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 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 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 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.

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. 

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. 

The Australian Government should work with state and territory governments and critical infrastructure operators to improve information flows during and in response to natural disasters:
(1) between critical infrastructure operators, and
(2) between critical infrastructure operators and government. 

The Australian Government, working with state and territory governments and critical infrastructure operators, should lead a process to:
(1) identify critical infrastructure
(2) assess key risks to identified critical infrastructure from natural disasters
of national scale or consequence
(3) identify steps needed to mitigate these risks
(4) identify steps to make the critical infrastructure more resilient, and
(5) track achievement against an agreed plan. 

Australian, state and territory governments should expedite the delivery of a Public Safety Mobile Broadband capability. 

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.

If recommendation 1 is not supported by the Australian Government, the committee recommends that the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy issue a Ministerial Direction to the Australian Communications and Media Authority to allocate as a minimum requirement, 20 MHz in the 800 MHz band for the purposes of a public safety mobile broadband network.

The committee recommends that the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy take appropriate measures to secure, for public service agencies, priority access to an additional 10 MHz of spectrum in the 700 MHz band for public safety purposes.

The committee recommends that the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy issue a Ministerial Direction to the Australian Communications and Media Authority to allocate 20 MHz of contiguous spectrum in the 700 MHz band for the purposes of a public safety mobile broadband network.

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 Productivity Commission undertake an examination of bushfire risk from ageing power infrastructure, including an assessment of replacement costs and likely suppression costs from bushfires caused by defective infrastructure.

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.

Subject to the findings of the Productivity Commission, the Commonwealth examine options for the funding of replacement of power infrastructure that presents an unacceptable bushfire risk.

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 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 Working Group recommends that State/Territory emergency management plans should explicitly take the need for rapid assessment of damaged physical infrastructure into account. The importance of rapid physical infrastructure assessment in ensuring the supply of utilities including sewerage and drainage, electricity, water and gas to residential structures and other types should be recognised and considered. 

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 Emergency Management Australia and the Australian Communications Authority jointly with the Australasian Fire Authorities Council:
- Initiate an urgent review on a district basis, of the suitability of the current allocated radio spectrum to ensure that as far as possible, fire fighter safety is not being compromised through inadequate communications.
- Commit to the development, in conjunction with representative bodies of all emergency services, to a National Strategic Radio System.
- That the coordination of the deliberations be assigned to Emergency Management Australia.

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.

The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth seeks to ensure that the Council of Australian Governments resolve to increase water access points for bushfire fighting on public land to the minimum national standard.

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 Emergency Management Australia and the Australian Communications Authority, in conjunction with the respective state and territory governments, ensure the survivability of essential communication installations during fire incidents by strategic fuel management around the assets.