Submission to Productivity Commission Natural Disaster Funding Draft Report

This document is a submission made in 2014 by the APS to the Productivity Commission Natural Disaster Funding Draft Report.

The APS agrees that mitigation and risk reduction is an important shift in focus for funding priorities, and has great potential to reduce risks from extreme weather event disasters, thereby lowering the potential physical, economic, social and psychological costs to communities affected by natural disasters. The APS recommends the addition of the following points in the report:

1. Greater emphasis on (lower-cost) mitigation activities like risk messaging to change people’s risk-taking behaviour
2. Greater emphasis on preparedness initiatives, including household and psychological preparedness
3. Greater emphasis on the psychological and social impacts and costs of disasters, rather than the almost exclusive focus on risks to assets
4. Greater emphasis on individual and community resilience in the form of skilling-up to reduce psychosocial and mental health costs following disaster.

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