OPINION: A unique analysis of Australian weather data going back 40 years has quantified the scale of the inundation problem facing vulnerable households.
Suncorp Group chief executive Steve Johnston worries that federal and state governments do not understand the magnitude of the nextHe says we appear to be heading into a third successive year of La Niña and, yet, the federal, Queensland and NSW governments have only made incremental advances in flood mitigation expenditure.David Rowe
The company took 40 years of meteorological data from every weather station in Australia by 10-minute increments. This was loaded into a database and mapped against key natural hazards and perils, including hail storms, cyclones, bushfires and floods.“What we’ve found is, in aggregate, there has been a slight increase in the frequency of the events – it’s up by about 0.2 per cent over the four decades,” Johnston says.
Johnston refuses to label those living in the 10,000 properties facing extreme flood risk as being “uninsurable”. But the reality is the“We think all homes should be insurable, but it needs a partnership between government and the insurance industry to allow that to happen in high-risk areas,” he says.
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