National Disaster Preparedness in Australia – before and after 9/11

Throughout history, certain major events or disasters have served as “focusing events”, leading to the development of new legislation, policy, planning, and practices. While many of these events have led to significant changes in terms of planning, preparedness, and consequence management (of particular note are the changes to preparedness and response in Israel and the Middle East following warfare and conflict), one event was the ultimate “focusing-event”, with no other event bringing about changes of a comparable scope or scale.