Polytechnic), and staff at NDO Headquarters.
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