What people are saying...

From letters to the editors nationwide...

We were much better prepared to handle Tracy

When Major-General Alan Stretton, in the first few hours after cyclone Tracy, set up his headquarters in Darwin to manage the relief and recovery effort, it was not as a one-off appointment by the then PM, but as director-general of the Natural Disasters Organisation - a body set up by the federal government about a year earlier expressly for the purpose of managing disasters that went beyond the scope of state emergency services.
So where is that organisation today, and why hasn't the director-general taken charge in Innisfail as Stretton did in 1974 in Darwin? It's a story that very much parallels the running down of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the US. In the 1990s, the organisation's name was changed to Emergency Management Australia and after John Howard came to power, like its counterpart in the US, it moved departments and a new head was appointed, who, like Michael Brown from FEMA, was a political type with no operational experience. So as counter-terrorism and national security became paramount, EMA became just another obfuscation office of the Attorney-General's Department, dedicating most of its time and effort to justifying its own existence.

The appointment by the Howard Government of General Peter Cosgrove to oversee the relief effort in Innisfail demonstrates just what an irrelevance EMA now is, full of paper-shuffling time-servers whose only power comes from handing out money to the states each year and holding onto a small and largely irrelevant management training section.
It's really a pity that the organisation of which Alan Stretton was such a worthy and admired founding director-general should be now so silent and irrelevant in the face of Australia's latest natural disaster.

John Laurie, Newport

C'mon, Aussie, c'mon!

IT IS very disappointing that Australians have not as yet responded as generously as hoped to the Tropical Cyclone Larry Appeal. In my experience as a marketing communications executive with Australian Red Cross managing appeals for local, national and international disasters, two of the primary components required to generate positive public donations are quantifiable resources (such as money to buy tarpaulins, buckets and food) and widespread, continuing media coverage at a significant level.
Last year, I served as the volunteer chairman of the 71st Victorian Relief Winter Blanket Appeal. We received 9000 new blankets for the state's homeless and vulnerable from a target of 10,000 blankets in a statewide partnership with ABC local radio. It was the best response in the appeal's history. And it's a nonsense argument that the Commonwealth Games pushed the story aside. One official TV network (Channel Nine) plus one commercial AM, FM and one ABC local radio station in each capital city market covering the Games left plenty of capacity for others. The Seven Network had a Sunrise crew there, and Grant Denyer did plenty of radio interviews about the impending disaster. The show now has a continuing appeal.

In an international disaster, money is the first, and only, request because it is flexible. As practically as possible, it is spent near to the disaster centre to provide continuity for the local economy. Goods are not generally sought from international donors because of the prohibitive cost of transport, logistics and distribution. However, the cyclone Larry response could, and in my opinion should, have cash donation options plus a new-goods/products option specifically targeted at Australian manufacturers and importers. For the people of Innisfail and surrounds who have lost their homes and livelihoods, a wave of Aussie generosity should be overwhelming them, at the same strength of tropical cyclone Larry.

Andrew Heslop, Mansfield

What's going on in the local community?

This morning on the Sunrise show, there was much talk of the LOCAL COMMUNITY and LOCAL ECONOMIC RECOVERY. The discussion was raised in relation to relief supplies and efforts, and how much 'assistance' can hinder the revitalisation of local businesses. A simple way to think about revitalising and recovery of the local economy is to think of ways to get cash recirculating the way it did before, in and out of households and the local community.

When we watched the Tsunami hit our favourite beaches in Asia, we thought about the local people, how we could help... then sent up loads of what we thought were 'useful' items. In reality, there was excess of everything, from inappropriate clothing to too many medics.

Yet, what a local community might need is housing, employment, basic services to resume, kids to go back to school and local businesses to resume trading.

So, how does the local community in northern Queensland revitalise the local economy? Can we do anything to assist the process from outside the community?

There are standard things people can do, such as buy locally, contract local tradespeople, contract local businesses to work on the clean-up, hire as locally as possible... keep it local... Post up ways that you are keeping it in the neighbourhood... people might get ideas from your comments!

If there is something we can do, businesses we can support from outside the area... drop me an email and might be able to work something out!