Key Reforms

The creation of a Federal Coastal Resilience and Adaptation Office.

This office would be empowered to develop, promote, coordinate and fund best practices in adaptive coastal management to support state and local governments. It would also facilitate collaborative coastal management across the professional community (government, academia, consulting/industry) who each have important skills and capability that will be required.

The creation of a National Coastal Adaptation Legal Framework.

This legal framework would ensure the development of nationally compatible coastal adaptation programs that are tailored to individual communities with provisions to facilitate managed retreat. It would also require engagement with coastal communities and stakeholders throughout the coastal management process and facilitate their involvement and ownership of locally specific issues.

The creation of a National Coastal Observatory and Associated Funding.

This observatory would support and coordinate a national level approach to coastal science and adaptation research. It would have responsibility for the creation of a data repository and remain its custodian, initially compiling and making available the many coastal datasets that have been collected around Australia. It would also coordinate and fund new national-scale coastal monitoring and research efforts towards the most critical coastal research priorities as identified by the coastal research community.