Infrastructure Vulnerability and the Coordination of Government Responses

Shortly after hosting the October 2010 workshop on Aviation and Maritime Security, Australia and its region faced some major challenges to its infrastructure. 2011 began with a series of natural events and human catastrophes that tested the resilience of government, frontline agencies and citizens in Australia and its close neighbors, New Zealand and Japan. In this briefing paper, Dr. Tim Legrand profiles the CEPS research project on infrastructure vulnerability and government coordination. The method of drawing out the critical policy issues, from academic, policy and industry perspectives, directly shapes the direction of research. Government coordination in a federal system such as Australia is requires coordination between the multiple and overlapping tiers of government - federal, state and territory, as well as local government - is essential for good legislation and regulation The tests to our community’s resilience demonstrate that cooperative federalism involves requires a strong bipartisan political commitment to an intergovernmental partnership. But more than this, as this workshop series continues to reveal, we must acknowledge and give serious attention to the central roles played by the private and non-government sectors, which share the responsibility and costs for securing a significant portion of Australia’s critical infrastructure.