Press conference, Brisbane, QLD

JENNY MCALLISTER: Well, good morning, everyone. I’d like to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet – the Turrbal and Jagera peoples. I pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging. And I also acknowledge the Turrbal and Jagera peoples’ continuing culture and their contribution to the life of Brisbane.

I’d also like to acknowledge the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. I extend my sincere condolences to members of the royal family.

My name is Jenny McAllister. I am Australia’s Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy, and I am joined by Ms Mami Mizutori, the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction. I am so pleased to have you here with us and to be standing here this platform with you today.

MAMI MIZUTORI: Thank you.
 
JENNY MCALLISTER: May I also acknowledge my colleague Senator Tony Sheldon, the Special Envoy for Disaster and Recovery.

This morning I’ll deliver some remarks on behalf of the Australian Government. I’ll hand over to Ms Mizutori, and then we’ll open the floor to your questions.

Australia is proud to be hosting the Ninth Regional Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction. We are so pleased to have been able to partner with Ms Mizutori and her organisation to bring this conference together after a long wait. Senior leaders with responsibility for disaster management and over 2,000 delegates from the region are attending as we speak.

Important – very important, that Pacific voices are an active part of this conversation. All the more so as this conference follows on from last week’s inaugural and very successful Pacific Disaster Risk Management Ministerial Meeting in Nandi, Fiji.

Now, the conference comes at a critical time for the region. The Asia Pacific is the most disaster-prone region in the world. The Australian Government knows that climate change is not an abstract threat; it is an existential one. Climate change plays a major role in disasters now, and will do in the future. And our climate and disaster resilience has never been tested like this before, but it is going to be tested further.

The impacts of climate change are also magnifying a range of challenges in disaster risk management. Climate change has led to disasters of increasing frequency and severity, and our region is experiencing more and more catastrophic disasters. Our seas are rising, our oceans are warming, and extreme events such as bushfires, cyclones, floods and droughts are more frequent than ever before.

This conference brings together the private sector and, importantly, First Nations collectively prepare and respond to the disasters that impact our region. The partnership we are announcing today with the UN will support the implementation of the commitments we are making here at the conference collectively.

So I’m delighted to announce that Australia has just signed a new three-year partnership framework with the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction worth $9 million. This new partnership demonstrates Australia’s commitment to the international system by supporting countries in our region to reduce the risk of disasters.

The funding builds on close collaboration with the United Nations on this issue over many years. And we’re pleased to be making progress on some very important priorities: ensuring our efforts to address climate change and disaster risk reduction are integrated, guaranteeing disaster risk reduction efforts are gender sensitive and disability inclusive, shifting the emphasis from investing in disaster response to investing in risk reduction and risk-informed [indistinct] is implementing the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. It’s the blueprint for reduction. And the mid-term review of that framework is currently underway and its findings will be consolidated and presented to a high-level meeting of the General Assembly in New York in May next year.

To support this important work Australia is also providing additional funding to support the Sendai framework mid-term review in the Pacific. As we know, the risk landscape in the Pacific has been reshaped by climate change and Covid-19 and this is testing resilience in the Pacific, as it is doing across the globe. Despite these challenges, the Pacific leads the world in approach to climate change and disaster risk reduction for sustainable development since 2016.

The Pacific has a lot to share. And show this funding will support broad consultations in the Pacific to inform recommendations for the mid-term review of the Sendai framework. People in the Pacific have significant lived experience of disaster and climate action. They have a depth of traditional and contemporary knowledge. We want them to be able to share that experience at the global level.

Thank you again, and I’ll now hand over to Ms Mizutori from the United Nations to make a few remarks.

MAMI MIZUTORI: Well, thank you very much, Assistant Minister. I am delighted to be here with you and Senator the Special Envoy on Disaster Recovery. Members of the press, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for joining us today. I start by expressing my heartfelt gratitude to the Australian Government for graciously hosting this conference. As you’ve mentioned, we had a lot of preparation in time, but I think all the preparation is now a great conference. So thank you so much.

I would also like to of my condolences on the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to the people of the United Kingdom, of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the wider Commonwealth of Nations.
 
We are gathering now in Brisbane to ensure a future where Australia and all countries in the Asia Pacific will not be [indistinct]. Countries must transform their [indistinct] and we need to do better in preventing and preparing.
 
As you have heard from the honourable Assistant Minister, Asia Pacific is the most dangerous disaster-prone region in the world. We experience here more extreme weather events as a result of climate change even including – in addition I would say to the traditional earthquakes and tsunamis that are so frequent. [indistinct] UN Office for Disaster [indistinct] UN organisation relationship, we have truly come to a point where I hope we can call you a great partner in building the resilience of Asia Pacific and, again, the most vulnerable countries here.

However, this reduction we know cannot be done by governments alone, and with their generous support even. And that is why, specifically why, 3,000 – more than 3,000 people have gathered here in person and mine as well from over 40 countries. And as you have mentioned, and officials are from national and local but also the private sector, the civil society organisations, the academia, the science and technology [indistinct] we call the voices have to be heard and when they come here, yes, we do hear their voices. And that is very important. And this is the importance and beauty of these conferences around disaster risk reduction.

And what we’d like to see from this very important conference happening here right now in Brisbane, we’d like to see actions and solutions coming out. But I would like to point out three key areas: first, we would like to see increased investment in disaster risk reduction, resilience building and preparedness [indistinct] including more support to the least developed countries and small island developing [indistinct]. This is the first commitment that we would like to see coming out.

Second, the commitment to shockproof our infrastructure and systems to prevent disruption of basic service delivery, as we saw so much during the pandemic. Hospitals being overwhelmed and schools being shut down. And this has lasting impact over years but maybe over decades because [indistinct] do not have access to digital mechanisms.

Third, commitment that we would like to see coming out from this conference is commitment to empower the communities through a human rights-based approach to build the resilience in a project, a program now being supported by Australia. Disaster risk reduction historically comes from a civil protection background. So naturally a lot of very strong and powerful men ran this area for a long time and we still need this very strong and powerful gentlemen to help us. But we also need to see more women in the leadership position for disaster risk reduction because if we’re saying that we need to hear the voices of women, we need to have the women also running the business.

And on that note, I would like to hope that you can join us this evening when we announce the winners of the Women’s International Network for Disaster Risk Reduction Leadership Awards, an award which, again, started because of the generous support of the Australian Government, which is really gaining traction more and more applications from all over Asia Pacific, women working in their national disaster management agencies, but also a lot of women and younger ladies working in their communities to build a resilience ensuring that inclusivity is there for disaster risk reduction [indistinct] short list of ladies, and this is really the stories, the important stories, that come out from these conferences. So please do join us this evening.

Finally, we are in the process of, again, as you have kindly mentioned, viewing the progress of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction [indistinct] important for prevention, but it is also very important so that we can achieve the goals of the Paris agreement and ultimately that we [indistinct] issues. Because if we do not have risk-informed development then we cannot achieve [indistinct]. And if we can do all of these things – tall order, but we can – together we can build with you a future for all. So thank you very much.

JENNY MCALLISTER: Thank you so much, Mami Mizutori, for those very generous remarks. We have time to take a few questions. Please.

JOURNALIST: Thank you very much, Ms Mizutori, and also the Australian Government. My name is [indistinct] from the Televisi Republik Indonesia, TVRI World. To echo on what Madam Secretary said at the end about the ongoing mid-term review for the Sendai framework, up to this point of the third day of our conference have you received words on how the findings of the review of the Sendai framework have been used by nations that have been severely or prone to disaster areas to be used as measures to find multi-faceted and tailored solutions to disaster risk reduction?

MAMI MIZUTORI: So right now we are still in the process of stocktaking. We have asked governments to conduct national review of the implementation of the Sendai framework. We have from their point of view, whether they are civil society organisations or private sector, we are also conducting thematic reviews. We’re also conducting interviews to people who are close to the agenda. And we will bring this all together in a report as a secretariat by the end of January. And this will be the basis of understanding where we are in terms of what have we achieved and what are still the gaps.

Now, this will be consulted by the member states in New York next year in May. And we are hoping that a very ambitious political declaration will come up from that process which not only talks about where we are but where we want to go and how we want to go – ie, actions and solutions.

So this is – that’s why this is a very important process and we do believe that with the strong awareness that we need to prevent better [indistinct] though my sense is that we are quite off target in most of the loss and damage indicators, we will come up with strong solutions.

JOURNALIST: My name is Judith [indistinct] a bit earlier this year and in Lismore as well. So first of all I’d just like to congratulate the Albanese Government. Everybody in Australia who cares about climate change breathed a huge sigh of relief in March. So thank you for taking climate change so seriously and taking a lot of action on climate change in your ministry.

First question I have for you – I have two questions – and it is about the Northern Rivers. Okay, the first question is, number one, I fully support the idea of the army coming in. The army did arrive one week later after the actual flood in Lismore. And I would like to ask whether you will be looking at making sure that the army arrives quicker into major disasters like Lismore.

The second question is a very unusual anyone. I’d firstly like to congratulate all the state governments who are looking at ratified as part of climate action. So South Australian Labor Government, Victoria and Queensland are all revitalising their rail. New South Wales has an LNP Government. They’ve just given the transport minister the power to rip up all the regional railway lines that are not being used. We have 134 kilometres of railway lines. Some of it has already been pulled up in Murwillumbah without community consultation of any kind, and the people of that area are very distraught and also very distraught about the fact that the minister now has the power to pull up all of the lines of the 134 kilometres if they choose to.

So I’m just [indisctinct] and the people of our region do not agree with our railway lines being turned into bike tracks. Meanwhile, there’s huge investment in every other state for rail in regional areas. We haven’t had a train for 17 years in Byron-Lismore. And it would also really help in disasters because we had no electricity and no food, no ATMs, no money, no transport and a lot of cars were swept [indisctinct] in the future, but these are important issues.

JENNY MCALLISTER: Thanks very much for your questions, Judith. I really do want to acknowledge what a hard time it’s been for the people of the Northern Rivers. That’s actually – I was born in Murwillumbah, Judith, so I know that community very well.

JOURNALIST: They love their train lines and they’re gone now.

JENNY MCALLISTER: And it happened that I actually was visiting the Tweed at the time of the flooding, and I’m very aware of just how stressful it was for the community at the time and the ongoing stressors that are being placed on the communities that are really in for a long [indistinct].

You asked about disaster response and the way that we respond to disasters. I think there has been some important work being done at a state government level to examine the way that the response was structured in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. It’s really important that we do have those kinds of reviews because they give us important information about what works and what we need to change in the future.

I think from a commonwealth perspective we are open to feedback about how we best coordinate with states and territories. It’s appropriate that they remain in the lead for disaster response, but there are always opportunities for us to augment and support their response, and we're interested in finding ways to streamline that and make it as effective as it can be.

I'm going to have to take your questions about trains [indistinct] this, that decarbonising the transport system to create for the first time our national electric vehicle strategy and other initiatives to decarbonise the transport system. We’re conscious of the role public transport might play in that, and I’m happy to take your question on notice and have a bit of a look at what we might think about that.

JOURNALIST: Thank you so much for that.

JENNY MCALLISTER: No problem, Judith. Any other questions? Thank you all so much for being here.

MAMI MIZUTORI: Thank you.