With roughly half of the Australian Defence Force’s troops having been involved in disaster relief efforts within the country in recent years, the government is looking into establishing a separate organization specifically intended to help during floods, wildfires, and other natural disasters. With flooding already occurring in the southeast, and with floods on the east coast in 2022, and wildfires scorching much of the country in both 2019 and 2020, the use of the military to support these relief efforts has been found to be unsustainable, with the Department of Defence noting that it was undermining the ability to defend the country.
Says Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister of Australia, “tragically in this beautiful country of ours, natural disasters are becoming more frequent and more intense. All of this is a reminder that the science told us that climate change would mean there would be more extreme weather events and they would be more intense. Unfortunately, we are seeing that play out with the number of events that we’re having to deal with right around Australia, where over this period we’ve had events in Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia that have been severe events.”
Says Jacinta Allan, premier of Victoria, “Growing up in this part of the world, these summer storm events … were not a common experience, and it is troubling that it is becoming more common. What used to be a one-in-100-year event for communities like Rochester, they’ve now had three big flooding events in 10, 11 years,”
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