Australia weighs creating disaster relief force as floods hit southeast

Australia is considering setting up a disaster relief force to help relieve a military overstretched by regular natural disasters, the prime minister said on Tuesday, as towns in the country’s southeast were evacuated due to flooding.
The floods come after Australia endured some of its worst bushfires over the “Black Summer” of 2019 and 2020, followed by a devastating bout of flooding on the east coast in 2022.
Roughly half the Australian Defence Force’s (ADF) 62,000 troops were involved in disaster relief over that period, a commitment which undermined its ability to defend the country, the Department of Defence said last year.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the government was considering creating a standing reserve body, although the country needed to be flexible and use whatever assets it had on hand during disasters.