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This article highlights the need for an inclusive and integrated policy-making model by drawing on the experiences of the bushfire fighting efforts of community, business and government bodies during the bushfires that ravaged North-East Victoria during January and February of 2003 and the delivery of recovery assistance since the fires. These experiences revealed some shortfalls which militated against delivering public value for the communities affected during and after the fires. A policy framework has been developed in light of these shortfalls and is used here to reveal the ways in which bushfire management policy and practice needs to be 'modernised' if arrangements in the future are to deliver public value.