Press conference at Parliament House, Canberra

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
PRESS CONFERENCE
MURAL HALL, PARLIAMENT HOUSE
MONDAY, 23 OCTOBER 2023 

Subjects: Bushfire Resilience Rating app, Wine tariffs and the Chinese market, Hamas-Israel conflict, Prime Minister's visit to US.
 
FIONA PHILLIPS: Good morning everyone. It's wonderful to be here today with an absolutely wonderful announcement. I'm Fiona Phillips, the Federal Member for Gilmore on the New South Wales South Coast, which of course was hit so hard by the Black Summer bushfires.

In my region, in the Shoalhaven and the Eurobodalla we lost 795 homes to bushfires and hundreds and hundreds of more homes damaged, and outbuildings damaged.

I'm really pleased to be here today with Minister Murray Watt, with Kate from the Resilient Building Council and Andrew from the Insurance Council of Australia, because what we're about to hear today, the Bushfire Resilience Rating app was actually piloted in my Shoalhaven community where we've had quite a number of people out there really testing this app.

What we found after the bushfires is that people were really financially and mentally so impacted by the bushfires, and they wanted to know what we can do to actually help, what we can do to help protect our homes going into the next fire season, and the fire seasons after that. We know that we can't stop bushfires, but we can do everything possible to make our homes and our community safer.

So I really want to thank Minister Murray Watt, the Resilient Building Council for actually developing this app. It has helped already so many people in my community and it's going to help so many people around Australia.

I'll just hand over to Murray. Thank you.

MURRAY WATT:  Well thanks very much Fiona and it's a delight to join you, Kate and Andrew here at the launch of what I think will be a really important practical step that Australians can take to make sure that they're as well prepared as possible for the coming bushfire season.

We know as we look around the country that we're already in bushfire season in a number of parts of the country. Fiona was talking to you about the hundreds of homes that were lost in her electorate during the Black Summer fires, and we understand already this year there have been around 20 homes and properties destroyed just in New South Wales alone because of the fires, and the season is really just getting going.

That's why it's been so important that governments are working together to make sure that we're as well prepared as possible. We're certainly stepping up at the Federal level to support States and Territories to be as well prepared as they possibly can be. But it's also important that we encourage homeowners and citizens to do everything possible to be ready for the coming fire season and for future fire seasons as well.

That's why it's so great that we've had this partnership under way between government, community sector and insurers to work together on practical things that people can do to make sure that they limit their risk as we're heading into bushfire season.

We've been very pleased as a Federal Government to provide $3 million in a grant from the National Emergency Management Agency to the Resilient Building Council to develop this Bushfire Resilience Rating app. And what it will do is provide every Australian with the opportunity to just hop online and test how resilient their home is for bushfire risk, and importantly to get some very practical suggestions about what can be done to improve that resilience level.

As Kate can tell you as she takes you through it, this app has been trialled in about 1,200 different homes across Australia, and in about 67 per cent of cases it was able to suggest ways that people could reduce their bushfire risk. That's important for insurers as well because we know that people are doing it tough with cost of living pressures, insurance premiums being the way that they are, and this will also give insurers the opportunity to look at a home's resilience level in determining the premium that should be charged for that.

So it's a good way that Australians can take some initiative to try to push as much downward pressure as they possibly can on their insurance premiums.

Just before I hand over to Kate, the other thing I was going to say is that of course there are major things that people can do to improve the resilience of their home. They can be changing and using bushfire resistant materials on their window shutters, other parts of their house.

But there's also really simple, cheap things that people can do that this app will help them with. Things like moving surfboards and caravans away from a home to reduce the risk. Things like sealing drafts in a home. All of those things are very cheap or don't cost anything at all but can actually go a long way to improving the fire resilience of your home.

And all you've got to do, I'll hop on to it myself, having just logged in this morning, all you've got to do is go to the Resilient Building Council website where you can find that app, enter details about the structure, the construction materials of your home. Very simple things that will give you very simple suggestions about how you can improve the fire resilience of your home.

So I can congratulate Kate and the Resilient Building Council, NEMA and everyone who's been involved in developing this app. It's another step that the Albanese Government is taking to make sure that we're as well prepared for natural disasters into the future as we possibly can be.

Over to you, Kate.

KATE COTTER - CEO RESILIENT BUILDING COUNCIL:  Thanks very much. First of all, I'd like to acknowledge the communities and the families that have been bushfire affected that have contributed to co designing this app, testing it and actually going through with the recommendations to improve their homes.

Community resilience is made of many people and many homes so we're trying to help individual homeowners help themselves, and through the trials those homeowners have gone and helped their neighbours and other people in their community use the app and get themselves ready.

So what's really exciting I guess about this app and what makes it a world first is applying 80 years of research into something practical and meaningful that hopefully will help Australians be better prepared for natural disasters.

The app is really easy to use. It takes about 20 minutes to complete. Households get a report that tells them specifically for their individual home, their individual risks what their rating is, what it could be and what actions that they could take for the specific to their home to improve its resilience.

So this is really a leap forward in the way Australians can have clarity and a measurable outcome about their resilience and to customise actions that will make immeasurable difference to improve the safety of communities and individual families and homes.

So we're really excited to put this work, it's been a decade of work, out into the community and we're looking forward to bringing other hazards on to this program next year.

I'd like to thank the Federal Government and NEMA and everyone that's contributed to bringing this I think really important program out into the public and so we can get ready together.

Thanks very much.

ANDREW HALL - CEO INSURANCE COUNCIL OF AUSTRALIA:  Thanks Kate. My name's Andrew Hall, I'm the CEO of the Insurance Council. Insurers are delighted to be collaborating with Government on these initiatives and we welcome today the launch of this resilient app.

This is yet another part of the important puzzle insurers are seeing Australians and through the Government actions take to be able to improve the narrative around our risk profile in this country.

Since the 2019 bushfires Australian insurers have paid out more than $13 billion in claims related to fire and to flood. The Albanese Government set up the Disaster Resilience Fund. This is an important investment and together with data that the insurers can bring to the table we hope that apps like this can start to empower communities to become far more resilient.

Australia must tell a better story when it comes to resilience. For too long we've built too many homes in areas that are subject to risk. And because insurance prices the risk, our insurance premiums have been going up and up.

In the last two years alone Australia's re insurance internationally has jumped around 20 to 30 per cent. And international re insurers are telling Australia we've got a short window of five years to improve our resilience narrative so that we can bring downward pressure on insurance premiums.

And it is the little individual actions that people can take. Increasingly insurers will start pricing homes at the individual address level, and when they do that you want to be able to show your insurer that you have maximum rating possible when it comes to resilience and mitigation against those risks.

So we commend the development of this app. We look forward to keeping working with the Federal Government through the Hazard Insurance Partnership. We think this is part of an overall push to be able to improve the resilience of Australian homes, and as the Minister says, ultimately bring downward pressure on insurance premiums.

JOURNALIST: Just a question for Andrew quickly. You mentioned about insurance, insurers looking at tools like this app to assess the risk to homes. Is this something we can see in the future being used to reduce premiums or essentially seeing an increase in premiums of people that aren't taking the right steps?

ANDREW HALL:  In the future insurers will use increasingly individual address level data to be able to price homes. Now what that means is that for people who can afford to do the work to improve a home, they will likely get a cheaper insurance premium.

What it does mean though as a community we've got to think about more broadly what do we need to do to lift the whole community. That's why the hazard insurance partnership which sits alongside the DRF work that the Government is doing is critically important, because moving forward money will have to be spent on those communities that can least afford the improvements to make sure they're not left behind in the data led future.

There is a downside with individual pricing of homes. The upside is that you may get a better insurance premium, but we've got to make sure everybody community wide do it, which is why we commend the work of going door to door in some of these bushfire riskier communities making sure people have got the app and can do the work that they need to do to their homes.

JOURNALIST: And this is for the Minister, how is the bushfire season looking right now? Is it better than previously thought?

MURRAY WATT:  Well, I think we're all concerned to see bushfires across so many parts of the country already and we're only in October. And it is a reminder that we are going to be facing the most difficult bushfire season that we've faced as a country since Black Summer.

All of the advice to me remains that it's not likely to be as catastrophic as Black Summer was, because of course that was on the back of four years of drought and instead what is happening here is that we're emerging from a period of very wet weather. So we haven't had that very long standing drought to dry out conditions but what we have had is lots of rain that has meant lots of grass, lots of other vegetation growing and in some parts of the country it has been difficult to get that reduced before this fire season.

That's why it is so important that governments, communities, insurers, industry, individuals are all working together to be as ready as possible as we can be for this fire season. We've taken a lot of steps as a government to make sure that we're ready.

We'll have the largest aerial fleet of aerial firefighting aircraft that we've ever had in the country. A range of other things as well. But we are looking at a serious season and everyone needs to be getting ready now.

JOURNALIST: I guess we've seen a pretty catastrophic fire season in the Northern Hemisphere as well. What lessons have we taken from that for our upcoming or the season that we're currently in now?

MURRAY WATT:  Yeah, look our national and State and Territory fire authorities are in regular contact with their counterparts overseas, and you will have seen in fact that some Australian firefighters have been deployed to places like Canada this year to assist them with their firefighting efforts. And people when they go on those experiences obviously learn things from other countries about the way they manage fires and bring those lessons back home.

We're also obviously very regularly in contact with those other countries about lending aircraft to each other and borrowing aircraft or leasing aircraft from those countries as well. But I think the fact that we have seen those very intense fires in the Northern Hemisphere has been a very useful reminder to Australians that we are going to be facing a difficult fire season this year and we all need to be taking steps right now to be as ready as we possibly can be.

JOURNALIST: Just on the announcement that we've been hearing about the wine tariffs in China over the weekend, obviously after such a long time some wine producers might need assistance to get back into the Chinese market. Is the Australian Government looking at anything to help that process?

MURRAY WATT:  We haven't got anything specifically under way in that way at the moment, but even over the period that China has had tariffs in place for Australian wine, the Australian Government has provided our wine growers with a range of financial and other support to help them enter new markets.

Obviously this was very good news over the weekend to hear that China is now going to review the wine tariff that it has in place on Australian wine. But it is also important that we learn from that experience that we can't put all of our eggs in one basket when it comes to our trading partners. We do need to build up other markets and that's what Australian producers have been doing over the last couple of years with support from the Federal Government.

But we'll obviously continue to keep that under monitoring and if there's support that's required for Australian wine growers to get back into the Chinese market then we would consider that.

JOURNALIST: Just discussing the Middle East for a moment as well. Obviously, Ed Husic and Anne Aly have kind of come out with comments saying, you know, condemning punishment of Palestinians in Gaza. I guess do these comments show that there is not a united front in the Government about the Middle Eastern issue or what does it show?

MURRAY WATT:  No, I don't think it does show that. From the very outset of this conflict the Prime Minister and every other member of our Government have been utterly consistent with condemning Hamas's abhorrent attacks on innocent Israeli lives.

We have been utterly consistent in saying that Israel has a right to defend itself and we've been utterly consistent with saying that all lives matter here. There's no difference between an Israeli life and a Palestinian life. If we're talking about innocent civilians on either side of that barrier, they all have a right to be protected.

So I think that was fundamentally the point that Ed and Anne were making and it's a bit disappointing to see members of the Opposition seek to make political mileage from an awful conflict overseas that has already cost thousands of lives. And I'd ask the Opposition to think about whether this is an appropriate matter to be trying to make political hay from.

JOURNALIST: And last question as well. Just on the Prime Minister's visit to the US, I guess what are we hoping from that I guess from your portfolio's point of view?

MURRAY WATT:  Well certainly the Prime Minister has already made clear that some of the matters that he'll talking about with President Biden involve how we can be cooperating on matters involving climate change. That has a direct bearing on both portfolios that I hold.

Obviously climate change is the key driver of extreme weather that we are seeing emerging more and more in Australia, so it's highly relevant for the disaster management portfolio. But of course Australian farmers are also already seeing the effects of climate change on their profits, on their profitability and on their production levels.

So anything that we can be doing together with the US on climate change is going to be useful when it comes to both agriculture and disaster management.