Concern over disaster risk

AN independent analysis of Australia’s natural disaster risk should be done after wild inconsistencies have emerged in industry findings, North Queensland apartment owners say.

The Townsville Lot Owners Group has challenged the Insurance Council of Australia’s finding that the Townsville-based seat of Herbert is the most flood-prone in Australia.

This comes after the electorate did not even rank in the top 20 most “at-risk” for climate extremes by 2030 in a report released by the Climate Council of Australia.

Group spokesman Andrew

Turnour questioned why “big insurance” was charging North Queensland high-risk premiums for natural disaster risks and accused them of spreading misinformation.

“We need to have independent natural disaster assessment,” Mr Turnour said.

The Climate Council released its report, Uninsurable Nation: Australia’s Most Climate-Vulnerable Places, this month.

The council said it produced the ranking of most atrisk electorates from climate change and extreme weather based on the percentage of “high risk” properties in each federal electorate. While 11 Queensland electorates rank in the top 20, including Brisbane

and Griffith, none are in North Queensland.

In contrast, Herbert tops a table of the Insurance Council of Australia’s “20 most floodprone electorates in Australia” with 55,000 “exposed land parcels”. It ranks the federal seat of Kennedy second with 35,000 exposed land parcels, Leichhardt eighth with 25,000 exposed land parcels and Dawson 14th with just over 20,000 exposed land parcels.

A spokeswoman for the Insurance Council of Australia said that when it came to pricing risk, insurers employed the most up-to-date data available to ensure premiums they reflected the true nature of the risks they covered.