The past two years, 2020 and 2021, will be remembered as years defined by disaster. Regional Australia has been subjected to devastating fires, floods and cyclones. The COVID-19 pandemic has added an unprecedented layer of complexity to these major disruptions. Separately and together, they have posed significant challenges to regional communities and businesses, as well as to the governments and organisations supporting communities in recovery.
Disaster recovery and resilience in regional Australia was the central focus of the Regional Australia Institute (RAI)’s Intergovernmental Shared Inquiry Program in 2020. This program is a collaboration involving the federal, state and territory governments, the RAI and partner universities. Each year, participating governments determine a priority theme to research, in order to develop an evidence-base for policy-making. The 2020 theme on disaster recovery was determined as a high priority by participating governments. The program is led by the RAI and is built around a body of work by three leading universities: RMIT University, the University of South Australia, and Charles Darwin University. A number of research reports were produced by the partner universities, which are listed in the Annex section.
The research developed under the program has resulted in some clear lessons for policy-makers involved in disaster recovery and resilience building in regional Australia. This guide is not trying to replicate or summarise the reports. Rather, it takes the key findings from the research reports and distils the important lessons which are relevant to the decision-makers and policy officials who are tasked with developing and delivering disaster recovery and resilience support across regional Australia.
February 2023; Select Committee on Australia’s Disaster Resilience Submission
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