Insurance claims for wild weather damage this year already exceed 2024 total
Insurance claims for wild weather in the first five months of this year have already surpassed 2024 for at least one major insurer, as the community tallies the cost of Cyclone Alfred and the NSW floods.
NRMA Insurance said it had received 32,000 claims for wild weather-related damage to both vehicles and property between January and May this year, including cyclones, devastating floods, damaging winds and storms. While unusually high, it did not surpass the 53,716 claims in the first five months of 2022 for damage from widespread floods and an east coast low.
Climate Change Authority chair Matt Kean said Australia needed to reduce emissions to limit further climate warming, while also mounting a strong national adaptation effort to protect the nation against the risks that were already here.
'It's no surprise the damage bill is mounting,' Kean said. 'This underscores the need for practical action like updating building codes and extending cyclone construction standards further down the coast.'
Loading
The Albanese government has invested $27.4 million in Australia's first-ever National Climate Risk Assessment and a related National Adaptation Plan, but it is yet to be released. The Climate Change Authority will on Thursday publish a report examining the perils of climate change for home owners, including the implications of ex-tropical Cyclone Alfred and expectations of more southerly cyclones.
CSIRO research suggests every $1 invested in climate resilience saves up to $11 in recovery costs.
Alfred was the first cyclone to threaten South East Queensland and northern NSW in 50 years. Peter Chan, a meteorologist and executive manager with NRMA's natural perils team, said back in 1974 when Cyclone Zoe and Cyclone Wanda hit, there were 2 million people living in South East Queensland and now there were 4 million. By 2046, the population of the region is expected to grow to 6 million.
NRMA Insurance covers every state and territory except Victoria, where IAG insurance is sold by RACV. Chan said Queensland experienced its worst season for wild weather claims back to at least 2017 – and that it took just 66 days for the state to surpass its total claims due to weather damage in 2024.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sky News AU
32 minutes ago
- Sky News AU
Energy Minister Chris Bowen launches major review of gas market rules amid energy grid concerns
Energy Minister Chris Bowen has launched a comprehensive review of gas market regulations in a bid to shore up long-term energy security and affordability. The review comes after Mr Bowen's repeated claims that 'renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy'. As part of the review, the government will consult with industry, stakeholders and the public on how to regulate the gas market. There have been sweeping efforts across all levels of government in recent months to review the role of gas in the power grid amid concerns about reliability and cost. The Victorian government recently backed down on its contentious gas bans following alarm from consumers and industry stakeholders. The NSW government also faced calls to intervene in Sydney Mayor Clover Moore's ban on gas appliances in new buildings. Mr Bowen said his review will ensure the gas market will be "fit for purpose" as the country accelerates toward an 82 per cent renewable energy grid. 'Gas has an important role to play in our energy system as we transition towards 82 per cent renewables,' Mr Bowen said in a statement on Monday. 'Unlike coal, gas power generators can be turned on and off in a couple of minutes – providing the ultimate backstop in our energy grid.' 'It's critical that we use this review get the settings right in our gas market, ensuring we are securing affordable Australian gas for Australian use.' The goal will be to streamline regulatory mechanisms to support long-term investment, affordability, and domestic supply of gas. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) released its latest Gas Inquiry report on Monday, raising concerns about the future of gas. The ACCC confirmed that while short-term supply was sufficient, the long-term outlook remains precarious without further investment. The report echoes years of warnings from the ACCC and the Australian Energy Market Operator about looming supply shortfalls. In response to those warnings, the Albanese government said it has secured 644 petajoules of enforceable domestic gas supply since 2023. Environment Minister Murray Watt recently gave the green light to Woodside's North West Shelf gas project extension until 2070 in order to firm up gas supply. The approval was made under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, which doesn't require consideration of climate impact. The decision sparked backlash from environmental groups and the Australians Greens, who accused Labor of failing a major climate test. Greens leader Larissa Waters labelled the approval 'a betrayal' of the government's commitment to net zero by 2050 and vowed to encourage legal action. 'Approving fossil fuels out to 2070 totally undermines the government's commitment to net zero by 2050, which is already too late for a safe climate future,' Ms Waters said. Despite the criticism, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese defended the continued role of gas during the transition. 'You can't have renewables unless you have firming capacity. You don't change a transition through warm thoughts. You do it through a concrete proposal,' he said recently.
AU Financial Review
3 hours ago
- AU Financial Review
Bowen flags east coast gas reserve
The Albanese government will consider establishing an east coast gas reservation but has ruled out imposing domestic supply conditions on existing projects. Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen on Monday confirmed a government review of the east coast gas market would include whether domestic gas needs would be considered as part of all new export projects, as first reported by The Australian Financial Review last month.
The Advertiser
3 hours ago
- The Advertiser
Defence spending: the art of picking the moment to panic
The United States wants Australia to spend more on its armed forces. That's the way nations talk about these things. In everyday life, things are different. I don't make up my shopping list by noting down "spend more on chicken thighs": I want to buy a particular number of chicken thighs, the number the recipe calls for. The Albanese government is standing firm in the face of American pressure, sort of, saying that we'll spend more money on our armed forces because we want to, not because you want us to, so there! Which doesn't really resolve the question of how many chicken thighs we need. It's certainly true that we're facing unprecedented challenges. In his recent Quarterly Essay "Hard new world", independent defence analyst Hugh White points out that in the Trump era the American alliance is no longer worth the paper it was never printed on (the ANZUS treaty commits the parties only to "consult[ing] together whenever in the opinion of any of them the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened" and to "act[ing] to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes". White concludes that Australia must stand up for itself, cancel AUKUS, and carve out its own foreign policy. Despite his differences with the government, however, he still suggests that "Australia will need to spend a lot more on defence if it wishes to manage the risk of aggression by a great power like China in the decades ahead." Various commentators have pointed out that we already spend rather a lot on our armed forces, coming in at about 11th on world rankings of dollar expenditure - more than Israel, more than Taiwan. For their payments, Taiwan gets a parade ground salute from 1,837,800 uniforms and Israel gets 642,000 (including large reserve forces in both cases). We check in at 79,990, reserves included - notably fewer. Even those critics who don't think we need to spend more on our defence don't suggest we need to spend less, but it would surely be odd if we had purely by chance ended up exactly in the Goldilocks zone. There are hints that we could do rather better. Analysis prepared for the Greens by the parliamentary library and reported by the ABC revealed that "the ranks of senior officers in the Australian military [have] almost doubled over the past 20 years, despite a steady decline in overall numbers of enlisted defence personnel". Critics - and some official reports - suggest "the Defence organisation is top- heavy, over-managed and under-led" (Michael Shoebridge, Strategic Analysis Australia) and "there are ... dangerous weaknesses in our defence capabilities" (Henry Ergas, in The Australian). Armed forces, though, are inherently difficult to manage efficiently. How do you measure the performance of an organisation that you hope is never going to be called upon to do what you would want it to be able to do? How, strategically, do you identify the threats that our forces are designed to combat, given that mentioning the names of these nations in public would move us appreciably closer to such conflicts? How, as a politician, do you cut back on the privileges of the generals without having them leak hostile reports to the media? Faced with these difficult problems, Australian ministers for defence tend to move on to another more compliant portfolio as soon as they can. Australian governments have historically retreated to arguing only about total spending, believing that the public can't cope with more than one number at a time. The other problem, of course, is productivity. Money spent on arms is, in economic terms, a dead end (although it could be said that our acquisition of warships supports our shipbuilding industry, or would, if we had one). There's not much spillover. Money invested almost anywhere else - education, research, infrastructure - would have a payoff down the track; adding more soldiers just withdraws resources from everywhere else and diminishes growth. READ MORE: The longer we can last before we arm up, the more resources we'll have when we need to. If Australia did believe that we were in actual danger of invasion, we would be spending on defence about what we spent in 1943, or 33 per cent of GDP, and we'd also be instituting conscription and rationing. The difference between 2 per cent and 33 per cent is a measure of how safe we feel when not specifically prompted to panic. The trick, of course, is picking the moment to panic. And one of the major tasks facing any Australian government is to make it absolutely clear when the answer is "not remotely yet". Our leaders are very, very bad at it. Then we need to talk about AI and its role in place of foot soldiers. That's a whole other debate. The United States wants Australia to spend more on its armed forces. That's the way nations talk about these things. In everyday life, things are different. I don't make up my shopping list by noting down "spend more on chicken thighs": I want to buy a particular number of chicken thighs, the number the recipe calls for. The Albanese government is standing firm in the face of American pressure, sort of, saying that we'll spend more money on our armed forces because we want to, not because you want us to, so there! Which doesn't really resolve the question of how many chicken thighs we need. It's certainly true that we're facing unprecedented challenges. In his recent Quarterly Essay "Hard new world", independent defence analyst Hugh White points out that in the Trump era the American alliance is no longer worth the paper it was never printed on (the ANZUS treaty commits the parties only to "consult[ing] together whenever in the opinion of any of them the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened" and to "act[ing] to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes". White concludes that Australia must stand up for itself, cancel AUKUS, and carve out its own foreign policy. Despite his differences with the government, however, he still suggests that "Australia will need to spend a lot more on defence if it wishes to manage the risk of aggression by a great power like China in the decades ahead." Various commentators have pointed out that we already spend rather a lot on our armed forces, coming in at about 11th on world rankings of dollar expenditure - more than Israel, more than Taiwan. For their payments, Taiwan gets a parade ground salute from 1,837,800 uniforms and Israel gets 642,000 (including large reserve forces in both cases). We check in at 79,990, reserves included - notably fewer. Even those critics who don't think we need to spend more on our defence don't suggest we need to spend less, but it would surely be odd if we had purely by chance ended up exactly in the Goldilocks zone. There are hints that we could do rather better. Analysis prepared for the Greens by the parliamentary library and reported by the ABC revealed that "the ranks of senior officers in the Australian military [have] almost doubled over the past 20 years, despite a steady decline in overall numbers of enlisted defence personnel". Critics - and some official reports - suggest "the Defence organisation is top- heavy, over-managed and under-led" (Michael Shoebridge, Strategic Analysis Australia) and "there are ... dangerous weaknesses in our defence capabilities" (Henry Ergas, in The Australian). Armed forces, though, are inherently difficult to manage efficiently. How do you measure the performance of an organisation that you hope is never going to be called upon to do what you would want it to be able to do? How, strategically, do you identify the threats that our forces are designed to combat, given that mentioning the names of these nations in public would move us appreciably closer to such conflicts? How, as a politician, do you cut back on the privileges of the generals without having them leak hostile reports to the media? Faced with these difficult problems, Australian ministers for defence tend to move on to another more compliant portfolio as soon as they can. Australian governments have historically retreated to arguing only about total spending, believing that the public can't cope with more than one number at a time. The other problem, of course, is productivity. Money spent on arms is, in economic terms, a dead end (although it could be said that our acquisition of warships supports our shipbuilding industry, or would, if we had one). There's not much spillover. Money invested almost anywhere else - education, research, infrastructure - would have a payoff down the track; adding more soldiers just withdraws resources from everywhere else and diminishes growth. READ MORE: The longer we can last before we arm up, the more resources we'll have when we need to. If Australia did believe that we were in actual danger of invasion, we would be spending on defence about what we spent in 1943, or 33 per cent of GDP, and we'd also be instituting conscription and rationing. The difference between 2 per cent and 33 per cent is a measure of how safe we feel when not specifically prompted to panic. The trick, of course, is picking the moment to panic. And one of the major tasks facing any Australian government is to make it absolutely clear when the answer is "not remotely yet". Our leaders are very, very bad at it. Then we need to talk about AI and its role in place of foot soldiers. That's a whole other debate. The United States wants Australia to spend more on its armed forces. That's the way nations talk about these things. In everyday life, things are different. I don't make up my shopping list by noting down "spend more on chicken thighs": I want to buy a particular number of chicken thighs, the number the recipe calls for. The Albanese government is standing firm in the face of American pressure, sort of, saying that we'll spend more money on our armed forces because we want to, not because you want us to, so there! Which doesn't really resolve the question of how many chicken thighs we need. It's certainly true that we're facing unprecedented challenges. In his recent Quarterly Essay "Hard new world", independent defence analyst Hugh White points out that in the Trump era the American alliance is no longer worth the paper it was never printed on (the ANZUS treaty commits the parties only to "consult[ing] together whenever in the opinion of any of them the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened" and to "act[ing] to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes". White concludes that Australia must stand up for itself, cancel AUKUS, and carve out its own foreign policy. Despite his differences with the government, however, he still suggests that "Australia will need to spend a lot more on defence if it wishes to manage the risk of aggression by a great power like China in the decades ahead." Various commentators have pointed out that we already spend rather a lot on our armed forces, coming in at about 11th on world rankings of dollar expenditure - more than Israel, more than Taiwan. For their payments, Taiwan gets a parade ground salute from 1,837,800 uniforms and Israel gets 642,000 (including large reserve forces in both cases). We check in at 79,990, reserves included - notably fewer. Even those critics who don't think we need to spend more on our defence don't suggest we need to spend less, but it would surely be odd if we had purely by chance ended up exactly in the Goldilocks zone. There are hints that we could do rather better. Analysis prepared for the Greens by the parliamentary library and reported by the ABC revealed that "the ranks of senior officers in the Australian military [have] almost doubled over the past 20 years, despite a steady decline in overall numbers of enlisted defence personnel". Critics - and some official reports - suggest "the Defence organisation is top- heavy, over-managed and under-led" (Michael Shoebridge, Strategic Analysis Australia) and "there are ... dangerous weaknesses in our defence capabilities" (Henry Ergas, in The Australian). Armed forces, though, are inherently difficult to manage efficiently. How do you measure the performance of an organisation that you hope is never going to be called upon to do what you would want it to be able to do? How, strategically, do you identify the threats that our forces are designed to combat, given that mentioning the names of these nations in public would move us appreciably closer to such conflicts? How, as a politician, do you cut back on the privileges of the generals without having them leak hostile reports to the media? Faced with these difficult problems, Australian ministers for defence tend to move on to another more compliant portfolio as soon as they can. Australian governments have historically retreated to arguing only about total spending, believing that the public can't cope with more than one number at a time. The other problem, of course, is productivity. Money spent on arms is, in economic terms, a dead end (although it could be said that our acquisition of warships supports our shipbuilding industry, or would, if we had one). There's not much spillover. Money invested almost anywhere else - education, research, infrastructure - would have a payoff down the track; adding more soldiers just withdraws resources from everywhere else and diminishes growth. READ MORE: The longer we can last before we arm up, the more resources we'll have when we need to. If Australia did believe that we were in actual danger of invasion, we would be spending on defence about what we spent in 1943, or 33 per cent of GDP, and we'd also be instituting conscription and rationing. The difference between 2 per cent and 33 per cent is a measure of how safe we feel when not specifically prompted to panic. The trick, of course, is picking the moment to panic. And one of the major tasks facing any Australian government is to make it absolutely clear when the answer is "not remotely yet". Our leaders are very, very bad at it. Then we need to talk about AI and its role in place of foot soldiers. That's a whole other debate. The United States wants Australia to spend more on its armed forces. That's the way nations talk about these things. In everyday life, things are different. I don't make up my shopping list by noting down "spend more on chicken thighs": I want to buy a particular number of chicken thighs, the number the recipe calls for. The Albanese government is standing firm in the face of American pressure, sort of, saying that we'll spend more money on our armed forces because we want to, not because you want us to, so there! Which doesn't really resolve the question of how many chicken thighs we need. It's certainly true that we're facing unprecedented challenges. In his recent Quarterly Essay "Hard new world", independent defence analyst Hugh White points out that in the Trump era the American alliance is no longer worth the paper it was never printed on (the ANZUS treaty commits the parties only to "consult[ing] together whenever in the opinion of any of them the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened" and to "act[ing] to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes". White concludes that Australia must stand up for itself, cancel AUKUS, and carve out its own foreign policy. Despite his differences with the government, however, he still suggests that "Australia will need to spend a lot more on defence if it wishes to manage the risk of aggression by a great power like China in the decades ahead." Various commentators have pointed out that we already spend rather a lot on our armed forces, coming in at about 11th on world rankings of dollar expenditure - more than Israel, more than Taiwan. For their payments, Taiwan gets a parade ground salute from 1,837,800 uniforms and Israel gets 642,000 (including large reserve forces in both cases). We check in at 79,990, reserves included - notably fewer. Even those critics who don't think we need to spend more on our defence don't suggest we need to spend less, but it would surely be odd if we had purely by chance ended up exactly in the Goldilocks zone. There are hints that we could do rather better. Analysis prepared for the Greens by the parliamentary library and reported by the ABC revealed that "the ranks of senior officers in the Australian military [have] almost doubled over the past 20 years, despite a steady decline in overall numbers of enlisted defence personnel". Critics - and some official reports - suggest "the Defence organisation is top- heavy, over-managed and under-led" (Michael Shoebridge, Strategic Analysis Australia) and "there are ... dangerous weaknesses in our defence capabilities" (Henry Ergas, in The Australian). Armed forces, though, are inherently difficult to manage efficiently. How do you measure the performance of an organisation that you hope is never going to be called upon to do what you would want it to be able to do? How, strategically, do you identify the threats that our forces are designed to combat, given that mentioning the names of these nations in public would move us appreciably closer to such conflicts? How, as a politician, do you cut back on the privileges of the generals without having them leak hostile reports to the media? Faced with these difficult problems, Australian ministers for defence tend to move on to another more compliant portfolio as soon as they can. Australian governments have historically retreated to arguing only about total spending, believing that the public can't cope with more than one number at a time. The other problem, of course, is productivity. Money spent on arms is, in economic terms, a dead end (although it could be said that our acquisition of warships supports our shipbuilding industry, or would, if we had one). There's not much spillover. Money invested almost anywhere else - education, research, infrastructure - would have a payoff down the track; adding more soldiers just withdraws resources from everywhere else and diminishes growth. READ MORE: The longer we can last before we arm up, the more resources we'll have when we need to. If Australia did believe that we were in actual danger of invasion, we would be spending on defence about what we spent in 1943, or 33 per cent of GDP, and we'd also be instituting conscription and rationing. The difference between 2 per cent and 33 per cent is a measure of how safe we feel when not specifically prompted to panic. The trick, of course, is picking the moment to panic. And one of the major tasks facing any Australian government is to make it absolutely clear when the answer is "not remotely yet". Our leaders are very, very bad at it. Then we need to talk about AI and its role in place of foot soldiers. That's a whole other debate.
