Councils are at the frontline of emergency management, but don’t have the financial sustainability to keep up with increasingly frequent disasters. The Australian Local Government Association (ALGA) is advocating for change.
Work undertaken by local governments includes preparing communities for disasters, protecting critical infrastructure, supporting evacuation centres, and communicating essential information with residents.
In some states, councils have statutory obligations to lead recovery after a disaster, but even without this responsibility, most local governments take on this role, including providing responses to the ‘long-tail of recovery’, after external or interjurisdictional services have packed up and left.
With close links to the community and knowledge of resources, councils are best placed to know how to respond to local needs and priorities after a disaster.
Councils also often provide cross-jurisdictional support, at a financial cost to themselves, including through aid, deploying personnel, or establishing relief centres in their own townships for neighbouring areas.
Data recently collated by ALGA found councils experienced 529 natural disasters (bushfire, cyclone, flood, storm, and/or earthquake) in 2024/25 alone.
Many local government areas are also facing more concurrent, or compounding disasters, that are increasing in severity and frequency.
Where the High-Risk Weather Season (HRWS) used to formally run from October/November to March/April, Australia is now seeing natural disasters all year round, leaving councils with little-to-no time to recover from one emergency before facing the next one.
This is also impacting on communities’ ability to prepare for disasters, including risk mitigation and resilience-building strategies, programs and initiatives.
Recent inquiries and reviews, including the Independent Review of National Natural Disaster Governance Arrangements (the Glasser Review) and the Independent Review of Commonwealth Disaster Funding (the Colvin Review) have noted an urgent need to uplift local governments in capability and capacity, combined with dedicated and sustainable funding streams.
ALGA’s submissions to these reviews are available here.
What has ALGA been doing to address this?
ALGA continues to advocate for sustainable funding for local governments, so that they are less vulnerable to the cumulative effect of unbudgeted financial impacts from natural disasters.
ALGA is asking the Federal Government for a $900 million per year ongoing, non-competitive, untied emergency management fund for local governments, to enable councils to develop and implement long-term disaster preparedness and recovery measures.
Noting the cross-over between climate-adaptation and disaster risk reduction, ALGA has also been calling for a $400 million ongoing annual fund to support local, place-based solutions that will safeguard communities against climate-driven weather extremes which lead to natural disasters.
ALGA has been advocating for an uplift in capability for councils – namely access to free, nationally accredited emergency management training, recognising that this does not address the issue of some councils not having any actual staff to train.
A capability uplift also includes support for councils to develop localised risk assessment and emergency management plans; support to acquire expertise in applying for disaster grants such as the Disaster Ready Fund (DRF) or Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements (DRFA).
ALGA’s advocacy on these issues includes membership on high-level, inter-governmental forums such as the National Emergency Management Minister’s Meeting (NEMMM), the Australia and New Zealand Emergency Management Committee (ANZEMC), and various subcommittees and working groups that sit under these.
It also has members on panels such as the Disability Inclusive Emergency Management (DIEM) Expert Advisory Panel, and the National Hazards Accessible and Inclusive Education Resources Project for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) Communities Advisory Group. Sitting on these national groups allows ALGA to provide a local government perspective on more nuanced emergency management issues.
ALGA’s membership on these groups enables it to raise emergency management issues for local government to both the federal, state and territory governments, drive national policy development, and form important working relationships with emergency management senior officials and ministers.
ALGA also attends national roundtables and workshops, including the National Emergency Management Volunteering Forum, and the annual HRWS Summit, which provides an opportunity to take a birds-eye view of emergency management issues from a national perspective, and to raise awareness of the impacts on local government.
