At a ceremony held at Government House on Wednesday, six projects and one photograph were recognised as winners of the 2023 South Australian Resilient Australia Awards.

The Resilient Australia Awards celebrate and promote initiatives that reduce risk and build whole-of-community resilience to disasters and emergencies around Australia, as well as photographic images capturing resilience in action. The awards recognise collaboration and innovative thinking across all sectors.

Since being established in 2000, the awards recognise a wide range of initiatives; with past projects centred on risk assessment and mitigation; mental health and wellbeing; education, training and research; community engagement, as well as response and recovery.

Determined through a judging panel, the South Australian Resilient Australia Awards have been awarded to:

Community Award
Joint winners

  • CALD Community-Locally Led Risk Reduction Project – Australian Red Cross
  • Operation Green Shoots@Charleston – Charleston Community Centre Incorporated


Government Award
Winner

Optimism and hope – building resilience after the South Australia Black Summer bushfires – Department of Primary Industries


Highly-commended

  • SA Water River Murray flood event – SA Water


Local Government Award
Winner

  • Towards Community Led Emergency Resilience – Adelaide Hills Council


Business Award
Winner

  • Kangaroo Island Business Climate Roadmap – Resilient Ready


Photography Award
Winner

  • Swiftwater Technicians – Jayme Moreland


These projects demonstrate that making disaster resilience everyone’s business makes SA a safer, more resilient and an even better place to live.

All entrants and winners from, community groups, state and local governments, and businesses across the state should be congratulated for their selfless achievements.
South Australian winners are automatically entered and considered for the 2023 National Resilient Australia Awards to be announced later this year.

Quotes

Attributable to Joe Szakacs

Our government is committed to reducing the community’s disaster risk and I would like to extend my congratulations to all award winners.

The nominated projects demonstrated that their proactive approach has resulted in tangible benefits to individual, community and organisational capability and resilience.

Attributable to SAFECOM Chief Executive Julia Waddington-Powell

Last year two SA award recipients were recognised for National Resilient Australia Awards in their category, and we are quite rightly proud of these achievements.

These awards are a fantastic opportunity to highlight how when local agencies, community groups and emergency management agencies work together, we can share knowledge to achieve a common goal.