A Missed Opportunity to Promote Community Resilience? – The Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry
In: Australian journal of public administration, Band 71, Heft 3, S. 355-363
ISSN: 1467-8500
This commentary piece argues that the recent Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry of 2011 remained trapped in a reactive, inquisitorial mindset that led the commissioners to produce prescriptive recommendations aimed at increased regulation and modelling. It largely ignored the parallel discourse around disaster management emphasising community resilience, which has been endorsed by governments across Australia through the Council of Australian Governments' recent national strategy. Consequently, my argument, as a former director‐general of community safety in Queensland, is that the recent commission of inquiry missed a great opportunity both to reinforce the resilience policy approach and redirect funds from response and recovery endeavours to better ways of securing preparedness, prevention and mitigation.