Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

As I've said before in this place, it's not enough to be the lucky country; we must be smart as well. When it comes to our changing climate, smart governance means making decisions now that will allow future generations to cope with climate change in a way that is both sustainable and equitable. I want to thank the member for Warringah for moving this motion today. For us to pursue that goal means recognising that Australia is on the front line of climate change and integrating climate risk assessment and management into our land use, planning and building processes.

We know extreme weather events are now the new normal. In fact, it was almost five years ago that the then head of the Australian Defence Force, General Angus Campbell, sought to warn us that Australia is in the most natural disaster prone region in the world and that climate change is predicted to make disasters more extreme and more common. Weather extremes are projected to worsen as the climate warms further. These include increasing temperatures, more frequent heat waves, more storm events, less rainfall in many places and increased storm surges in others. With worsening extreme weather comes rising costs, costs that currently full on ordinary Australians, including rising insurance premiums, declining property values and a large mental health toll. Not only are these costs borne by ordinary households and businesses but they are more likely to fall on regional and rural Australians and lower income households who are least able to afford them.

My community of North Sydney and indeed many Australians are acutely aware that severe weather events are already costing the Australian economy, and they believe it is untenable and unethical for these increasing costs to continue to be borne by those on the front line. They have long called for strong action to improve the resilience and adaptation of Australian communities, homes and infrastructure. It's for this reason that I wholeheartedly support the motion moved by the member for Warringah, a motion that calls on the government to implement sensible, practical and achievable measures to improve Australia's climate resilience, including by ensuring building codes are fit for purpose, incentivising home adaptation measures, unlocking global capital for private-sector-led resilience and ensuring equitable access to insurance. Failing to plan, invest and act now is tantamount to putting our fingers in our ears and ignoring the science that tells us climate impacts will worsen.

Of course the first line of defence against climate impacts is reducing emissions. There's a long way to go on that front, but adaptation and resilience measures must be considered alongside strong mitigation plans and, to date, they've not been afforded the focus they deserve. We must start making climate informed decisions when it comes to the investment, location, insurance and design of our buildings. That means funding the organisations with a proven track record of helping to increase resilience of the built environment. This includes the Resilient Building Council, which operates on the principle that everyone has the right to safe, healthy, secure housing, and whose mission it is to realise that, right through a resilience revolution, better housing for all contributes to a thriving, sustainable community.

It means ensuring our building codes are fit for purpose because decisions made about homes today will continue to have consequences for many decades. The average life of a brick home in this country at the moment is 88 years, while a timber home will last 58 years. Many homes last much longer than this, and public buildings, particularly, are asked to stand well into the next century. To futureproof these homes and buildings we need a robust national standard for adaptation decision-making that considers climate risk as part of our land use planning and building reform processes, as previously proposed by the National Cabinet.

Additionally, climate resilience and adaptation must be included as a matter of priority in the upcoming update to the National Construction Code. Organisations across the world are currently updating standards or writing new ones that take future climate into consideration, and it's time Australia followed suit. Smart governance in a changing climate also means putting adaptations squarely within the remit of the sustainable finance taxonomy to enable cross-border flows of sustainable finance and accelerate the flow of capital into investments that not only support Australia's transition to net zero but also unlock private sector led resilience and adaptation measures.

Importantly, we must ensure equitable access to insurance, financial services and support, so lower-income households and regional Australians in high-risk areas are not left behind. As we've heard, the adaptation measures we take today pay dividends in the future. Every dollar spent on adaptation measures now returns an order of magnitude more in the years ahead and in direct and indirect benefits. Just last week experts from government, financial services, property and community gathered at the National Industry Roundtable on Land Use Planning and Resilience to say the time is now for action on land use planning and reforms. The informed measures proposed by the member for Warringah would help avoid the impacts of disasters when they occur. I commend the motion to the House.

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