Alastair Wilson

Alastair has had a longish career in the media and in emergency management – a bit over four decades in total.

After time in the army and the police force, in New Zealand, he began his media career as a radio journalist and then came to Australia where he worked in radio, television, and newspapers. He worked in public relations and then joined the federal government as a media manager for the Customs Service based in Sydney. In 2000 he took on public affairs roles firstly in the Industry Department, then the Immigration Department at the time of the Tampa asylum-seeker incident and through the children overboard political incident.

In 2003 he went to Emergency Management Australia in the Attorney-General’s Department as a media liaison officer covering such major disasters as the Indonesian Boxing Day tsunami and Cyclones Ingrid and Larry, and then part of the Media and Crisis Communications team within Attorney-General’s where he brought his considerable expertise to support community awareness programs in disaster preparation.

He has been a lecturer in media issues management and crisis communications at the Australian Emergency Management Institute (AEMI) in Victoria and in 2005 he co-founded the Emergency Media and Public Affairs association.

Alastair retired from the Australian Public Service in mid-2011 to establish his own crisis communications consultancy specialising in facilitating exercises and workshops and writing on disaster resilience topics.