D.H. Drummond Memorial Lecture University of New England, Armidale

8 May 2014

DISASTER RESILIENCE:

MAKING THE NATIONAL STRATEGY LOCAL

Associate Professor Dr Michael Eburn ANU College of Law The Australian National University CANBERRA ACT 0200 P: 6125 6424 E: michael.eburn@anu.edu.au

Introduction Before I start this talk I want to take a minute to reflect on and acknowledge the recent losses suffered by the UNE School of Law. In a very short time frame they have lost their colleague Fran Wright and a former colleague Bryan Pape. I did not know Fran so I will not talk about her but not out of any disrespect simply that I did not know her. I did, however, work with Bryan, during my time at UNE. Bryan played a significant role in the history of the law school, he was an acting director of the Ag-Law centre, was fundamental in getting the Moot Court room built and he designed what might be described as the capstone unit of Advanced Legal, Research, Writing and Advocacy. Bryan was also a Fellow of Drummond and Smith College and a Life Member of the Drummond and Smith Law Society Unlike most of us in academia, Bryan did not look to publish esoteric arguments in refereed law journals but tested his ideas against the most stringent peer review in the High Court of Australia. Bryan was the plaintiff in Pape v Commissioner of Taxation, a case that I will return too shortly, but a case that fundamentally changed our understanding of Commonwealth powers. As my colleague Professor Fiona Wheeler said, on hearing of Bryan’s death, ‘Papes Case certainly changed much of what we thought we knew about s 81 of the Constitution’. Pape’s case, the issues being litigated Bryan’s reasons for launching that challenge were the subject when Bryan delivered this lecture, the Drummond Lecture, in 2009.1 We need not concern ourselves with what s 81 of the Constitution says, but we can recognize the very significant contribution Bryan made both to the law school and the development of the law and to note his passing.

1 http://bryanpape.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/The-Rule-of-Law-and-the-

Global-Financial-Crisis-The-Eighteenth-D.-H.-Drummond-Memorial-Address-Armidale-9-May-2009.pdf

So tonight I come to deliver a lecture named in honour of David Henry Drummond, but just tonight, just once, with your forgiveness, I propose to deliver the Drummond and Pape memorial lecture. Disaster Resilience: Making the National Strategy local Drummond was the member for Armidale in the New South Wales parliament from 1920 to 1949. He resigned his state seat to contest, and win, the seat of New England in the Federal Parliament, a seat he held until 1963. That’s more than 40 years representing the communities in this area. During Drummond’s tenure, Australia suffered a number of natural disasters not least of which were the bushfires of 1939, which, in Victoria, lead to the Stretton Royal Commission and the establishment of the Country Fire Authority. The Australian Disasters Database maintained by Emergency Management Australia records that there were 12 significant bushfires that killed 202 people, during Drummond's time in parliament. Limiting ourselves to NSW the significant recorded fire events were:

Year Location Death toll 1926 NSW and Qld 8 1939 NSW, Victoria, ACT, SA, Tasmania.

"Black Saturday" 13 (in NSW)

1939 NSW 6 1951 ACT and NSW 13 1957 Sydney and the Blue Mountains 4 TOTAL 44

This is the death toll from bushfires. We know however that fires are not the most costly disasters facing Australia, either in terms of repair bills or lives lost. Floods and storms are significantly more dangerous and costly as those who lived in Armidale in 1996 can attest. In September 1996 a severe hailstorm hit Armidale causing damage to 5000 homes and 4000 vehicles with an estimated damages bill of $104 million (or $288 million in normalised 2011 dollar values). This is one of the more expensive events and is currently sitting as the 37th most expensive disaster. (It is also worth keeping in mind that bushfires are certainly not the biggest risk we face. Bushfires killed 552 civilians (non fire-fighters) between 1901and 2008. If we add the 172 civilian deaths from Black Saturday, that is 724 deaths in the 109 years from 1901to 2009 inclusive, an average of 6.65 deaths per year. Compare these figures to the national road toll; in 2008 alone, 1,464 people were killed in road accidents, that is more than the entire number of people killed in bushfires in the preceding century.) So what did Drummond have to say about living with natural hazards in Australia? In today’s world we would think ‘surprisingly little’. Today hazards like bushfires and floods are not seen as an act of God over which we have little control and little ability to influence their impact. Today we recognise that fires and floods are only disasters when they impact upon us or upon assets that we value. Accordingly where we chose to live and the decisions we make about how to live in the environment are significant. These decisions are inherently

political so people are held to account for decisions that are made to allow development on the flood plain or to manage the response to the bushfire. Politicians are directly involved, both because of the decisions they make and the chance that a disaster offers to get out and to be seen supporting the community. Following major events, like the 2009 Victorian Bushfires, we hold significant and lengthy post event inquiries and politicians are expected to speak up, to extend their condolences to the bereaved and to promise reform to ensure that ‘this must never happen again’. Perhaps, however, in Drummond’s time, there was less expectation that politicians and the government could do something to reduce the hazards and save lives so there was less need for comment. So Drummond had little to say on the subject. He did make one comment that would be quite a surprise to those in the field today. In 1939, as the New South Wales Minister for Education, Drummond was asked whether he would 'take up with the federal authorities the matter of the provision of first aid equipment for schools and make strong representations to them to grant a subsidy for that purpose' Drummond said that he would not. Schools did not require extensive first aid equipment 'All that is needed is simple equipment such as bandages and first dressings, and then to get word to the ambulance authorities, if such were required'. First aid to children was 'outside the ordinary requirements of education and, moreover, it is associated with the normal care of the parent for the child' so it was appropriate to ask parents to fund the provision of first aid equipment at schools. As for obtaining a Commonwealth subsidy for the purpose, he said ‘the principle has been laid down that the care of civilians is essentially a matter for the State’.2 That attitude is out of keeping with modern Workplace Health and Safety legislation that imposes obligations upon all employers to take steps to ensure the health and safety of those at their workplace, and school children are at a workplace. 3 Today there must be appropriate risk registers, trained first aiders and first aid kits stocked in accordance with principles set out in the National First Aid Code of Practice.4 It is no longer the case that first aid to children is outside the ordinary requirements of education; and even if it is part of the ‘normal care of the parent for the child', teachers stand in the place of the parent so have to provide that normal care supported by their employer! In 1948 Drummond made another reference to emergency management. In that year a storm had a significant impact upon the ‘pretty little mountain village’ of Black Mountain. Drummond’s comments were limited to thanking ‘… the

2 New South Wales, Parliamentary Debates, Legislative Assembly, 18 October 1939, 6696

(David Drummond). 3 See, for example, Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW). 4 WorkCover NSW, First Aid,

http://www.workcover.nsw.gov.au/newlegislation2012/general-risk-management/Pages/first-aid.aspx, last updated 14 September 2013; Safe Work Australia, First Aid in the Workplace; Code of Practice, July 2012, in particular Appendix C ‘Example of Contents for a First Aid Kit’.

Ministers concerned and their officers for the extremely efficient, sympathetic and practical assistance that they extended to the people concerned’ and to ‘thank, too, the shire councils that came to their assistance’.5 If we can infer anything from those two comments it is that, in Drummond’s view, looking after the civilian population is a matter for the states, not the Commonwealth but it did not extend to providing an individual response – to doing for people what they should do for themselves; and that government assistance to disaster affected communities is something for which one should be grateful, not something that is delivered as a right or legitimate expectation. But where does that leave tonight’s talk? I’ve come to speak in Drummond’s memory and I chose to speak about the National Strategy for Disaster Resilience, but Drummond said little if anything about disasters and what he did say seems out of date; reflective of his times and not of today’s centralised, government run, emergency services. But as one of New England’s favourite sons, Peter Allen told us ‘everything old is new again’.6

The National Strategy for Disaster Resilience Historically, fire and emergency services were made up of local volunteers effectively coming together to form a self-help group supplemented by brigades operated by local governments or insurance companies.7 In enacting legislation, the governments did not see their role as protecting people from fire. Victoria’s first fire brigade legislation, the Fire Brigades Act 1890 (Vic) was an Act to improve the administration of fire brigades. This Act empowered the local municipalities that had an interest in providing fire protection to do so if they wished;8 it did not require them to do so. There was clearly no expectation that local government, let alone state government, would necessarily set up fire brigades to provide protection for the community, let alone to protect private assets. Over time things have changed; the 1939 Royal Commission into Victorian bushfires that took more than 70 lives, called for the establishment of a fire fighting authority, the Country Fire Authority, to bring together the various local brigades. Originally brigades signed up to be a member of authority to gain some central support and common training but over time over time the various brigades were brought under the control of an organizing authority or board even if they remained largely independent.9

5 New South Wales, Parliamentary Debates, Legislative Assembly, 10 November 1948, 31

(David Drummond). 6 Peter Allen and Carol Bayer Sager "Everything Old Is New Again" (1974)

http://www.metrolyrics.com/everything-old-is-new-again-lyrics-peter-allen.html accessed 30 March 2014.

7 Theo Ruoff ‘Links with London’ (1966) 40 The Australian Law Journal 211-213. 8 Victoria, Parliamentary Debates, Legislative Assembly, 18 June 1890, 381 (Mr Deakin). 9 Robert Murray and Kate White State of Fire: a history of volunteer fire fighting and the

Country Fire Authority of Victoria (1995, Hargreen, Melbourne); Julie-Anne Ellis Tried by fire: the story of the South Australian Country Fire Service (2001, South Australian Country Fire Service, Adelaide.

Today emergency management is seen as a core or central government activity. In Victoria, statutory authorities such as the Metropolitan Fire and Emergency Services Board and the Country Fire Authority manage fire brigades and the delivery of fire services subject to the direction and control of the Minister.10 In New South Wales, the emergency services are centrally located as executive agencies of the Public Service.11 The Federal Attorney-General is also the Minister for Emergency Management and the Commonwealth provides direct financial assistance to affected states and communities. Pape, like Drummond, was against the growth of Commonwealth control in all areas of public life and he, like Drummond, did not see that the Commonwealth should be the primary source of assistance in a disaster. In Pape v Commissioner for Taxation12 Bryan challenged the authority of the Commonwealth to issue us all with $900 to maintain domestic spending and help Australia ride over the global financial crisis. The Commonwealth had no specific legislative authority to make that grant but sought to rely on the nationhood power, the idea that there are something’s, like a national emergency that requires a national response. The High Court agreed that such a power existed, for example Gummow, Crennan and Bell JJ said:

The Executive Government is the arm of government capable of and empowered to respond to a crisis be it war, natural disaster or a financial crisis on the scale here. This power has its roots in the executive power exercised in the United Kingdom up to the time of the adoption of the Constitution but in form today in Australia it is a power to act on behalf of the federal polity.13

In that case the Court, by a 4:3 majority, allowed the expenditure as a legitimate exercise of Commonwealth power and even today the Commonwealth responds to more typical emergencies, national disasters, and makes significant contributions to the states and territories through the National Disaster Relief and Recovery arrangements without any legislative backing. Australian governments have moved from a laissez-faire or simply enabling approach to disaster response to providing direct personal assistance in the event of an emergency.14 But governments can’t do it all. That message was dramatically demonstrated by the 2009 Victorian bushfires that claimed 173 lives. Although most of the time, on most days, the fire brigades and emergency services can respond promptly and efficiently there will always be an incident that will overwhelm them and their resources. When faced with a fire of that size:

10 Metropolitan Fire Brigades Act 1958 (Vic) ss 6,7 and 8; Country Fire Authority Act 1958

(Vic) ss 6 and 6A. 11 Government Sector Employment Act 2013 (NSW) s 22 and Schedule 1; Part 2. 12 [2009] HCA 23. 13 Ibid, 233. 14 Rutherford H. Platt, Disasters and Democracy (1999, Island Press, Washington).

(Copyright © 2014 Black Saturday Bushfires; http://www.blacksaturdaybushfires.com.au/) no amount of available capacity can extinguish the fire and there are insufficient resources, and always will be, to be able to protect every property and every life. The modern mantra is that responsibility for preparing for, preventing, responding to and recovering from the impact of a fire, storm, flood or other hazard is a ‘shared responsibility’. In what may be seen as a return to the self-help days of the past, the ‘state agency–centered approach to hazard management began to be replaced by a model that sought to make community members increasingly self-reliant’.15 In the most recent, and high level policy statement, the National Strategy for Disaster Resilience, all Australian governments committed to strengthen … the nation’s resilience to disasters’.16 In this policy world, resilience will be supported by business, non-government organizations, and community organizations. It will be ‘based on individuals taking their share of responsibility for preventing, preparing for, responding to and recovering from disasters’.17 As the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission explained ‘Shared responsibility … [will] create a situation in which the State, municipal councils, individuals, household members and the broader community all contribute to mitigating bushfire risk … ‘18 In this world, the community, or communities (however defined) will understand their risks, know how to, and in fact, prepare to face those risks.

15 Victoria, 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission, Final Report (2011), vol II, part II,

p 352. 16 Council of Australian Governments (COAG) (2011), National Strategy for Disaster

Resilience (Commonwealth of Australia). 17 Ibid. 18 Victoria, above n 15.

Community members, you and I, will have identified steps that can be and are taken to minimize the impact of the event (for example by building hazard resistant homes or adopting other engineering solutions), there will be community and household plans:

on how to react when the hazard occurs and everyone will know who will do what to respond during and after the event. We will plan for the recurring event but also the extreme or catastrophic event. We may put in place mitigation for the 1 in 250 year flood event but will understand that mitigation measures will not protect them from more extreme events, such as the rare, but not impossible, 1 in 500 year flood event, and will plan accordingly. The emergency services will continue to respond but they will focus more on education and information, rather than response. And this brings us back to Drummond. Drummond was not a centralist, he advocated for decision making to be left with the states,19 or even better, with individuals. In 1951 Drummond said, of the United States of America:

... there must be something of strength and abundant vitality in a system that insists on thrusting back onto the people the necessity for making their own decisions and their own mistakes, and for paying for those mistakes. That is the essence of democratic government. But all the time we have creeping into our system this paternalism which states, in effect, "You must not trust the people because they may do the wrong thing. You must not put fire in their hands because they may burn their fingers ". All the time we have that insidious doctrine creeping in here, and behind it is the unexpressed idea that if you can only have a lovely big bureaucracy with a lot of executives at the top issuing orders you will be sure to have all the happiness and prosperity you want. God save us from such a thing.20

I think Drummond has described a major challenge in implementing the National Strategy; the balance to be struck between paternalism and individual liberty,

19 New South Wales, Parliamentary Debates, Legislative Assembly, 13 April 1943, 2376-

2380 (David Drummond); New South Wales, Parliamentary Debates, Legislative Assembly, 1 October 1947, 123-131 (David Drummond).

20 Commonwealth, Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, 12 June 1951, 259 (David Drummond);

summed up in the word ‘trust’. Will governments leave it to individuals to make, and pay for their own mistakes? It would, we imagine, be political suicide for any parliamentarian to stand up after the next flood, fire or cyclone and say to the devastated communities ‘we’ll you chose to live here, the risk occurred, it’s your problem’. The governments and the community through public donation rush to support disaster affected communities even if the disaster was inevitable, and even if people have not taken steps to protect their own interests by preparing their properties for the inevitable impact. Government’s wont leave people to their fate, but equally governments are having trouble affording the disaster bill, a bill that is likely to rise with climate change. We have then a situation where governments at all levels are committed to developing resilient communities by sharing responsibility for emergency management. As a policy statement it sounds fine but its details remain to be contested. How is responsibility to be shared and what are the consequences of failing to meet one’s responsibilities? In Victoria, for example, a recent review of the Fire Service Commissioner’s Bushfire Safety Policy Framework found that stakeholders had widely varying understandings of shared responsibility.21 An analysis of public submissions to the Victorian 2009 Bushfires Royal Commission also revealed a wide range of conflicting assessments of the responsibilities of governments, citizens and communities.22. Sharing responsibility for natural hazards requires the parties to have some understanding or belief about the capacity of the other. Everywhere carries its own risk so the objective is not to remove all risk but to “keep safe.” A US commentator says:

“Keeping safe” means assessing and managing risk in ways that capture the full spectrum of values at stake in the context of preparing for catastrophic harm. Too often, important environmental or engineering decisions are made according to economic models that emphasize cost savings or commercial development but downplay public safety.23

If governments believe that individuals and communities are capable of making decisions that ‘capture the full spectrum of values at stake’ they should be willing to allow those individuals and communities to prioritize those values in a way that is both rational and informed, even if others, including governments, would prefer to give greater priority to other values including public safety.

21 Fire Services Commissioner Victoria, Review of the bushfire safety policy framework:

summary of findings (2012, Melbourne) <http://www.firecommissioner.vic.gov.au/policies/bushfire-safety-policy-framework/>.

22 Blythe McLennan and John Handmer, Windows on responsibility-sharing challenges: a multi-theory analysis of public submissions to the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission. (2012, RMIT University & Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre, Melbourne.)

23 Robert R.M. Verchick, Facing Catastrophe: Environmental Action for a Post-Katrina World (2010, Harvard University Press, Harvard).

A simple example may demonstrate the point; driving a car 333 miles in the United Kingdom carries a one in a million chance of dying whilst riding a motorcycle 28 miles carries a four in a million chance of dying.24 Assuming the risk remains constant travelling approximately 333 miles carries a one in a million chance of death for the car driver and a 48 in a million chance of death for the motorcyclist.25 Whilst the risk that either the car driver, or the motorcyclist will die is low, the motorcyclist is 48 times more likely to die than the car driver; clearly motorcycle riding is more dangerous than driving. Some people, including legislators, may think the risk of dying in a motorcycle accident is too high, but that does not mean that motor cycle riders cannot make an alternative assessment, taking into account the chance of dying balanced against the cost of running a motorcycle and the enjoyment they get from motorcycle riding. If a motorcycle rider dies in a motorcycle accident it does not mean their risk assessment was wrong or that in their risk assessment they failed to “capture the full spectrum of values at stake.” Their decision to ride a motorcycle, assuming they understood the risk, reflected not only the values at stake, but also their personal prioritization of those values. If, on the other hand, governments believe that individuals or communities are actually incapable of “assessing and managing risk in ways that capture the full spectrum of values at stake” then a different approach to the concepts of shared responsibility and resilient communities is required. If individuals and communities are incapable of making those assessments or rational decisions then someone else – the government, a Royal Commission or professional emergency managers and land use planners, may have to determine when a locality poses “an unacceptably high threat to human safety”26 and what should be done to mitigate that risk. In that case shared responsibility means government and emergency service agencies “have a responsibility to provide advice. They [the people at risk] have a responsibility to take up on that advice or to adhere to that advice”.27 At one extreme, hazard risk mitigation can be left entirely to individuals or communities (however defined) and provided that they have the tools and information to assess risk they can be left to their own choices no matter how foolish they appear to others. At the other extreme, governments will determine what an acceptable risk is and regulate or mandate the response to that risk by prohibiting some developments, imposing rigid building codes, mandating and policing obligations for ongoing hazard management practices, and the like. The appropriate share of responsibility lies between those two extremes. What is evident is that understanding risk involves much more than just understanding the probability of an event. Risk, and what is an acceptable risk,

24 Michael Blastland and David Spiegelhalter, The Norm Chronicles: Stories and Numbers

About Danger (2013, Profile Books), Chapter 15. 25 333 miles is approximately 12 times further than 28 miles (ie 333/28=11.9); if travelling

28 miles carries a 4:1 000 000 risk of dying, travelling 12 times further (all else being equal) will carry a risk equivalent to 12 x 4 or 48:1 000 000.

26 Victoria, above n 15, vol II, part II, p 249. 27 Research interview participant.

reflects our values and the values we place on those things at risk, whether that is life, liberty or a home amongst the trees. Values are fundamental in determining what is or is not an acceptable risk. Research that I and my colleague, Blythe McLennan from RMIT University in Melbourne, have done has tried to make explicit some of the necessary but often hidden trade-offs between competing values that are implicit in decisions about sharing responsibility in this field.28

The first value trade-off is between control and choice.29 Those with a paternalistic orientation (which Drummond feared) accept a high degree of government control over citizens “for their own good”.30 Libertarian and liberal orientations, on the other hand, accept very little government control of citizen’s

28 Blythe McLennan and Michael Eburn, 'Exposing hidden value trade-offs; sharing wildfire

management responsibility between government and citizens' International journal of Wildland Fire (Forthcoming).

29 Blythe McLennan and John Handmer, ‘Reframing responsibility-sharing for bushfire risk management in Australia after Black Saturday’ (2012) 11 Environmental Hazards 1-15.

30 B. New, ‘Paternalism and public policy’ (1999) 15 Economics and Philosophy 63-83.

Public

values

Private

interests

Control Choice

Autonomous individual Prioritised value:

Individual liberty Decision-making is:

Decentralized Individualized Unrestricted Risk accepting

Paternal individual Prioritised value:

Individual wellbeing Decision-making is:

Centralized Authoritarian Restricted Risk averse

Paternal communitarian Prioritised value:

Social wellbeing Decision-making is:

Centralized Authoritarian Restricted

Risk averse

Autonomous communitarian Prioritised value:

Social liberty Decision-making is:

Decentralized Collective Unrestricted Risk accepting

actions and decisions, prioritising citizen’s rights to freedom and liberty.31 The second value trade-off is between public values and private interests. In the context of bushfire management, for example, mandatory evacuation would be more towards the control end of the x-axis than the Australian ‘Prepare, Stay and Defend or Leave Early’ approach which has avoided mandatory evacuation in preference for guiding households to make their own informed choices in the face of bushfire (wildfire) threat.32 Thus management strategies that emphasise greater control over people’s actions also tend to reveal greater risk aversion, while those that allow people to exercise greater choice are necessarily more risk tolerant in approach. If wildfire management was underpinned by the values prioritised in the paternal communitarian scenario (control and public value), responsibility would likely be vested in a governmental authority with the power to compel compliance. An underlying assumption here would likely be that governments are best able to protect the public interest. Under a paternal individual scenario where control and private interests were prioritised, there would similarly be a large amount of formal government control, with the explicit goal of acting for the individual’s own good. At the extreme, the assumption would be that people are not capable of making their own best decision so they will be told what they should do for their own benefit. Importantly, this model assumes that the government is in a better position than an individual to decide what is in that individuals’ best interests, which runs against the grain of a fundamental principle in liberal societies. In an autonomous communitarian scenario public values and choice are prioritised. Communities would be free to make collective risk management decisions and determine their own priorities. This would create a very localised, decentralised model of wildfire risk management, based on an assumption that relatively interdependent, small, capable and organised communities exist and that collective decision-making and action can be effectively self-governed.33 The final autonomous individual scenario prioritises choice and private interests. In that model it would be up to individuals to make the best choices they can in line with their own interests and values (which may include acting for the community good). A core assumption underlying this model is that individuals are best placed to determine what is in their own best interests and should be allowed to make those decisions, subject only to a limitation that they must not actively restrict other’s freedom to make their own choices. A further underlying

31 However, the concept of ‘soft’ or ‘libertarian paternalism’ has become influential in the

United States in recent years under the moniker of ‘nudge theory’, see Thaler, RH, Sunstein, CR (2008) 'Nudge: improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness.' (Yale University Press: New Haven).

32 Above, n 23. 33 E. Ostrom, Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action.

(1990, Cambridge University Press: New York)

assumption would be that people have access to the necessary risk information and awareness, and have no restrictions or limitations on their capacity to make free and informed decisions, including financial limitations. The Commonwealth, State and Local Governments along with the emergency service agencies are now committed to getting out and selling the shared responsibility message, but at this stage who has responsibility for what remains contested, as does the question of what the National Strategy is trying to achieve. If the objective is to ensure that people make informed decisions about how and where they live then the outcome of the shared responsibility discussion will be very different compared to a discussion if the objective is to ensure no-one dies in a flood or fire. Let me then come full circle back to David Drummond. Drummond, I inferred that Drummond believed that the role of government did not extend to individual responses, the government may act for the community benefit but should leave individuals with responsibility for their own (and their children’s) well being. People could and should be trusted with fire, there is ‘strength and abundant vitality in a system that insists on thrusting back onto the people the necessity for making their own decisions and their own mistakes, and for paying for those mistakes’. 34 Drummond would have placed himself on the right of the choice spectrum with responsibility for the community good on government so governments would need to provide information to allow people to know their risks and move to protect community assets, the roads, the town halls, but it would be up to individuals to determine what they needed to do in their own best interests. The individual’s well-being was a matter for the individual. As I also said, Drummond’s views seem reflective of his times rather than ours. Today we expect much from our government run, though volunteer staffed, emergency services. Governments have significant planning laws to limit what we can build and where and it’s not clear if that is for some communal benefit or to protect individuals from their own decision making. Tribunals like the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission declare that same areas of the state carry an ‘unacceptably high bushfire risk’35 without explaining to whom it is unacceptable or who should decide what is, or is not, an acceptable risk. The Commission did not recommend that individuals consider their risk and how they may adapt to it, rather the Commission told them, and the state, that the risk is unacceptable. Conclusion Bushfire, floods, storms, cyclones and droughts are an inevitable part of living in Australia. They have always occurred and the climate science tells us not only will they continue the environment is likely to change to cause more, and more severe natural hazard events.

34 Commonwealth, Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, 12 June 1951, 259

(David Drummond); 35 Victoria, above n 15, vol II, part II, p 252, Recommendation 46.

In response governments and the emergency services realise that they cannot turn out during catastrophic events and save all the homes and people that will be threatened. Surviving the next catastrophic fire, flood or cyclone requires us all to take action – to share responsibility for the preparations for and response to those natural hazards. As a policy statement that sounds fine but as I’ve tried to show, the whole question of how responsibility is to be shared requires necessary but often hidden trade offs of values and interests. How those values and interests need are to be traded needs to be the subject of discussion to avoid the classic communication failure, where everyone thinks they’ve agreed on some issue, such as ‘emergency management is a shared responsibility’ without realising they disagree on the details. Further, as I’m sure David Drummond would want, we need to tell our governments what we view as shared responsibility, otherwise the ‘lovely big bureaucracy’ may see shared responsibility as the government and emergency service agencies “have a responsibility to provide advice. They [the people at risk] have a responsibility to take up on that advice or to adhere to that advice” (Research interview). As Drummond said ‘God save us from such a thing’.36

36 Commonwealth, Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, 12 June 1951, 259

(David Drummond);