Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, can I offer our thoughts to those communities that are once again afflicted by flooding and are dealing with the consequences. I want to pay tribute to and thank the volunteers, council workers, emergency personnel and community who are on the ground doing incredible work, day and night, in preparing for the flooding disasters that we're seeing and in cleaning up. We've already seen that the new National Emergency Management Agency has had to work collaboratively with all levels of community and government affected by these floods that we're experiencing at the moment.

It turns out that the climate scientists were right! They've been warning for some decades now that we will experience an increase in the severity of weather events—particularly, in Australia, around flooding associated with increased rainfall and bushfires associated with the summer months—and that's exactly what is playing out. Unfortunately, many communities and many individual households and businesses have experienced that in having to deal with the flooding.

We all know that there is a cost associated with climate change. The previous government and those opposite have denied that. They've said that there's no cost associated with climate change—that you can get on with removing emissions trading schemes and with trying to remove the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and all these organisations that were devoted to encouraging an increase in renewables and a reduction in emissions so Australia did its bit to tackle climate change. They said that there was no cost; we didn't have to worry about it. But the economists and the climate scientists were saying, 'There will be a cost associated with climate change, and the longer you kick the can down the road, the more the cost will be.' Well, guess what, Madam Deputy Speaker? Communities that are afflicted by flooding at the moment are feeling that cost right now. Australians over the last decade have been feeling that cost, particularly during the bushfires—we've still got people living in temporary housing—and during the floods that we saw earlier this year, particularly around the Lismore area, where people still haven't been able to rebuild their homes. That is the cost of climate change, and that cost is only going to grow.

The Insurance Council of Australia last year estimated that the cost of natural disasters in Australia over the 2019-2020 period was $5.19 billion. That cost is going to grow. They expect that every year the average cost of natural disasters in Australia will be $18.2 billion, growing to $39 billion by 2050. The cost of climate change is going to be felt by Australians and it's going to grow. It will be principally felt through individuals', families' and companies' insurance premiums. Think about the notion of insurance. You are costing in a risk. You are looking at what the risk is going to be and factoring in a cost to insure people for that. What we've seen is that the risk is going to increase. That is the cost of climate change. It's going to feel its way into all of our insurance policies, not just those of people who are living in flood-prone areas or areas increasingly in danger of cyclones and bushfires. Each year, that cost is going to grow.

The Productivity Commission have had a look at this issue, and they've said that historically in Australia what we've done as a government and as a people is overinvest in post-disaster recovery and underinvest in mitigation. We all know you can't stop the weather. You can't stop the fact that we're probably going to have many more floods, bushfires and cyclones in the north of Australia, but what you can do is prepare communities to ensure that you reduce the risk of those extreme weather events doing damage and thereby reduce the cost to communities and the flow-on costs to people's insurance policies into the future. That is exactly what this bill is about.

The approach of the previous government, when it came to their Emergency Response Fund, was that all of the money associated with it was spent on post-disaster recovery—on clean-up—rather than on mitigation, and anything that wasn't spent was invested in markets to earn interest. What's the point of that when you have an increasing risk of damage associated with climate change and you are not spending the money allocated to the fund that has been specifically allocated to ensure that the government invests in mitigation infrastructure? We have seen that underinvestment and we have seen the damage that's been done to communities where we know there are natural floodplains, where we know there is the risk of flooding and where we know there is the risk of cyclones.

The former government had to play catch-up, and they played catch-up in a number of ways. There's the cyclone reinsurance pool in the north of Australia. Time will tell whether that will work, but it is a $10 billion guarantee backed by the government because insurers are pulling out of that market because they know that the risk is too high. You can't insure against something that's almost a certainty. Then we had the disastrous approach with the Emergency Response Fund and not investing in mitigation infrastructure.

The Albanese Labor government accepts that climate change is occurring. We accept the advice of climate scientists and economists who say that the costs associated with climate change are going to grow unless we invest in mitigation infrastructure, and that is exactly what this bill does. It ensures that the government establishes the Disaster Ready Fund, investing up to $200 million a year, matched by the states and territories, in disaster risk reduction and mitigation. The CSIRO has found that, for every dollar spent reducing disaster risk, it will save between $2 and $11 on disaster recovery and reconstruction.

The new government is also committing $38.3 million over four years, from 2022-23, for Disaster Relief Australia, a veteran led group doing wonderful work, so that they can scale-up their organisational capacity and operations, providing a significant increase of close to 5,000 additional volunteers to their existing disaster volunteer workforce by covering the uplift costs associated with recruitment, deployment, equipment and training.

This government's approach will be in complete contrast to the climate change denial and the lack of investment in mitigation infrastructure from the previous government. Instead of spending money solely on clean-up and recovery, this government will support communities when that occurs but also will invest up to $200 million a year in mitigation infrastructure to future-proof communities and individual families and businesses.

We're talking about things like building levees. I was fortunate to go to Roma in Central Queensland a few years ago. They had problems with flooding in the past. The river there would overflow quite regularly and inundate houses and businesses. Insurers were pulling out of that market because the risk was too great and they didn't want to lose money on what was becoming an ever-increasingly risky proposition. So the Gillard government, with the Campbell Newman government in Queensland, co-invested in the building of a levee. The levee has made a fundamental difference to the risk of flooding in Roma but also to insurance premiums. That risk is now mitigated, insurers are moving back into that market and households and businesses are able to access insurance at a reasonable cost. That is a classic example of governments working at state and federal levels to build mitigation infrastructure, to protect communities from the risk of climate change and to ensure that that money is being wisely invested.

That is exactly what this fund is about. It's about building those levees. It's about building those culverts. It's about providing the opportunity for people that live in fire-prone areas to future-proof their homes to ensure that they can reduce the risk of the monumental damage associated with bushfires.

There is also some great work going on in the north of Australia through the university sector up in Cairns and Townsville. They are developing homes that will be cyclone-proof into the future because they know that the risk is going to grow and grow and that that will have a cost for households and businesses through their insurance policies. This is something that the government in Australia should've been doing a decade ago. But we had that wasted opportunity under the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments, where the denial of climate change and the fact that they put all of this on the back burner and kicked the can down the road meant that the climate scientists and the economists were right that the longer you delay the greater the cost. Communities are now feeling that cost. And governments, particularly the federal government, have had to intervene in markets—particularly in the north of Australia with the cyclone reinsurance pool—and back insurers to ensure that the risk is reduced and that you can have insurance maintained in those markets. If there had been some foresight by the government and some planning then potentially they wouldn't have had to do that. But because this government ignored the advice of those experts and kicked the can down the road we've now got those significant costs that are being undertaken and, unfortunately, those costs are going to grow and grow and grow.

The increasing threat of severe weather is likely to increase. The risk of damage, particularly to critical infrastructure, is going to grow. That's why Australia needs a Disaster Ready Fund, so that we are building that mitigation infrastructure to reduce those impacts—particularly of cyclone, flood and bushfires—on communities, households and businesses into the future. It demonstrates that this government takes the threat of climate change seriously and will do whatever it takes to ensure that we can, where possible, protect communities and the livelihoods of Australians.

See this speech in context