Identifying and actioning key bushfire disaster economic, efficiency and accountability lessons and insights from across Australia

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There are bushfire economic, efficiency and accountability lessons and insights that need to be addressed to improve bushfire preparedness across Australia.

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Australian bushfires are very costly, large intense megafires and repeat bushfires even more so. As an example, bushfires burnt over 17 million hectares during the 2019/ 20 Australian bushfires. The 2019/ 20 bushfires were estimated by AccWeather to be $110 billion in terms of total damage and economic loss.

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Governments and fire agencies are missing opportunities for coordinated prescribed burning programs across all land tenures to achieve economies of scale and resilient landscapes, not necessarily in single areas. Florec and Pannell (2016) outline key issues in relation to mitigation, noting there are additional fire mitigation opportunities across all land tenures. There are large government expenditure savings to be made through increasing mitigation expenditure to reducing natural disaster response costs, including bushfires.

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Economic impacts of the failure to or consider or implement for Australia the valuable approaches that the US is undertaking in relation to Wildfire Crisis A Strategy for Protecting Communities and Improving Resilience in America's Forests; National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy and the likely Fix Our Forests legislation for resilient fire landscapes and safer communities, including low intensity burning, thinning, grazing and other active management.

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