[hugh3]

That's one way of looking at it.

On the other hand, the way people behave in crisis situations is largely dependent upon the way they see prominent people behaving. If prominent people are out there volunteering and helping out their neighbours then it makes it more likely that other folks will too. Mr Rudd is probably the most prominent Brisbanite at the moment (possible exceptions of the Premier and the Lord Mayor who were busy with their actual duties) so by helping out his neighbours (with cameras present) he can do a lot to set the tone for the behaviour of Brisbanites during and after the disaster (which I must say has been pretty much exemplary).

I'd never vote for Kevin Rudd, but I'm perfectly prepared to give him due credit for doing the right thing. (Unless of course it turns out that he only helped out for five minutes and stopped as soon as the cameras left).

[brc]

I'm just taking a poke at Rudd, I do agree with you it's important to set the tone of the event by having well known politicians, business leaders, sportsmen and others pitching in and lending a hand.

I'm far more impressed with Rudd getting his hands dirty than others hiding in Canberra trying to score points by press release.

[westajay]

I think your poke at Rudd was somewhat justified, since we all know Rudd as a media whore. :-) But yeah, nice to see the politicos getting dirty, and I think it's pretty clear even from press conferences that there is sincerity involved on all sides.

As an ex-pat aussie looking at this from abroad, at appears as if various levels of Australian government are pulling together and focusing on clean-up. In many other places, things descend into blame and confusion pretty quickly, which is what happened in the US. I'm sure Bush did care what was happening on the ground, but the confused response between the different levels of government was astounding (and surely wasn't the feds fault alone).

For all the internal complaining about who is running the show in oz at various times, the country has a healthy and functional democracy in many ways. And Queenslanders will pull through.. the state is full of tough buggers. Best wishes to all affected back home.

[hugh3]

I'm sure Bush did care what was happening on the ground, but the confused response between the different levels of government was astounding (and surely wasn't the feds fault alone).

In fairness Katrina was a much more difficult disaster to deal with than the flood. The flood required small-scale evacuations, while Katrina required the evacuation of an entire city. There's always going to be chaos when you try to evacuate an entire metropolitan area within 48 hours... the manpower and infrastructure to do that kind of thing just doesn't exist.

And that's before you consider that there was a storm as well as a flood.

[vacri]

From memory (and I could be very wrong here) Bush's response to Katrina was to not address it for a few days - exactly the wrong thing to do. http://blogcritics.org/politics/article/was-bush-slow-to-res... says it was four days before action started to happen, and I recall at the time there was a lot of anger directed against the inactivity of the feds.

Compare to Bligh in QLD, who was doing two-hourly media stops packed with information, keeping people abreast of what was going on. The second day of the recovery they realised that they had so much volunteerism that they had to tap it - and there's aerial footage of volunteer centers with queues literally over a kilometer long. Compare to Katrina when the feds had no idea what was going on and where they also copped flak - rightly or wrongly - for not letting volunteers help in a timely manner

Even on the information front alone, if people know what's going on, they feel in control of the situation as the 'what ifs' are minimised. QLD flood victims felt acknowledged, Katrina victims felt abandoned.

Katrina was indeed much worse than the QLD floods, but that doesn't absolve a politician of having to provide good leadership.

[westajay]

I think that's a good point. The scale of the gulf weather events on urban populations (also thinking of Rita and the Houston evacuation) is just astounding.

I guess all reminders of our planet's volatility no matter where we choose to settle.