The Australian & New Zealand Disaster and Emergency Management Conference continues to support the Disaster and Emergency Management community with a strong focus on natural disasters and 2015 marks the 4th year of the event. The ANZDM Conference will be held 4-5 May 2015 at Jupiters Gold Coast with the theme of EARTH; FIRE AND RAIN.

Presentation Title: Lessons from the past – Vision for the future

The presentation will consider the 2009 Victorian bushfires and subsequent Royal Commission, and the 2010-11 flood emergency and subsequent inquiry focussing on the emergency management reform agenda undertaken in Victoria resulting from these two events.

Tony Pearce was appointed Victoria’s first Inspector-General for Emergency Management in August 2014. For more than thirty years he has worked in intelligence, security and emergency/crisis management and in that time has held a number of senior roles in both state and federal government including four years in the role of Director-General Emergency Management Australia.

He holds graduate and post graduate qualifications in Management, Health Science, Emergency Management, and Public Administration and is a graduate of the Australia and New Zealand School of Government and the Victorian Leadership Development Centre.

Tony was founding President and Patron of the Oceania Council of the International Association of Emergency Managers and a Global Board member of the IAEM. He is the current Chair of the International Advisory Committee for the Centre for Disaster Management and Public Safety at Melbourne University and an Advisory Board Member to the Monash University Disaster Resilience Initiative.

Full  2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission Report, July 2012