AusAID is the Australian Government's overseas aid agency. The Humanitarian Department is responsible, among other areas, for overseeing AusAID's response to the devastating Asian tsunami that hit in December 2004. Alan March works as Assistant Director General of the agency, with responsibility for overseeing humanitarian, multilateral, and community operations.
Alan has responsibility for a budget of half a billion Australian dollars and oversees the work of forty staff whose work relates to humanitarian and multilateral coordination in the Asia Pacific region. When the tsunami hit Asia in December 2004, Alan headed up the AusAid Indian Ocean Support Taskforce. "Clearly there has been a substantial and extensive outpouring of support from both Australian private commercial and Government sources in response to the tsunami", Alan asserted.
AusAid donated AUS$ 68 million to the post-tsunami recovery efforts. The humanitarian response is now over and AusAID are now working in a reconstruction phase, which will take an entire generation to complete. The geographical proximity of Australia to the tsunami meant that some effects were felt as far away as the Australian coastline. "Oil production was closed, 12 people were washed off a sand bar in the west and water levels rose in several places", he said. Australia has contributed AUS$ 70 million to a tsunami early warning system that will detect signals between Australia and New Zealand and off the West Coast. "It is great that we have this system", Alan confirmed, "But we need to determine how this information will get from the alert office to the community and this is where Local Government comes in".
Prior to his current post, Alan was head of AusAID's East Timor, humanitarian and regional programs, where he was responsible for managing Australia's aid program in East Timor, Iraq, Afghanistan, Southern Africa and South Asia. Alan has worked with AusAID for 20 years, including overseas postings as an aid official on three occasions: Suva, Fiji (1984-87), Noumea, New Caledonia (1990-91), and New York (1996-2000).
The future work of the Indian Ocean Taskforce will concentrate on other safety networks. "If we ever think we are well prepared, we are wrong. You must always be over prepared, and expect things to happen even during relaxing periods such as Christmas. You can do 10,000 things well, but do two or three poorly, with a lack of thoroughness and you will lose that identity", he said.
