Let's start therefore with a universal truth: leaders are fundamentally accountable.

Communication is the conduit of leadership from the Prime Minister down to the leading hand of a small group of council workers fixing the roads. Leadership uncommunicated is leadership unrequited!

We want our leaders to be fair dinkum, as much among us as above us.

But the people of the disaster area fundamentally needed to understand that the rest of Australia had noticed their misery and their stoicism and their intense sense of community and determination to arise from the sodden wreckage of their homes, and that Australians would dig deep to help. I helped to describe the community ethos which quickly triumphed over incipient despair. It is this mobilisation of the unifying spirit that thrills us all, even as we mourn.

Leaders who fail to appreciate this fundamental precept of accountability must also fail to muster the profound commitment true leadership demands.

Oh, fatherhood has a very humanising effect on a bloke like me in the military. As a dad, you become absolutely aware of your own human frailty and a need to be nurturing and compassionate and fatherly

I saw one of my primary tasks was to do what I could to restore confidence, to ensure that people knew and cared about their predicament and that governments were committed to helping. Equally an optimism had to be engendered, a belief that not only would they recover but would emerge 'bigger, brighter and better than ever.'