Empower local and First Nations communities to improve disaster resilience

We are now one year on from the catastrophic flooding that hit the NSW Northern Rivers in what was one of Australia’s biggest natural disasters since Cyclone Tracy in 1974. And according to a CSIRO report on disaster preparedness released last week, inadequate flood warning systems means it could happen again.

The spectre of further flooding weighs heavily on the minds of the up to 20,000 people impacted by the disaster – especially as rain ominously returns to much of NSW after a mostly dry February. Many people in the region are yet to regain a sense of normalcy in their lives and realise that if disaster strikes again, they’ll be the ones pioneering the recovery effort.

That’s why empowering local communities to be able to respond to natural disasters must be a key part of disaster preparedness planning going forward, with a special focus on local First Nations groups. ?I saw the unique ability of these groups to respond to disaster when I travelled with colleagues to Bundjalung Country, in and around Lismore, to assist the flood response last year.

When we arrived our initial focus was to get supplies to those who needed help, alongside clean up and establishing lines of communication. The nexus of this effort on a community level was at the Koori Mail’s building.

Even though the floods destroyed the lower level of the building, the staff and the community behind the Indigenous newspaper leveraged their previous experience with bushfires and other disasters to know how and where to provide relief.

From there our team began working with other local groups, including the Jali Local Aboriginal Land Council, which represents the Traditional Owners of much of the impacted area. Chris Binge, the Land Council’s CEO, was responsible for rescuing 180 people stranded on Cabbage Tree Island after receiving a notification form emergency service, who were too overwhelmed to respond.

Meanwhile Aboriginal Health Service Rekindling the Spirit (RTS) managed to provide health services to the local Indigenous community despite losing access to four of its five locations and its computer system. Without the work of these First Nations groups there would have been further loss of livelihoods, and perhaps lives.

It is clearly crucial to ensure these organisations are adequately funded and resourced – it improves the disaster preparedness and resilience of the entire community. In the months since we’ve worked closely with both organisations to secure grants and improve their operational resilience. But such important work can’t be shouldered by individuals and business alone. A holistic, whole of government response is needed.

In Deloitte’s submission to the Senate Select Committee on Australia’s Disaster Resilience we recommended that a special responsibility of the Australian Defence Force and state-based response services should be to empower communities to tackle disaster management across four key phases: resilience, preparedness, response, and recovery.

When it comes to building resilience, community capacity to prepare and respond to disasters needs to be recognised and developed by government. This needs to include an integration of the knowledge First Nations peoples hold about land management, restoration, disaster mitigation, as well as the development of First Nations first-responder programs, which was a key recommendation NSW’s 2022 Flood Inquiry.

These things can only occur if the ADF and State Emergency Services do the work to build respectful and genuine relationship with Traditional Owner groups. This is also true when it comes to preparedness – for example, the effectiveness of hazard reduction burns would be enhanced by local traditional knowledge.

These relationships are also important to bolster response capabilities. Governments need to know which local groups are capable to be given access to emergency power generation, or even fuel and water transport capabilities. They also need to rely on the knowledge of these groups – particularly First Nations ones – to help with emergency accommodation logistics, and to ensure these accommodation options are culturally safe.

A successful recovery from natural disasters will also depend on the extent they are community-centred, both in the immediate aftermath and in the long term – long after the ADF and SES are gone. For example, the Gippsland & East Gippsland Aboriginal Co-Operative is, in partnership with the Victorian government, still spearheading the disaster recovery effort following the black summer bushfires.

Rebuilding Lismore and the broader Bundjalung nation will be a bigger job, but it can be done by creating a proper working partnership between the community and the state or Federal government. Pulling it off will also create a blueprint for communities in Australia and around the world that are vulnerable to the changing climate. We can remain vulnerable, or we can lead the way.

Joe Hedger is a Bundjalung man and Indigenous Service Group Lead for Deloitte Australia.?