00:00We gamble with risk by allowing people to build and locate themselves in in
00:05dangerous locations. We know what the risks are, we know how often these events
00:11will come through such as floods, storm surges, bushfires, landslides. We
00:16understand the risks reasonably well these days but we continue to allow this
00:20to occur. What we say is that okay we will provide immunity to say the one in
00:25100 year event and then we say okay we will try and gain economic benefits from
00:31development in that area and we'll hope that the one in 100 year event doesn't
00:35come along for a long time but it invariably does and people suffer. Their
00:40homes get flooded, their homes get washed away, people are traumatized, some people
00:45lose their lives unfortunately. We have a saying in the business and that is that
00:50all natural disasters are a result of poor planning and the only way to fix
00:56that is to have better planning. Though really it's up to the consent authority.
01:01The consent authority are the people that give permission for these
01:04developments to go ahead. That's usually local government in Australia. We can
01:08build in safe areas, we don't have to continue building in these really really
01:13dangerous locations. That is next to rivers, on floodplains, along coasts where
01:19storm surges are prone or coastal erosion is going to be occurring or
01:24necessarily in areas where bushfires are going to occur. I know people want to
01:28live in those locations but the reality is that this can be very very dangerous.
01:32So we've got to start doing this in my opinion or in some way make our
01:39dwellings resilient to these sorts of natural hazards which makes them more
01:43expensive and difficult to build but but it can be done and also the rest of
01:50the community has to pay for this. Not necessarily for that building but we pay
01:54for it through our insurance premium. Every time new assets are placed in the
01:59path of these hazards, the insurance industry says well look we've got more
02:03potential losses so we have to put up our premiums in order to cover ourselves
02:08because simply because the consent authority is allowing more of these
02:12buildings to occur, more of these developments to occur, local governments
02:16and also state governments through their really ineffective policies. Ineffective
02:21because they're not enforceable, they're not legislation, they're just guidelines
02:24and local governments don't have to follow them. So through those sorts of
02:28policies, developments are continuing to occur and we are paying as a community
02:32as a whole. Even when the disaster hasn't occurred yet, we still continue to pay
02:36for it through our insurance premiums and that's a big issue at the moment
02:40throughout North Queensland, here where I live and also throughout the rest of
02:44Northern Australia.
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