Humanitarian Response and Pacific Partnership

Australia's Humanitarian Response and Pacific Partnership - Hosted by the AIIA Queensland

Join us either in-person or online as Shelley Thomas and Mark Broekhuizen of Palladium Group discuss how Humanitarian Logistics Capability supports the Australian Government in responding to humanitarian crises in the Indo-Pacific.

If you are attending in-person, please arrive at Holding Redlich at 5.30pm for registration and drinks. This event will be available online. After registering, on May 23 you will receive a follow-up confirmation email containing further details on how to join the webinar which will commence at 6pm AEST. The event is free for AIIA Queensland members and AIIA members from all states. Non-members pay $10 and student non-members $5.

If you arrive after 6pm, the lifts may not be accessible. Ring 0403 777 541 for assistance.

The Humanitarian Logistics Capability (HLC) is an Australian Government investment implemented by The Palladium Group. The HLC program provides crucial logistic and procurement support for the implementation of the Government's disaster response and humanitarian policy imperatives.

The program is a key element of the Pacific partnership between Australia and the nations of the region. It was designed as a flexible and responsive mechanism, seeking to facilitate timely, effective, and flexible delivery of Australian humanitarian assistance through the provision of appropriate and high-quality humanitarian supply chain logistics support and advice to humanitarian emergencies in the Indo-Pacific region and globally.

The HLC was originally designed to provide a humanitarian response to one medium and one large crisis in the Indo-Pacific per year. The reality today is much more complicated than that. In the past few years, the world has seen unprecedented crises, including a global pandemic, international supply chain disruptions, civil unrest, and armed conflict. Despite this, the HLC's response team is no stranger to responding to multiple, concurrent, and even colliding crises and disasters.

The team has responded to disasters such as the tsunami response to the Tonga volcano eruption, the cyclones which hit Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Fiji, COVID response support throughout the Pacific, and most recently, the earthquakes in Türkiye.

Three days after two devastating earthquakes struck Türkiye, members of Palladium's HLC team arrived to support the Australian Government's Disaster Assistance Response Team. Team Australia was made up of Australian search and rescue workers from NSW, ACT and Queensland state agencies, three Australian Government liaison officers and two HLC members.

In addition to supporting humanitarian responses, the HLC program can be leveraged to support a wide range of preparedness efforts to include supporting regional Australian High Commissions and Embassies with the prepositioning of supplies, management of in-country warehousing, and meeting other advising and training requirements. The dynamic nature of changing humanitarian needs requires the HLC program to be agile and adaptive, with the ability to quickly assess requirements, identify solutions and in some cases rapidly employ and deploy technical expertise.