Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As we've watched flooding occur around the country in recent days and weeks, there's deep empathy for victims from my electorate who live on the Hawkesbury-Nepean floodplain. This season we've been lucky so far, but that doesn't mean we can ignore the need to act urgently on flood mitigation, flood resilience and flood insurance. Around 1.3 million properties around the country are at risk of flooding. About half of them are without the flood resilience measures of modern planning and building standards. Around 240,000 of those properties, homes and businesses face at least a two per cent or five per cent chance of flooding each year—many are in Macquarie.

Since 2022, floods and storms in Macquarie have led to more than 3,000 properties requiring a rebuild by insurers, $107.6 million in insured losses and $193.6 million in total economic costs. Flood insurance is a problem. The link between high flood risk and lower socioeconomic status is strong. We're talking about 70 per cent of homes where median incomes are below the national median of $92,000 a year, and 35 per cent of these are in areas where the median income is below the poverty line. When people are quoted insurance premiums for flood coverage, as they are in parts of Macquarie, of $10,000, $20,000 or $30,000 a year, it is understandably completely out of reach for homeowners. The Insurance Council of Australia estimates around 80 per cent of homes that are in severe to extreme flood risk are not insured for flood.

This is something we have to tackle head on as a government, but we can't do it without the industry. We've started the work through the Hazards Insurance Partnership, the HIP, which the government established in 2023 to look at solutions for easing pressures on insurance premiums. In addition, I've worked with insurers exploring and learning more about models used elsewhere. I can say that no single country has nailed this. The Albanese government also created the Disaster Ready Fund in 2022, dedicating a billion dollars over five years for investment in disaster mitigation. But I want to see a greater focus on flood defence, especially for my region, and we await the New South Wales government's Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley Disaster Adaptation Plan to understand their priorities.

I stress again that there is urgency to act on flood risk and flood insurance. This is not just an issue for Macquarie; it's for every one of those 1.3 million properties at risk of flooding and already—or at risk of—being priced out of insurance. It's also a reality that those without insurance will turn to the government of the day for support should the worst happen. Our role should be to find a pathway to help people who live in floodplains have the financial resilience to cope with the inevitability of a flood.

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