Zali Steggall (Warringah, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I want to start off by saying a huge thank you to the many organisations and individuals who went above and beyond in assisting the local communities impacted by ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred. It was the best of Australians that we saw, with so many communities rallying and services—more often than not, volunteers—coming to the aid and support of so many communities to ensure there was that level of preparedness to try to mitigate the likely severe impact of the cyclone.

It was really interesting to see the role the Bureau of Meteorology played in providing that early warning and ongoing information. Of course, no-one controls nature and it has a mind of its own, so the additional time provided through that early warning process allowed for greater preparation for so many of those communities. This highlights the importance of having that visibility, that satellite capability and that information to be able to predict when these events hit.

Unfortunately, as has been established by experts, many predicted patterns are changing as our environment is changing and warming. While cyclones are predicted to be less frequent, they are predicted to be much more severe when they hit, as a result of fast-warming water temperatures, which means we have supercharged amounts of humidity in the atmosphere. This makes for much greater downpours of rain and also weather events that will hit with a severity that puts at risk the safety of communities and would devastate them economically.

The aftermath of ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred is telling. When you look at the budget recently delivered by the government, it took centre stage. It has to be part of our economic planning for the future. In the aftermath—this is for one event that unravelled over the course of about a week, but the cleanup will go on for much longer—we saw more than 300,000 homes losing power. There were some 644 properties with flood damage, including 112 with severe damage. Of those, 97 had been affected by flooding in 2022 and had not even been repaired yet.

The idea that these are individual events that will happen from time to time is simply not the reality anymore. We know these events come successively. They batter communities. They overwhelm capacity to respond. They will overwhelm the very well-meaning volunteer workforce that comes to the aid of communities. We need to move beyond that capacity. We have to put in place more security and preparedness for these communities. The infrastructure damage is estimated to be in the hundreds of millions. The aftermath of ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred underscores Australia's vulnerability as a continent to extreme weather events. I think that in the same week that we were talking about ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred we had other parts of Australia grappling with flooding and other parts grappling with bushfires. The reality is that we are incredibly exposed as a continent to these changing events. We're feeling the impacts of our warming climate, and, without interventions, communities will continue to suffer.

Whilst it's incredibly important that we continue to mitigate, we cannot keep making this problem worse, so we must act in terms of the mitigation piece and be ambitious on our emissions reduction. We must build in adaptation and resilience at the same time. Communities and individual households should not be left holding the bag for a national and global failure of policy over the last 20 or 30 years. That adaptation-and-resilience-building piece must become a priority. Sadly, the most recent budget completely failed to address those needs.

We need to take action now to keep our communities safe today and into the future. These are really big challenges. Whilst there will be a lot of focus—and rightly so—on the insurance industry, to make sure that those with premiums are able to fully get the benefit of having paid for so many years, the reality is that one in five Australians surveyed are underinsured or uninsured. That means that, when these events strike, quite a significant proportion of people in our communities stand to lose up to 75 per cent of all the net worth that they have accumulated during their working lives, because too often it is heavily focused in the family home. A recent Australia Institute report found that one in five homeowners are underinsured or not insured. That equals some $2 trillion worth of properties at risk, as the bulk of the Australian population lives within 50 kilometres of our coastline.

So I think it becomes an economic imperative for anyone wanting to form government to have a focus on building that resilience. We see the price of climate change risk costed in insurance premiums. That is a really telling industry, because insurance companies price risk on a yearly basis. So every year that change is happening—whatever you want to believe as to the causes, or whether you want to believe that we have an impact on it or not—those companies look at the financial model, they cost risk and they build it into that model. So, whether you want to believe it or not, you are paying for it; whether you are directly impacted or not, you are paying for it. This is how the model works. It exposes a huge issue in economic management for Australia. We have to look at that and deal with it, and bring everyone to the table to solve it.

There must, of course, always be scrutiny of insurers to make sure there is no price-gouging and that there is compliance and quick processing. But the reality is that, as other jurisdictions and countries have found, insurers will choose to vacate a market if the risk becomes simply too high, or they will choose to just not insure for certain risks. In the wake of the LA fires, we're finding that a huge proportion of people impacted there in fact had only very recently found themselves to no longer have insurance. That leaves a huge problem, when so much damage is caused.

So it's a really high-stakes road map, and ex-Cyclone Alfred highlights the urgent need for immediate action to keep communities safe against climate change. I have called for a national framework for adaptation, which means legislating an independent climate-change risk assessment every five years to identify and address significant climate risks, because every community will have different needs. Some communities will need coolrooms and opportunities to escape heat; others will need to deal with drought, flooding, coastal erosion or bushfires. The risks are different in different communities, and we must have a national plan to address that. Obviously, going hand-in-hand with that, we must also legislate for the government of the day to have a national adaptation plan, outlining strategies, policies and proposals to mitigate the identified risks, complete with an implementation timeframe and monitoring indicators. This caring about communities can't just be left to whoever is in government, because it is the marginal seats that they care about.

There has to be a properly managed plan for that adaptation and resilience-building. Of course, it will cost—and that's why I'm calling for sustainable funding, with a $10 billion climate resilience fund, to secure that safety for our communities and to assist local government in doing the kinds of infrastructure changes that will build their resilience. That can be fully funded through the budget, by redistributing priorities so that, rather than continuing to do cream on top for mining companies through fossil fuel credits, we actually start to redirect funds to households and to local governments, so that they can be safe and lower their insurance premiums.

This plan is a comprehensive plan that I have put to both sides of politics who want to form government, because we know we can't leave householders holding the bag. Currently, they are paying for incredible increases in insurance premiums. Premiums have risen by 32 per cent since 2022 alone. This is an unsustainable trajectory.

We also can't leave local governments alone to deal with this problem. They are on the front line. When things fall apart or when events strike, it is local governments that have to deal with them. So we must put in place the capacity for local governments to build that resilience. And it can't be left to local residents to pay for it through council rates to local government. It is simply unacceptable that state governments are transferring onto our local governments a lot of these emergency-response fees and costs. And, ultimately, it is the individual residents who are paying for them.

We know the economic savings. There is a resilience dividend. For every $1 invested in resilience building, we save $11 on disaster recovery. In the most recent budget, it was estimated that the cost of ex-Cyclone Alfred would rise to $13.8 billion. We can do so much better if we start building adaptation and resilience.

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