Funding welcomed for bushfire and natural hazards

Towards the end of a busy fire season, the Prime Ministerial $47 million announcement that has secured bushfire research funding for a further eight years was a welcome relief.

This funding has long been sought by the fire and land management sector and researchers. We know that developing new knowledge and learning is a fundamental requirement to doing our jobs better. No industry can be satisfied that what it knows today will be enough to carry it through into the future, with all the challenges that are brought with changes in population, climate and environment.

By the end of June this year, the Bushfire CRC will have completed a decade of research into fire. But it was never the intention that the research outputs gather dust on academic shelves. That is why the utilisation of the research has been so important in recent years and will now continue well into 2014 with a mixture of publications, guides, conferences, workshops, videos and many other communication tools that meet the needs of each particular audience.

I wish to thank the many researchers, students and end users who actively contributed to their Bushfire CRC to make it a success.

While this utilisation program is rolled out, we will also be working closely with partners around Australia on building a research program for the new Cooperative Research Centre for bushfires and other natural hazards.

Much of the new CRC research program will build upon the decade of outputs of the Bushfire CRC, but much will also take us into new territory to cover cyclones, storms, tsunamis and other natural hazards.