2012 a realisation of the promise

Happy New Year to everyone! 2012 will be busy, but also a year in which a lot of the promise of the research program will be delivered. It will be an exciting time for everyone, I hope. With the third anniversary of the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria it is useful to reflect on the reasons that sit behind the current research agenda and why we are all on an important path for the community and the industry which serves them.

As many of you will be aware, the Bushfire CRC faces a major review on 17 and 18 April. Whereas this may seem daunting to some, a successful result will help in the transition to an institute. In my mind this is a great opportunity to tell the good news story of the Bushfire CRC. It is sometimes easy to get lost in the detail of the day-to-day work we conduct and not recognise the importance of what we do. As I have been going through the preparatory thinking for the review and reflecting on the most recent visit by the Commonwealth we had last year, it became clear that there are many aspects of what we do that are best practice, in particular the research teams we have pulled together and the way in which the end-users have integrated into the program, I think is remarkable. We have an enviable track record of embedding outputs in the agencies and simultaneously we maintain a steady stream of high quality science outputs.

Personally I am looking forward to being able to tell the good-news story of the Bushfire CRC, and I hope that those of you who are approached by the panel feel the same.