Patients leave ED for a variety of reasons and at all stages of care. In Australian law, clinicians and health services owe a duty of care to people presenting to the ED for care, even if they have not yet entered a treatment space. There is also a positive duty to warn patients of material risks associated with their condition, proposed treatment(s), reasonable alternative treatment options and the likely effect of their healthcare decisions, including refusing treatment. This extends to a decision to leave the ED before care is completed. The form of that warning may vary based on what is known about the patient's condition and the associated risks at the time. Specific documentation of warnings given is essential.

Ambulance ramping, the delay to transfer of a patient arriving at an ED by ambulance into an ED treatment space and handover of care to ED clinicians, is a problem in all Australian states and territories and New Zealand. It is a symptom of ED overcrowding and access block and has been associated with adverse health outcomes for some patient groups. The questions arise, who might be legally responsible for the care of patients who are ramped and does their physical location matter? The short answers are 'everyone' and 'no', however, whether there will be a breach of duty depends on the reasonableness of responses and resource allocation considerations.

Australian landscapes, people and laws have a long history with fire, but climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of fires and the scale of their impact. In this article, we ask the question: what laws make up the constituent parts, or the anatomy, of our legal framework for bushfire? We propose a novel conceptual model for the full spectrum of laws that relate to bushfire - from the crime of arson through to consumer lending laws and the Constitution - and reveal a complex web of (sometimes competing) values, objectives and substantive tools. Understanding this legal context can help us to prepare more effec-tively for a future that will be defined by our experience of fire.

This paper reviews some recommendations from the 2020 Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements (the Royal Commission). The Royal Commission delivered a nearly 600-page report that contained 80 recommendations. This paper does not review each of those recommendations but focuses on the constitutional and legislative considerations as they relate to recommendations about the proposed role of the Commonwealth in coordinating interstate resource sharing, the power of the Australian Government to declare a national state of emergency and the enhanced used of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) in disaster response.

The 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic has made clear the fragile nature of many of the liberties we take for granted. This article will briefly review what we know about the power of government to impose restrictions during a public health emergency and then compare and contrast the use of emergency during more traditional emergencies such as fire and flood. I argue that traditional emergency managers should not be tempted to try and copy the use of directions backed with the threat of force and penalties to ensure compliance but should, instead, continue to focus on community education and building resilience.

Most day-to-day decision making of paramedics is made in an environment where resources are not truly scarce, or not soon likely to be. Paramedics are therefore able to apply an ethical approach to their work that upholds their duty to provide patient-centred care that is in the best interests of the patient. Paramedics can and do apply a broader community-minded approach to triage at mass casualty events. However, what may be new and associated with the unprecedented public health emergency that is COVID-19 is that paramedics will now be required to make such rationing decisions across a much longer period of time for a far larger number of people. This short commentary aims to begin the discussion about the legal and ethical changes to paramedic practice that are likely to occur over the next 6 to 12 months in response to the COVID-19 crisis.

This article challenges the view that professional indemnity insurance is required when paramedics provide first aid at an unexpected accident or medical emergency while not at work. It is argued that an interpretation of ‘practice’ that includes emergency first aid would be inconsistent with the policy of the law reflected in ‘Good Samaritan’ legislation and would be contrary to the public interest. The provisions of the Registration Standard ‘Professional Indemnity Insurance’ are linked to judicial decisions on what it means to practise a profession to demonstrate that an interpretation of ‘practise’ that excludes first aid is consistent with the law. The Paramedicine Board of Australia and the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency should give a clear statement that providing first aid at an unexpected health emergency is not and will not be considered professional practice by an off-duty registered health professional who is at the scene of the emergency, simply by coincidence.

This work was supported by the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre and the Australian National University

Significant disaster and emergency management events are invariably followed by formal post-event inquiries and reviews. Such reviews identify lessons to improve future capacities and set the agenda for policy and management reform for emergency management organisations. As a result, there is a substantial body of reflections and recommendations gathered across all hazard types and jurisdictions by formal, structured inquiry processes that contribute to lessons management for the emergency sector. However, whether there is any coherence or core lessons emerging for the Australian sector from the totality of postevent inquiries is unknown. The work reported here identifies the recommendations from these inquiries. A meta-analysis of 1336 recommendations made in 55 Australian major post-event reviews and inquiries since 2009 revealed common themes. The recommendations were compiled into a comprehensive database and categorised into 32 themes. The analysis highlighted recurrent themes from recommendations spanning multiple jurisdictions. The study indicates the potential value for Australian and New Zealand emergency management agencies and jurisdictions of using the aggregate data organised as a resource for lessons management.

This report on domestic law and disaster preparedness and response was commissioned by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) as part of a wider global research project. Its overall goal is to support governments in considering key elements to include in their legal framework for disaster risk management to adequately address preparedness and response. Currently, a gap exists within the set of tools developed by the IFRC’s Disaster Law Programme that address legislative considerations for disaster risk reduction and international disaster response. The planned end output will be the development of a Checklist on Law and Disaster Preparedness and Response, designed to provide concrete guidance to law and policy makers, as well as National Societies and other interested stakeholders.

This paper critiques the adversarial processes used in inquiries following significant natural hazard events, in particular bushfires. Shortcomings identified with current practices suggest post-event inquiries should adopt restorative practices rather than traditional adversarial procedures. Restorative justice is a concept established in the area of criminal law. It is argued that the use of restorative practices could assist in formulating inquiries that would assist all parties to collectively resolve how to deal with a aftermath of the disaster and deal with its implications for the future. Restorative practices would enable a focus on both short-and long-term recovery.

In this paper, we argue that the statement ‘Whoever owns the fuel owns the fire’ implies a duty on landowners to manage fuel on their land to reduce the likelihood of bushfires, however started, from spreading to neighbouring properties. However, the notion ‘Whoever owns the fuel owns the fire’ has not been analysed from a legal perspective. This paper reviews Australian law to identify who is legally responsible for fire that starts on privately owned land. We argue that the correct interpretation of existing Australian law is: ‘Whoever owns the ignition owns the fire’ – that is, liability to pay for losses caused by bushfire has always fallen on those that intentionally start a fire, not on the owner of the fuel that sustains the fire. That legal conclusion could have dramatic implications for fire management policies. It will be shown that liability for starting a prescribed burn is clear-cut whereas liability for allowing accumulated fuel loads to contribute to the spread of fire is almost unheard of. As a result, we argue that the law is pushing landowners in a direction away from the policy direction adopted by all Australian governments. After identifying the current legal position, we recommend changes to align the law with the national policy direction.

As natural disasters increase around the world and stretch the capacities of emergency services, national governments and international institutions have stressed the importance of shared responsibility; the idea that all actors within a society have some obligations in disaster management and must work collectively to reduce disaster risk. However, the exact balance between individual and government responsibility is not yet established and continually contested, especially after major events. In Australia, the National Strategy for Disaster Resilience (NSDR) is the overarching policy framework for disaster risk management and aims to create resilient communities through an emphasis on shared responsibility and empowerment. Through a literature review and document analysis of the NSDR and associated policy documents, we clarify, organise and operationalise the necessarily general policy goal of shared responsibility. We first analyse how the NSDR conceptualises communities to discover which community actors are mentioned. We then identify the responsibilities it prescribes or implies for these different actors and consider the types of policy instruments that are relevant to disaster risk management. Our analysis reveals a tension between the NSDR's placement of government at the centre of disaster risk management, and its other, less well-explained emphasis on community empowerment.