Image: Wallaby caught in a flood.

The Productivity Commission (PC) recently released a draft inquiry report into ‘Natural Disaster Funding Arrangements’ in Australia. For those that don’t know, the Productivity Commission is an Australian Government independent agency that provides advice on economic reform. To my knowledge, I’m not sure if other national governments have a similar agency. The only one that comes close is the OECD, but that is a multilateral agency. The PC has a strong reputation of furnishing ‘frank and fearless’ advice to successive Australian Governments. So it is with some interest that I read this report. I have worked on the role of government in managing risk, so I was interested to learn the PC’s perspective on natural disaster risk management. (more…)