Policy analysis: King-hit - preparing for Australia's disaster future
This paper makes recommendations as to how Australia can be better prepared for and recover from future natural disasters. Suggestions include: measuring and reporting on community resilience; providing disaster funds on the condition that new structures are made to be more resilient than the structures they replace; asking the Productivity Commission to investigate if the Commonwealth has got value from the billions spent on disaster response and recovery; declaring an annual national disaster prevention day; developing national hazard mapping and a national sea-level rise policy statement; introducing durability ratings for buildings; providing information to individual insurance policy holders on the risks associated with their property; developing a national policy on retreating from hazardous areas to reduce people’s exposure to severe risks; and starting a national communications campaign to encourage individual and community preparedness.