The committee recommends that the Australian Government pursue the matter of land use and planning laws, including the feasibility of prohibiting future development in high-risk areas, through the Housing and Homelessness Ministerial Council and other relevant ministerial council arrangements.

The Committee recommends that building codes and planning rules be strengthened and future-proofed to improve the resilience of communities and households, consistent with Recommendation 2 of the Actuaries Institute’s Funding for Flood Costs report.
- This should take into account not just current flood risks, but also projected increases in risks based on climate modelling
- Consideration should be given to the publication of a freely available disaster risk rating system.

The Committee recommends that the Australian Government work with state, territory and local governments through National Cabinet to ensure that publicly disclosed risk information at the individual property level is available through the property conveyancing process or mandated in state rental agreement regulation.

The Committee recommends that the Australian Government work with State, Territory and local government through National Cabinet to ensure that further development does not occur in areas of 1-in-100 flood risk or greater. The boundary for no future development should take account of climate modelling of future increases in risk, in addition to current estimates of risk. The Committee further recommends that the Australian Government explore mechanisms that it can adopt to give effect to this unilaterally, including:
- Publicly disclosed risk information at the individual property level, including for new developments. This could be through a range of mechanisms, including:
- a portal informed by data provided to the Commonwealth government through the Hazards Insurance Partnership for all property released for development.
- A regulatory mechanism to discourage banks from loaning for further development at a 1/100 risk or higher (such as risk rating banks’ capital to appropriately reflect flood risk; an agreement between government, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, and major banks that such loans will not occur, or other regulatory mechanisms). These measures could apply to lending to both developers and to residential purchasers.
- Access to any flood pool (or subsidies) would not be available to properties approved in high-risk areas after the creation of the scheme.

The Committee recommends the Australian Government collaborate with state governments to implement measures to repurpose areas with high flood risk for alternative purposes, including returning developed land into a predeveloped state or repurposing land for recreational or agricultural use.

The Committee recommends the Australian Government work with state and territory governments to review the operation of existing buy-back schemes to ensure they are targeted appropriately and to evaluate the outcomes for households that have received assistance.

The Committee recommends that state and territory governments develop buyback and resilience programs for households with very high flood risk and where alternative mitigation measures are unlikely to manage the risk. The Australian Government should consider working with state and territory governments, including through co-funding models, where appropriate.

The Commonwealth should introduce a systematic and consistent approach to measuring and evaluating the impact of disaster programs against the nationally determined outcomes specified in the Outcomes Policy.

State, territory and local governments should be required to consider present and future natural disaster risk when making land-use planning decisions for new developments. 

Australian, state and territory governments should work together to develop a program for national level recovery exercises, building on the work currently underway through the Community Outcomes and Recovery Subcommittee of the Australia-New Zealand Emergency Management Committee. 

Australian, state and territory governments should conduct multi-agency, national-level exercises, not limited to cross-border jurisdictions. These exercises should, at a minimum:
(1) assess national capacity, inform capability development and coordination in response to, and recovery from, natural disasters, and
(2) use scenarios that stress current capabilities. 

The Australian Building Codes Board, working with other bodies as appropriate, should:
(1) assess the extent to which AS 3959:2018 Construction of buildings in bushfire-prone areas, and other relevant building standards, are effective in reducing risk from natural hazards to lives and property, and 
(2) conduct an evaluation as to whether the National Construction Code should be amended to specifically include, as an objective of the code, making buildings more resilient to natural hazards. 

All governments should put in place best-practice institutional and governance arrangements for the provision of public infrastructure, including road infrastructure. These should include:
• stronger processes for project selection that incorporate requirements for cost–benefit analyses that are independently scrutinised and publicly released
• consideration of natural disaster risk in project selection and asset management planning
• a clearer link between road-user preferences and maintenance and investment decisions.

The Australian Department of Health and Ageing consult with members of the general public or representatives of health consumers in the pandemic planning process, including in pandemic exercises designed to test the ability of government to respond to a pandemic event. Consumer involvement should include testing the ability of any communication strategy designed to inform and engage consumers about a pandemic event.

The Australian Government test Australia’s ability to respond to a widespread outbreak of infectious disease other than influenza, by undertaking a pandemic exercise across the relevant Commonwealth, state and territory government agencies.

The committee recommends that building codes incorporate mitigation measures that take into account foreseeable risks from extreme weather events.

The committee recommends that credible and reliable flood mapping activities and the development of other information that would best inform landowners or prospective landowners of potential risks from extreme weather events are prioritised and used to inform land use planning laws.

The Council of Australian Governments’ Building Ministers’ Forum should provide formal direction to the Australian Building Codes Board to:
• monitor projections of climate change risks to buildings
• revise the standards in the National Construction Code to take into account these projections where this delivers a net benefit to the community.
This body of work should be transparently and formally incorporated in the Australian Building Codes Board’s annual work program.

As a priority, state and territory governments should ensure that land-use planning systems are sufficiently flexible to enable a risk management approach to incorporating climate change risks into planning decisions at the state, territory, regional and local government levels. Consideration should be given to:
• transparent and rigorous community consultation processes that enable an understanding of the community’s acceptable levels of risk for different types of land use
• the timeframe of risks and the expected lifetime of proposed land use
• the costs and benefits of land use.
State and territory governments should provide appropriate guidance to local governments to implement these provisions in local government schemes.

The Commonwealth consult with local, state and territory government planning authorities on the development and dissemination of a house loss risk index for households in Australia's highest risk bushfire areas.

The Committee notes the Council of Australian Governments initiative (through the Local Government and Planning Ministers Council) to develop state-specific climate change planning policies by mid 2011, to inform local governments and regional planning responses to climate change. The Committee recommends that the Australian Government ensure that the outcomes of this initiative are included as part of the action plan under the proposed new Intergovernmental Agreement on the Coastal Zone.

The Committee recommends that the Australian Government:
- continue working with the Queensland Government and local councils under the existing Great Barrier Reef Intergovernmental Agreement to improve land use planning in the catchment
- commission analysis of the Great Barrier Reef as a case study for integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) in Australia. The study should draw out possible directions for ICZM in Australia with regard to:
* addressing challenges associated with climate change impacts on biodiversity
* declining water quality from catchment runoff and loss of coastal habitat from coastal development and population pressures
* building cooperative partnerships between Commonwealth, state and local government, and other stakeholders
* establishing governance and institutional frameworks

The Committee recommends that the Building Code of Australia, including cyclone building codes, be revised with the objective of increasing resilience to climate change.

The Committee recommends that the Australian Government consider the benefits of adopting a nationally consistent sea level rise planning benchmark and, if so, whether this be done on a statutory basis or otherwise. The outcomes of this consideration should then be included as part of the action plan for the proposed Intergovernmental Agreement on the Coastal Zone.

The ANAO recommends that the Attorney-General’s Department, in consultation with the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the National Counter-Terrorism Committee, pursue a more strategic and systematic approach to the measurement of performance via the National Capability Development Exercise Programme by:
a) the setting of broad exercise objectives and supporting performance indicators that are aligned with the priority areas of the national arrangements to be tested;
b) the consistent setting of objectives and performance indicators that allow for the measurement and reporting of performance over time; and
c) encouraging agencies to set objectives and performance indicators that are more aligned with those of the broad exercise and those of other relevant participating agencies.

The ANAO recommends that the Attorney-General’s Department, in conjunction with the National Counter-Terrorism Committee’s exercise management advisers, explore options for the incorporation of more contemporary and varied testing and training aids in the National Capability Development Exercise Programme.

The ANAO recommends that the Attorney-General’s Department, in consultation with the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the National Counter- Terrorism Committee, pursue the adoption of a more strategic approach to determining the National Capability Development Exercise Programme so that:
a) the exercises conducted better address the areas of greatest priority and maximise their contribution to the enhancement of a basic, viable nation-wide capability;
b) synergies with other exercises and reviews can be better taken into account; and
c) the rationale for the setting of the programme, including the individual components, is clearly documented.

The ANAO recommends that the Attorney-General’s Department, in consultation with the National Counter-Terrorism Committee, strengthens the reporting on the National Capability Development Exercise Programme through:
a) the provision of clearer guidance on, and monitoring of, the quality of reporting required for the exercises; and
b) a review of the exercise umpiring process to maximise the contribution umpires make to effective performance measurement and reporting and hence to continuous improvement.

The ANAO recommends that the Attorney-General’s Department, in consultation with the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the National Counter-Terrorism Committee:
a) clearly distinguish between the testing/evaluation components and the training components for the exercises conducted under the National Capability Development Exercise Programme; and
b) ensure that the National Capability Development Exercise Programme, and each of the exercises conducted, places sufficient emphasis on evaluation.

The Working Group recommends that Emergency Management Australia and the jurisdictions through the AEMC develop a three year rolling national exercise strategy aimed at testing the response and recovery aspects of large scale disasters. 

The Working Group recommends that the results of the scenario modeling be presented to the Australian Emergency Management Committee (AEMC) upon completion, and that AEMC form Sub Working Groups of State/Territory emergency management representatives as appropriate to be tasked with considering response and recovery capability (both state/territory and national) against the identified consequences. 

The Committee recommends that Standards Australia review the clarity of AS3959–1999: Construction of buildings in Bushfire Prone Areas to ensure that all relevant stakeholders can interpret and apply the Standard in the way it is intended.

The Committee recommends that Standards Australia incorporate building maintenance into AS3959–1999: Construction of buildings in Bushfire Prone Areas, perhaps renaming it as AS3959–1999: Construction and maintenance of buildings in Bushfire Prone Areas.

The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth seeks to ensure that the Council of Australian Governments resolve when asset protection zones will be located on private land and when on public land and gain assurances that adequate maintenance of zones will be enforced.