Tuesday, 8 September 2026

 Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (23:58): (2782) My adjournment this evening is for the Minister for Climate Action, and I ask her to establish a permanent climate resilience fund funded by a levy on the biggest fossil fuel polluters to help Victorian households and communities prepare for the worsening fires, floods and extreme heat that we know are coming. The cost of not acting on climate has arrived. Victorians are paying that cost right now through higher insurance premiums, damaged homes, emergency response requirements, rebuilding costs and public infrastructure that has to be repaired again and again.

The Insurance Council of Australia’s new catastrophe resilience report makes that painfully clear. In 2025–26 just seven declared extreme weather events generated more than $3.98 billion in insured losses across Australia, $1.7 billion more than the year before. Between 2022 and 2026 insurers received more than 400,000 claims to repair or rebuild homes damaged in declared disasters, costing $11.3 billion, and the cost does not stop at the insurance payout. The insurance council says that disaster rebuilding is now competing with new housing for the same builders, trades and materials, driving up construction costs and putting further pressure on premiums and housing supply. We have seen this here in Victoria. The January bushfires alone have generated around 4850 insurance claims and $598 million in incurred losses. In his valedictory my colleague and dear friend Tim Read gave a striking example of costs that we are all bearing now. He pointed to the recent LA fires, where the destruction of thousands of high-value homes fed through to the global reinsurance market and pushed up insurance costs globally, far beyond California. As Tim put it:

People are paying for climate change, whether they think about it or not.

That goes for our government and our opposition as well: whether they think about it or not, we are all already paying the price for the major parties’ inaction on climate. Even if your home has not flooded or burnt, you are already paying for climate change. But the people who are not paying their fair share are the coal and gas corporations, who have made enormous profits from the pollution driving this crisis.

Earlier this year Labor rejected a dedicated resilient homes scheme recommended by Victoria’s parliamentary climate resilience inquiry. That decision looks even more reckless and stupid right now. We should be investing before disaster strikes, helping people retrofit homes, protecting community infrastructure, improving urban heat resilience and supporting communities in high-risk areas. Those costs belong on the balance sheets of the companies fuelling the climate crisis, not family budgets. Minister, make the polluters pay, and put that money into a permanent fund to make our homes and communities safer before the next disaster hits.