Actions for the 48th Parliament of Australia
Protect people through and following climate disasters and extreme weather
Climate change is a justice issue.
The evidence that climate change drives worsening and more frequent extreme weather events and disasters is overwhelming. Alongside physical and psychological impacts, climate disasters create or worsen legal problems related to housing, insurance, income and social security, debt, family violence, destroyed documents and wills, and more. Some people’s legal problems begin straight away. Some people’s emerge a year or more down the track. Many of the problems created or made worse by climate disasters impact people’s lives for many years.
Climate change compounds structural barriers. Disasters and the harshest extremes of day-to-day weather conditions most severely impact people who experience social and economic barriers to equality, and who are most often failed by our laws, policies, and justice systems.
Problem: too many renters are living in homes that don’t keep them safe through extreme weather and disasters
A safe, healthy home is a fundamental part of keeping people safe through extreme weather and disasters, but too many people can’t access this protection. As climate change progresses, weather is becoming more extreme and volatile year-round. Australian homes, on average, have low energy performance, and rental homes are especially affected. People who rent are more exposed to the heat of summer and the cold of winter. This is bad for health, especially for people with pre-existing health conditions, children, and older renters. It also pushes up energy costs, which is a particular challenge for low-income renters.
People who rent their homes often have very few options to make them safer and healthier to live in through extreme weather conditions. In most jurisdictions, protections to ensure homes being rented out to people are safe and healthy are very limited.
Through the 2023 A Better Deal For Renters, the Federal Government showed leadership in working towards consistent protections for renters in all jurisdictions. This was a positive step, although not all jurisdictions have been good at implementing all provisions, in part due to a lack of national engagement. As climate change progresses, the Federal Government must now again show leadership in working towards adapting rental homes across all jurisdictions to withstand climate extremes. To be successful, there must be ongoing engagement and leadership at the federal level to ensure there is implementation across Australia.
Solution:
Lead a national process to agree on a shared set of actions to support implementation of consistent minimum energy efficiency standards for rental homes across all jurisdictions.
Problem: insurance can be inaccessible and insurance providers can behave badly following a climate disaster
Insurance is getting more expensive everywhere, but particularly in areas where climate change is significantly increasing the risk of extreme weather and disasters. Insurance companies aren’t transparent enough about how they set their pricing, and there is too much inconsistency across insurers. Too often, insurers don’t give people all the information about the risks their homes are exposed to, why their premiums have gone up, what climate adaptation measures they can take to make their homes more resilient to extreme weather, and how these measures will be reflected in lower premiums. This means many people are paying more than they can afford for insurance or are priced out of insurance altogether.
Insurers can also behave badly in response to claims, with little oversight. People who have experienced climate disasters too often see their claims fully or partially rejected and then face abuses of power by insurers who grind down their resolve until they accept the rejection or accept an unsatisfactory cash settlement offer. This further diminishes the perceived value of insurance, and disincentivises investment, particular in the context of a cost of living crisis. The result is communities exposed to further financial loss, housing insecurity and prolonged hardship when the next disaster strikes.
Solution:
Improve transparency and accessibility of insurance by requiring insurers to:
- Tell consumers the changes they can make to their homes to make them more resilient to disasters and lower their insurance premiums
- Provide free assessments for people who have made changes to their homes to mitigate disaster impacts and require that insurers reflect these mitigation measures in any new or renewing insurance policies
- Require that insurers provide customers a tailored breakdown of the key components of their premiums to understand the reasons for any changes.
Strengthen oversight of the insurance sector and improve outcomes for those impacted by disasters, by implementing recommendations of the Standing Committee on Economics’ report on the Inquiry into insurers’ responses to 2022 major floods claims, starting with recommendations 1, 2 and 7.
Problem: legal assistance services aren’t properly funded to best help communities impacted by disasters
People impacted by disasters are included as a new priority group under the National Access to Justice Partnership Agreement (NAJP). Disaster-impacted communities need their community legal centres to be able to respond to legal need at every stage of the disaster cycle from preparedness and risk reduction to response and recovery. Current funding arrangements for disaster legal assistance services make it very difficult for community legal centres to plan, deliver and scale up disaster-related services.
Community legal centres are well-placed to deliver community education on disaster-related legal issues that support preparedness and risk reduction like preparing important documents, housing and tenancy laws, social security, and financial literacy including insurance. However, our sector received no extra funding for disaster risk reduction, disaster preparedness or community resilience-building when the new NAJP commenced from 1 July 2025. Government funding for disaster resilience would support community legal centres to provide this type of crucial legal education and help insulate communities from the ripple effects of disasters.
Following disasters, some community legal centres receive one-off grants to deliver disaster legal assistance services to impacted people and communities. These grants are administered by the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) under the National Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements. Some aspects of the funding model work well: funds are delivered by state governments, which means responses can be tailored to local needs. The amount of funding delivered for disaster legal assistance services in response to recent disasters has also been insufficient.
In some jurisdictions, timeliness of funding distribution is improving, however in most cases it still takes far too long for funding to reach services in impacted communities. After the recent floods along the east coast of Queensland, community legal centres were still waiting to receive funding six months after disaster was declared. After the Black Summer bushfires in 2019-20 and the 2021 floods, some centres in NSW waited for more than a year to receive allocated funding. This means centres can’t trigger surge capacity or offer immediate services, which leaves many people without help while their legal problems snowball.
The funding model (which operates on a cost recovery basis) is better suited to infrastructure projects and is not fit for purpose for community-based disaster legal assistance services. Often, strict conditions attach to funding, which prevent community legal centres from responding flexibly to need and contribute to increased administrative burdens at a time when centres want to focus all their resources on supporting the community.
Different levels of involvement by states and territories to support the rollout of disaster recovery legal assistance also leads to inconsistent experiences for people, communities, and services across the different jurisdictions.
Solution:
Deliver additional funding via the National Access to Justice Partnership for community legal centres to deliver community legal education and other risk-reduction, preparedness, and resilience-building programs as part of business-as-usual service delivery.
In consultation with the community legal sector, reform the National Emergency Management Association’s (NEMA) standardised disaster recovery legal assistance package. Ensure the funding model is fit for purpose and delivers timely and flexible funding to community legal centres when a disaster is declared. Task NEMA to work with states and territories to ensure a nationally consistent approach.