Disaster resilience is not the place for shifting fiscal burden
As much as the federal budget needs fixing, shifting more disaster risk onto Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia would be the wrong way to do it. These jurisdictions already carry some of the country’s greatest exposure to floods, cyclones, heat and other natural hazards.
The federal government proposes under a Disaster Recovery Funding Framework to move to a flat 50:50 cost-sharing arrangement with the states and territories. It says the new system will be simpler, faster and fairer, with standardised assistance packages and a new Resilient Infrastructure Scheme providing funding of up to 15 percent of reconstruction costs.
This policy move will see more of the disaster cost and risk sit with the states and territories.
The Queensland government estimates that, had the proposed arrangements applied over the past three years, it would have received more than $1.5 billion less in federal assistance, including at least $713 million less in 2025–26. Its analysis also suggests that the proposed model would have funded only about 1 percent of its previous betterment program for improving disaster resistance.
Those figures will be contested. But they expose the real question: does changing which government pays reduce Australia’s disaster risk? I would argue that it doesn’t.
A federal saving isn’t necessarily a national saving.
There is no escaping the fiscal context. Federal gross debt is forecast to reach $1.051 trillion in 2026–27. The government is already pursuing savings, reprioritisations and spending restraint. Tough decisions are unavoidable.
But disaster resilience isn’t simply another spending program.
Northern Australia’s roads, bridges, ports and freight corridors are part of the machinery of the national economy. They underpin agriculture, mining, critical minerals, energy and exports.
Infrastructure Australia identifies high vulnerability across northern and western Australia, where distance and exposure to storms, flooding and heat amplify disruption. Six of Australia’s eight most vulnerable critical road freight routes are in the Northern Territory; vulnerable corridors are also identified in Queensland and Western Australia.
When those networks fail, the consequences don’t remain in the north. The Queensland Trucking Association warns that damaged bridges, highways and floodways can sever freight corridors carrying food, fuel, medicines and agricultural products.
That makes resilience investment a productivity measure, not just a disaster expenditure.
Nor should recovery mean rebuilding yesterday’s vulnerability. Restoring a washed-out road is one thing. Rebuilding it so it survives the next flood is another. If tighter funding arrangements reduce such betterment, redundancy and risk reduction, Canberra may improve one ledger while increasing the cost of the next disaster.
There’s also a defence consequence. Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia are central to Australia’s northern defence posture, logistics and sustainment. The same roads, ports, fuel systems and communications networks that support regional economies will be relied upon in a crisis.
A bridge unavailable to freight is also unavailable to Defence.
That is the contradiction Canberra should confront. A government pursuing net zero, stronger productivity and greater defence preparedness should be extremely cautious about shifting more disaster exposure onto the parts of Australia already carrying so much of it.
Canberra can move disaster costs off its own ledger. It cannot move them off Australia’s.
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