What a disaster!

As we head towards what threatens to be a highly dangerous bush fire season, the Victorian Government is on the front foot putting together an innovative strategy to address one of the major failings of the existing emergency response protocols.

Some may imagine that this means recruiting and training more firefighters, some may think this means getting more modern equipment and some may assume this means developing a rapid response alert system to notify people of impending dangers. Well, they would be wrong. There is, in the view of the Victorian Government, a far more important disaster management priority – the development of LGBTI (lesian, gay, bisexual, transgender and inter-sex) inclusive emergency protocols.

This work, which is deemed to be vitally important, has been going on for three years and will be informed by an anonymous survey, now closed, of LGBTI people and Emergency Management personnel. This survey was launched with the headline, "Living LGBTI during Disaster" on the Victorian Government's Premier and Cabinet website.

There we learned that:

This project aims to learn about the experience and needs of LGBTI communities in Victoria. The findings will inform the development of Emergency Management (EM) policies and procedures that reflect LGBTI-inclusive practice. The research project will be managed by the Gender and Disaster Pod, in partnership with GLHV@ARCSHS. It is funded by the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet and guided by an Advisory Group.

This project is, according to the explanatory introduction, "Led by the GAD POD & GLHV@ARCSHS La Trobe University".

According to the La Trobe University website this is:

an independent state government-funded lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) health and well-being policy and resource unit. It's mission is to 'enhance and promote the health and well-being of LGBTI Victorians and to improve the quality of health care they receive.

This is the same outfit that did such trail-blazing and agenda-setting work on the Safe Schools program which so irritated parents and which was led by the outspoken Marxist and LGBTI activist Roz Ward. Ms Ward and her aggressive approach copped such a public backlash that the otherwise wholly sympathetic Victorian Government was forced to cancel its contract with La Trobe University last December cutting loose Ms Ward, the policy architect, and bringing the program in-house. Ms Ward parted company with the university in June.

According to the LGBTI magazine Star Observer, the Victorian Goverment began this work "Following recent research suggesting that disaster impact can be worse for LGBTI people". The magazine revealed that a report by the Gender and Disaster Pod had shown that LGBTI people had "additional privacy concerns and risk and experience of discrimination" during natural disasters.

Sadly, shocking natural disasters – devastating bushfires, raging floods and fierce cyclones – seem to be increasing and Australia is blessed with professional fire and rescue organisations and teams of selfless volunteers who respond without any hesitation to save vulnerable people and provide them with essential basic care and protection.

Church based charities – think, for example, of the Salvation Army – are always in the front line. Their only motivation is care, compassion and the well-being of their fellow citizens. Rescuing people and getting them to safe havens where they can find respite from the terrible threat of fire, flood and high wind is their fundamental objective.

But it seems this is simply not enough.

But apparently some members of the LGBTI community are not happy because - oh, the horror of it all – they are not treated with the respect that their special gender status doesn't just warrant but deserves.

So, needless to say, some serious work needs to be done to correct this flagrant bias. Naturally, it is being done at the taxpayers' expense by academics who are actually conspicuous by their absence when rescue operations during floods and fires swing into action. Probably, their work is far too important to put themselves at any physical risk.

The Victorian Government's National Gender and Emergency Management Guidelines already addresses this crisis and frankly they couldn't have come a nanosecond sooner, could they? The survey, when evaluated, will presumably lead to a further enhancement and fine-tuning of these existing guidelines.

The guidelines note that, "promotion and awareness of the consequences of outsourcing response and recovery arrangements (is handed ) to third-party faith-based organisations" which receive "public taxpayer funds" and which are "simultaneously granted exemptions from anti-discrimination legislation". There appears to be no irony at all in these guidelines that those drawing them up also receive "public taxpayer funds" because, after all, they are performing an urgent and vital public service which puts the mere matter of saving lives in the shade. Well, aren't they?

According to the report that produced these guidelines;

Research participants reported exacerbated anxiety after the 2011 Queensland floods resulting from having to hide their sexual or gender identity from emergency workers and volunteers, or stay with people who were not accepting of them. Natural disasters are asserted by some in extreme religious groups to be caused by 'sinners'. These groups define homosexuality and non-normative gender identity as sinful and place blame for the disaster on LGBTI people, particularly gay men: in this view it is punishment from God.

Yes, there are nutters on the extreme fringes of Christian (and Muslim) fundamentalism who believe that natural disasters are God's punishment for acceptance of gay people but isn't it a wee bit extreme to imply that all faith-based volunteer organisations would naturally discriminate against LGBTI people during natural disasters?

Needless to say, there were no reports of LGBTI survivors of natural disasters thanking these vile bigots for actually saving and then housing them.

It seems that we are expected to believe that organisations which don't pay particular attention to the real and/or imagined hurt feelings of LGBTI people are heartless, homophobic, vilely discriminatory and just downright nasty.

The guidelines suggest that emergency workers and volunteers be taught about the "gender spectrum", that "gender spectrum" is a "social construction" and there is a recommendation that gender specialists be called upon to review state and territory emergency management protocols. There is a belief that because the "dominant construction of gender privileges men over women ... and some men over other men" that the LGBTI community is "disproportionately vulnerable during and after disaster".

So, to help overcome these delicate sensibilities, the guidelines propose that there be specialist LGBTI services to help in recovery efforts and that consideration be given to the installation of "facilities, such as bathrooms, toilets and showers beyond 'male' and 'female' and where possible provide an option for transgender and intersex people to reduce fears and vulnerability".

Not surprisingly the guidelines have attracted a good deal of criticism and even derision. Christine Nixon, Victoria's former Chief Commissioner of Police who was involved in the recovery after the 2009 Black Saturday fires in which 173 people lost their lives has been a prominent critic.

Asked if she had been approached with claims that people had been discriminated against during or after an emergency because of their sexuality she said, It's never been an issue while Federal Justice Minister Michael Keenan has distanced himself from the guidelines saying that the government had nothing but respect and gratitude for the work of charities, community organisations and volunteers.Mind you, he didn't actually say that these guidelines are a lot of confected rubbish.

And while we are on the subject of providing a truly inclusive disaster emergency response plan, I hope that it will soon be mandatory for all rescue workers and volunteers to provide halal tucker for Muslim victims of natural disasters. Woe betide any Muslim woman who allows herself to be plucked from a raging torrent or from a threatening bushfire by some infidel rescuer especially if that infidel rescuer happens to see more of her than her eyes.

Oh, the shame and dishonour of that!

Once emergency services protocols in Victoria have been sanitised to the satisfactor of LGBTI activists then isn't the next logical step a similar process to ensure that these protocols reflect cultural and ethnic sensitivities?

Victorians are so much closer to being fully ready to cope with the bushfire season. Now, what about more emergency services staff, better equipment and all of those other boring things?