In the past ten years we have seen several major reports and announcements seeking to improve and transform the way emergency management works in Australia.
The National Recovery and Resilience Agency, announced last week and funded in Tuesday’s budget, is the latest.
After the 2009 Bushfires and the 2010-11 Queensland floods, the Council of Australian Governments endorsed the 2011 National Strategy for Disaster Resilience, which identified a need
[…] to develop and embed new ways of doing things […] to improve disaster resilience and prevent complacency setting in once the memory of a recent disaster has subsided.
Now, the new National Recovery and Resilience Agency will
Politics by Sue Dunlevy
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Subscriber only Tens of thousands of older people who need help to stay at home will miss out because a budget funding increase is $1.4 billion short of what is required. The revelation came as aged care providers, nurses and pensioners welcomed the record $17.7 billion funding injection for aged care but agreed it was not enough to fix the neglect of our elderly. A detailed analysis by the Combined Pensioners and Superannuants Association reveals the 100,000-long waiting list for home care packages won t be eliminated by extra funding in the budget. The government s own data shows in December there were 96,859 people waiting for a home care package but the budget will fund only 40,000 new places next financial year and a further 40,000 places from July 2022.
Big thinking has been unfashionable for too long. Over the past decade, successive leaders have overseen cuts to universities, the arts and public broadcasting. There has also been a rejection of First Nations attempts to wrestle back dignity and create lasting change for the whole country.
In one fell swoop, the funded arts sector and the creative imagination of the nation shrunk.
This money was redirected away from peer assessment into funds for distribution at the discretion of the minister. After a long and consistent outcry, much was returned to the Australia Council’s peer assessment process but grants and funding to artists from the Australia Council decreased by 19% in real terms between 2013-14 and 2019-20, and increased by $1 million in last year’s budget.
News by Josh Hanrahan & Matthew Benns 10th May 2021 5:10 AM
Premium Content A former confidante of Victoria Cross winner Ben Roberts-Smith has turned on him and is expected to give evidence against the Afghanistan war veteran at a highly anticipated defamation trial beginning next month. Documents filed with the Federal Court show that security guard and former freelance 60 Minutes fixer John McLeod will be asked about posting an allegedly intimidatory letter on behalf of Mr Roberts-Smith to an SAS soldier who served with him in Afghanistan. The Daily Telegraph also understands that Mr McLeod was one of a group of people present in 2018 when Mr Roberts-Smith was secretly recorded at a meeting venting about his colleagues at Channel 7 and praising network chairman Kerry Stokes for backing his legal case.