Disaster Resilience Commission

Australian policy response to the coronavirus outbreak has followed a two-step process, with containment the highest priority (the bio-medical and humanitarian view) and with economic and social consequences (a whole of society view) occupying a clear follow-on priority. This short submission argues for a different model of pandemic response, one that places the concept of resilience at the centre of national pandemic response and all disaster response, ensuring that the whole-of-society view is as prominent at the outset as the biomedical and humanitarian view or other disaster specialisations.

This 2020 submission has been prepared by several senior researchers associated with the Social Cyber Institute, based in part on their work on resilience as a social concept, including with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation in 2011 and 2013, and in part on their work to improve national resilience for large-scale cyber emergencies, both in Australia and globally. A reference point for this submission is the work by one of its authors on a large project funded by the Chief Scientist through the Australian Council of Learned Academies on economic development strategies for Australia.