Given the adverse weather events currently being experienced across Northern NSW and climate change promising more unwelcome experiences to come, I'm not sure whether this would be considered an enviable job......
Echo, 8 March 2022:
So, you think you can manage an emergency?
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| Lismore flood. Photo Darren Bridge |
All over the Northern Rivers, amateur crisis response co-ordinators have filled a vacuum left by under-resourced and under-prepared official agencies.
Most community volunteers have felt little other choice and getting paid for the pleasure of helping their neighbours is unlikely to enter their minds.
But doesn’t hard work deserve decent pay? Like, around the $100K mark?
Perhaps it’s time we reconsidered a disaster response system based largely on volunteerism, especially when studies in recent years show fewer and fewer Australians have time to volunteer thanks to work and family pressures.
Emergency work in paradise
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| Live and work in Paradise! Photo supplied. |
Enter: the NSW government’s Emergency Management Coordinator.
It’s a newly advertised position with a starting salary of around $99K plus super.
An ad for the full time Local Land Services job position earlier this week said it included responsibility for the central & North Coasts including Newcastle, the Hunter Valley, Port Macquarie, Lismore and the Far North Coast.
The job location was negotiable, the ad said…..
The Emergency Management Coordinator would have to be adept at ‘functioning in an operating environment of change where risks and issues require challenging responses’, the ad read.
Other requirements for the role were:
- demonstrated experience in emergency response management situations;
- an ability to negotiate with stakeholders and customers;
- an ability to plan and make recommendations with respect to preparedness for, response to and recovery from biosecurity and natural disaster emergencies impacting landholders;
- previous experience in managing and undertaking a range of projects and associated activities with a view to achieving outcomes.
The successful candidate also needed a current NSW Driver License and an ‘ability and willingness to travel throughout the North Coast Region, including overnight stays’, the ad read.
The new Emergency Management Coordinator would have to report to the government’s ‘Team Leader Partnerships’, form productive relationships with regional stakeholders and provide advice to landholders.......
