Australia urgently needs a dedicated, independently administered fund to meet the escalating costs of natural disasters due to global warming.
Beneficiaries of the National Climate Disaster Fund?
Funding can be distributed amongst the most disaster impacted regions and sectors in Australia. These include:
Queensland
Currently Queensland bears around 60 percent of Australia’s total natural disasters (Deloitte Access Economics (2017) Building resilience to natural disasters in our states and territories). The increasing frequency of floods, fires and drought means these costs will almost certainly escalate. At the same time, the Commonwealth Government Grants Commission has significantly reduced the eligibility of QLD Government projects for GST revenue, as it no longer considers state government expenditure on disaster-affected local government assets to be necessary (Queensland Government (2019) Budget Papers 2019-20).
The NCDF could greatly assist the Queensland Government and local councils in disaster response, relief and reconstruction.
