Climate change is making natural disasters more frequent and more intense, increasing costs for households, businesses, and governments. This includes local governments, which are responsible for infrastructure such as roads, footpaths, drainage, sewage, parks and community facilities.

This briefing note makes the simple point that the costs of climate change are increasing rapidly, while local government revenues are growing far more slowly.

To demonstrate this, we compare the value of insured losses from natural catastrophes as estimated by the Insurance Council of Australia and compare this with Australian Bureau of Statistics data on local government revenues.