“Many communities experience repeated disruptions from flood, cyclone and fire events.   Some of these events are unforeseen and the damage is unavoidable, but in many cases the consequences of natural disasters could be mitigated.”

This quote is part of an inquiry launched by Joe Hockey and being undertaken by the Australian Productivity Commission (APC) into how taxpayer dollars could be better used in managing natural disasters.

The main concern is that most of that  funding is being used to pick up the pieces after disasters rather than on mitigation steps to minimise the damage.

The APC’s inquiry invited submissions and CCPA-Wooli responded. The highlights of our submission are that :

–      coastal erosion and inundation  should be recognised as an emerging type of disaster, which, if forecasts are correct, could steadily become a major long term problem around the whole of Australia ‘s coastline;

–      beach nourishment using offshore sand sources  is a viable mitigation strategy to effectively prevent or at least greatly reduce the impact of this type of disaster;

–      a funding model based on a Public Private Partnership approach would make this strategy sustainable indefinitely.

Click on this link to read  Our Submission. Its quite brief and we’d appreciate your feedback.

As you’ll see it draws information from a research paper by Mr Angus Gordon,  an experienced coastal engineer and member of the NSW Coastal Expert Panel.