Government told to reduce reliance on ADF for disaster clean-up

The government is being urged to reduce its reliance on the defence force to clean up after natural disasters.

Transcript

00:00A Senate inquiry into the country's resilience to disasters has been told the Australian

00:06Defence Force has a finite capacity to respond to disasters and should only be used as a

00:12last resort.

00:13The ADF told the inquiry that too often its personnel are being taken away from national

00:18security to conduct rescues and to respond to fires and floods.

00:23Certainly here in Queensland we've had our fair share of disasters and help from the

00:27ADF too.

00:28For example, South East Queensland was devastated by flooding in early 2022.

00:34Tens of thousands of properties were affected, thousands of people were displaced and many

00:39lives were lost.

00:40During that time we also saw the devastating floods in northern New South Wales.

00:45And overall about 7,000 ADF personnel were made available to help in both Queensland

00:51and New South Wales.

00:52And more generally, with the impact of more frequent and intense weather events, the Senate

00:57committee's final report found reliance on the ADF is unsustainable and the government

01:02must find an alternative.

01:04The committee recommended the scaling up of Disaster Relief Australia, a group of Army

01:10and Emergency Servant Veteran volunteers.

01:13The group says since 2017 it's deployed around 4,500 volunteers to disasters, but it only

01:20has funding until 2026.

01:23The report also recommended that the government incentivise young people to become volunteers

01:28to help in the wake of disasters.