![\"Tweed](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/6c3ebdaba2d37903b29f956ea4239ca8ad4c486a.jpeg\")
Tweed Shire mayor Chris Cherry says after several big floods \u201cwe need to just face up to that and accept that we need to adapt.\u201dPaul Harris<\/p>\nScene one: Bayden Bedwell feels trapped. In the raging October 2022 flood that swept through Greater Shepparton, the worst in the Victorian regional city in more than a century, water rose 40 centimetres above the floor of his three-bedroom home. Insurance was enough to repair it to the way it was, but the house is as vulnerable as ever in a city named in one study as the most susceptible to flood in the country. Bedwell, 28, says \u201cyou can still hear the cracking of everything at night\u201d. He and his wife Chloe would like to move their two young children somewhere safer, but they\u2019re stuck \u2013 a house on the same street was for sale for nine months, he says, \u201cthen went really, really cheap, about $90,000.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scene two: Just after 9am at a Darwin cafe, 30 degrees already and heading for 33, Phil Blum and fellow members of the Darwin cycling club recover after a two-hour ride. It\u2019s April, the brutal summer months almost behind him, but Blum, a doctor at Royal Darwin Hospital, isn\u2019t sure how much longer he can deal with the heat. \u201cIt\u2019s too hot, and it\u2019s getting hotter,\u201d says the 58-year-old of the capital city with the highest temperatures and humidity in the country. \u201cIn 50 years, it will be unliveable.\u201d Blum\u2019s family once opened the doors to let in the breeze; now, they close them. \u201cWe use air-conditioning six months of the year, all the time, night and day.\u201d He plans to move south in the coming years. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to be having to hide in the air-conditioning all day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scene three: The Tweed Shire, in the far north of NSW, is used to floods. Mayor Chris Cherry rattles them off: 2017, 2022, 2024 and then ex-tropical cyclone Alfred last year. The visitor centre in Murwillumbah was destroyed in the floods of 2017 and, despite works to fortify it, was again \u201ccompletely annihilated\u201d in 2022. It\u2019s been moved to higher ground. People are on the move, too, with 175 government \u201cbuybacks\u201d approved so far of Tweed homes deemed impossible to defend. There\u2019s pressure for more housing. Cherry says, \u201cThe community is crying out for reducing the standards and building in places that we normally wouldn\u2019t allow, just because it\u2019s easier, and it\u2019s cheaper land \u2026 but we just can\u2019t relax those standards because then we\u2019re just making the same mistake all over again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tweed Shire mayor Chris Cherry says after several big floods \u201cwe need to just face up to that and accept that we need to adapt.\u201dPaul Harris<\/p>\n
There are thousands of such stories across the country, unique in their details but with a common thread: Australians are confronting the consequences of global warming now, and it will get worse in our lifetimes \u2013 or our children\u2019s lifetimes. Whether you talk to climate scientists, insurance companies, and even some politicians, the message is the same: we are doing far too little, far too slowly, to adapt to a climate that has already changed and will be unrecognisable within a generation or two. Governments across the country make commitments and adopt plans, but routinely fail to fund or follow through.<\/p>\n
Australians are \u201cpsychologically unprepared for the world we are moving into\u201d, writes Professor Clive Hamilton in 2024\u2019s Living Hot: Surviving and Thriving on a Heating Planet.<\/a> \u201cWe urgently need a sustained national conversation \u2026 about where we live and how we live as the Earth takes us way outside our climatic comfort zones.\u201d<\/p>\n In climate jargon, preparing to live in a hotter, more extreme world is \u201cadaptation\u201d. It\u2019s different from reducing global-warming emissions through moving away from fossil fuels to renewable energy, for instance \u2013 that\u2019s mitigation. The UK\u2019s fourth climate change assessment, released in May \u2013 the hottest May on record in the UK \u2013 was called A Well-Adapted UK<\/a>. Greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming had dropped in the UK (as they have in Australia) but \u201cthere has been little progress on preparing ourselves for the changing climate\u201d, the report said. \u201cAdaptation cannot wait. Keeping people secure is a fundamental duty of the state.\u201d But it would cost \u2013 about \u00a311 billion ($21 billion) a year from the public purse and industry.<\/p>\n Related Article Australia has been slow \u2013 the government published our first national adaptation plan<\/a> late last year. It was cautious compared to the UK\u2019s clarion call, containing no strategy or cost estimates, but it did warn that the number of resilience projects across the country is \u201cnot high in comparison to the current and projected risks, and the low numbers in high-risk regions, such as in the Northern Territory, suggest significant adaptation shortfall at present\u201d. Dr Russ Wise is a senior principal research scientist at CSIRO and has been prodding governments for 15 years to prepare for a transformed climate. Australia\u2019s adaptation plan was an \u201cincremental first step\u201d, he says. What we need is AUKUS-level focus and funding \u2013 up to $15 billion a year, including public and private investment. We need \u201cbig strategic thinking and planning in every single region around Australia\u201d.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been a decade since 195 parties, including Australia, signed up to the Paris Agreement<\/a> to work to keep global warming to \u201cwell below 2 degrees\u201d \u2013 with the aspiration of holding it to 1.5 degrees \u2013 to avoid the worst impacts of global warming. (President Donald Trump has withdrawn the US, the second-highest emitter after China, from the agreement.) Temperatures vary year to year, but climate scientists say that nothing can stop the 1.5 degrees being breached now. Climate change is accelerating. The past three years have been the hottest on record<\/a>, with 2024 hitting 1.55 degrees of warming. Climate scientists say that the catastrophic heatwave and fires in Europe this year would have been \u201cvirtually impossible\u201d without global warming. The \u201csuper\u201d El Ni\u00f1o now upon us<\/a> almost certainly means next year will break another record, bringing devastating heatwaves, storms and bushfires.<\/p>\n Climate science is imprecise, but 2 degrees of warming will be far worse than 1.5, and credible estimates indicate the world will sail past that red line<\/a> around mid-century, less than 25 years away, with close to 3 degrees predicted by the end of the century. Australia\u2019s first climate-change risk assessment report<\/a>, released late last year, clarified what we face. Australia \u201cexperiences compounding and cascading hazards, and this is going to increase\u201d. One example: by mid-century, more than 1.5 million people will be living in areas of high-sea-level rise and coastal flooding.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The Paris Agreement aimed to treat adaptation with the same urgency as reducing fossil fuel emissions. But it\u2019s a dull word \u2013 adaptation \u2013 not sexy enough for a culture war, and until recently the poor relation in climate change. It\u2019s about nuts-and-bolts policy, delivered at scale, to prepare for, rather than react to, the impacts of global warming. It\u2019s about individuals upgrading their homes, community sea walls, banning building on flood plains, government \u201cbuybacks\u201d and \u201cmanaged retreat\u201d from areas impossible to defend, and \u201cgreening\u201d cities to cool them down. It\u2019s about where and how we live.<\/p>\n Scene four: Rania Omar dreads the upcoming summer. The 26-year-old lives in a granny flat in Blacktown in Sydney\u2019s west, a suburb that can be five degrees hotter in summer than Sydney\u2019s CBD, which is blessed by sea breezes. In a heatwave, it can be 8 to 10 degrees hotter. Omar suffers fibromyalgia, a chronic disorder that causes severe pain and fatigue, and heat makes her seriously unwell. \u201cI\u2019m honestly really nervous,\u201d she says. \u201cI have bad days and good days \u2026 but I feel like when that heat hits, I will be having no good days at all.\u201d Western Sydney councils participate in Heat Smart and Cool Centres programs, designating local libraries, swimming pools, community hubs and shopping centres as air-conditioned refuges. Over summer, Omar spends most of the time at home, saving expensive air-conditioning for the hottest days, and getting by with a portable fan and a cooling towel. Even taking the bus is hard; most bus shelters around Blacktown and nearby Penrith council areas don\u2019t have shade.<\/p>\n The insurance industry\u2019s job is to assess and price risk, and it argues Australia is out of time to start protecting its citizens from the impact of climate change, especially the soaring cost of floods and other natural disasters, which are already eye-watering. Federal spending alone on disaster recovery has more than tripled compared to the early 2000s: in the 2024 federal budget, disaster response projections were $11.4 billion; in the May budget, it was up to $16 billion. States also spend billions each year, heavily skewed towards clean-up and recovery \u2013 historically, only about 3 per cent of government spending on disasters goes towards prevention, although that has improved recently.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a hard truth to face, says the CEO of the Insurance Council of Australia, Andrew Hall. \u201cWe have spent a lot of money on our own emissions reduction but, in fact, the more urgent challenge we\u2019ve got is resiliency because emissions reduction is not going to make any difference to the climate events we are experiencing \u2026 number one is you want people to live in a home that\u2019s not going to get destroyed every five to 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Even if the world stopped emitting carbon today, there would still be implications from climate change, and those \u2026 would be very real.\u2019<\/p>\n Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen<\/p>\n Hall\u2019s view is contentious, but this debate is swirling across the Western world. Support for taking action on climate change remains strong in Europe and in Australia, but there is fatigue, with immediate cost-of-living pain and ebbing political will. Trump called global warming a \u201ccon job\u201d at the UN General Assembly last September.<\/p>\n Living Hot, the book Clive Hamilton wrote with George Wilkenfeld, was provocative. The authors argue that while emissions reduction matters, we have not confronted the reality that nothing Australia does will stop the worsening impacts of climate change here \u2013 to pretend otherwise is \u201cwishful thinking\u201d. They also argue that if governments lead a discussion about what we can realistically save and what we can\u2019t, Australians can flourish \u2013 but only to a point. The more temperatures rise, the harder it will be to adapt.<\/p>\n \u201cI agree with this much,\u201d says federal Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen. \u201cEven if the world stopped emitting carbon today, there would still be implications from climate change, and those implications would be very real, and we have to deal with the adaptation to climate change \u2026 I would agree that adaptation will be and needs to be an increasing focus of governments around the world.\u201d Where Bowen has a \u201cquibble\u201d is with any suggestion that we should rebalance our priorities towards adaptation over emissions reduction. \u201cYes, Australia is only 1 per cent of [global] emissions, but most countries are 1 per cent of emissions, and if every country took that approach, then you wouldn\u2019t reduce emissions, and we must reduce emissions.\u201d<\/p>\n Independent MP Zali Steggall argues adaptation is urgent and requires national leadership through an independent adaptation commission \u2013 based on the UK model \u2013 to set priorities, oversee funding, manage insurance gaps and report back on how we\u2019re going. (Australia\u2019s first adaptation report was done in-house in the Environment Department and included no funding estimates.) Steggall proposes a quarter of one per cent of GDP be set aside to fund resilience, because research indicates that every dollar spent preparing saves as much as $10 in cleaning up and rebuilding from disasters down the track.<\/p>\n \u2018This is a matter of national safety and security. We\u2019re miles behind.\u2019<\/p>\n Independent MP Zali Steggall<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a matter of national safety and security,\u201d Steggall says. \u201cWe\u2019re miles behind. If I did a defence analogy, we\u2019ve got the army amassing on our border, and we don\u2019t actually have any capability. We\u2019re hoping for local communities to take up pitchforks to deal with it.\u201d<\/p>\n The Albanese government is not embracing Steggall\u2019s approach, although after years of Coalition inaction, it gets credit for pushing ahead with a detailed risk report, so at least we know what we face. \u201cWe are a federation; that\u2019s not going to change,\u201d says Bowen, whose view is that the federal government can provide a framework for levels of government to work together, but not lead adaptation efforts. That\u2019s up to the states. \u201cThe adaptation approach for Cairns does not necessarily need to be decided from Canberra.\u201d<\/p>\n The result is a patchwork, with states doing their own thing \u2013 Queensland and NSW have \u201cbuyback\u201d programs for homes deemed too unsafe in some areas; Victoria does not, despite pleas from some councils including Shepparton in Victoria, where 80 homes were destroyed in the 2022 floods.<\/a> The response from the state government was \u201cclearly nothing\u201d, says Greater Shepparton mayor Shane Sali.<\/p>\n Queensland gets credit for initiative. The state\u2019s Reconstruction Authority was established after massive floods in 2011, and is charged with both recovery after disasters and resilience. Its job is to rebuild damaged infrastructure such as roads and bridges to a higher standard than the conventional \u201clike for like\u201d repairs. It\u2019s worth the money. A review of $244 million spent on projects in Queensland between 2013 and 2024<\/a> found about $988 million was saved in avoided reconstruction costs \u2013 roughly a four-to-one return.<\/p>\n Andrew Hall from the Insurance Council says Brisbane is way ahead, too, in giving residents information. \u201cThe council has gotten really good at it; they\u2019ve had to because Brisbane has been, for a very long time, a river with a city problem.\u201d The Brisbane City Council\u2019s Flood Awareness Map provides free details including local history of flooding and aerial maps of your property. NSW\u2019s flood data is available only by region, not by property, although some local councils offer more detail. It\u2019s similar in Victoria, where statewide flood maps are being updated.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no central source of truth about the peril data in this country,\u201d says Hall. You should be able to search on the web for a property and \u201cclick on a button and say, \u2018Overlay the bushfire or the flood risk of this property,\u2019 and you just get it straight away. \u2018What\u2019s the heat risk? What\u2019s the high-tide risk?\u2019 There needs to be a way.\u201d<\/p>\n If there is no one-stop-shop for consumer risk, soaring bills tell their own story. A new study prepared for Good Weekend by insurance consultancy Finity found that since 2021, the average home insurance premium has risen 63 per cent to $4680 in NSW, 43 per cent to $4335 in Queensland and 66 per cent to $2646 in Victoria. Not all of it is due to climate change, but Finity principal Stephen Lau says flood risk is the biggest reason for the increases, particularly in northern NSW and in Shepparton in Victoria.<\/p>\n Scene five: Rob Page, 71, the owner of East Bundaberg Engineering in regional Queensland, says flood damage has cost his business close to $1 million. The latest deluge was in March, but the record Burnett River flood of 2013 was \u201cthe real killer, my whole complex was underwater up to the roof \u2026 I\u2019ve never seen so many grown men cry.\u201d Page says he can no longer get flood insurance for his business, but it wasn\u2019t meant to be this way. In 2023, the federal and Queensland governments approved funding for a 1.7-kilometre concrete levee to protect Bundaberg\u2019s CBD and eastern suburbs. It was ready to go, until Mayor Helen Blackburn withdrew her support, saying it would be too costly for ratepayers to maintain. \u201cIt was a no-brainer,\u201d says Page. \u201cIf the levee was in place, I wouldn\u2019t have a drop of water.\u201d If it floods again, he\u2019ll walk away. \u201cI\u2019m just getting old and tired of losing money.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the most exposed places in the country is the Northern Territory. In June, the NT government released its first climate change policy, a three-page resilience plan<\/a> with not a single mention of \u201cheat\u201d. A few weeks before this, residents of Papunya, a small community north-west of Alice Springs, sued the NT government in the Federal Court for failing to protect tenants from extreme heat exacerbated by climate change. Residents were fainting due to dehydration, said their lawyer, while old people struggled to sleep at night. The risk assessment points out that northern Australia is especially vulnerable to climate change.<\/p>\n Heat is relative \u2013 30 degrees in Hobart is a normal day in Darwin. By local standards, Darwin now has between six and eight heatwave days a year, defined as when both daytime and nighttime temperatures are unusually high for at least three days. If we reach 3 degrees of global warming, more than a third of the year \u2013 up to 120 days \u2013 could be a heatwave. It\u2019s not just heat, either \u2013 the NT has just been through five natural disasters in a single wet season.<\/p>\n The outgoing executive director of Environment Centre NT, Dr Kirsty Howey, is unusual in that she argues the environment movement needs to evolve from its single-minded focus on lobbying governments to phase out fossil fuels and increasing renewable energy projects. Those issues are important, but \u201cwe are going to be shifting. It\u2019s a dualism with the climate movement, where we\u2019ll say, \u2018fossil fuels out, clean energy in and the problem is solved.\u2019 [yet] it\u2019s not solved here because no matter what Australia does with its emissions and its renewable-energy buildout, we\u2019re looking at being unliveable. I don\u2019t even call it \u2018adaptation\u2019 any more. It\u2019s just like, how are we going to live here?\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a question those living in flood-prone areas are also asking. The Insurance Council identifies 24 river catchments<\/a> across the East Coast needing urgent investment. It is lobbying for a flood defence fund of $30 billion over 10 years, to be paid for by the federal government and the states most impacted: Queensland, NSW and Victoria. So far, there is little interest. The insurance industry is preoccupied by floods because that\u2019s where it is most exposed. It estimates that there are 242,000 residential dwellings facing the highest flood risk across Australia, with more than 186,000 \u2013 three-quarters of them \u2013 uninsured for flood, in some cases due to prohibitive cost.<\/p>\n The industry is reluctant to reveal exactly where those communities are for commercial reasons, but Climate Valuation has taken up that challenge. It\u2019s a company that provides climate risk analysis to property owners and, working with the Climate Council, last year named Australia\u2019s 86 most vulnerable towns and suburbs.<\/a> It says that these areas are in \u201ccritical climate risk zones\u201d and without large investment will become hard to insure, a disaster for those wanting to buy or sell, and economically crippling for these towns and suburbs. The list was topped by Shepparton in Victoria, whose mayor, Shane Sali, says, rightly, that the analysis did not take into account the work his council has done to strengthen resilience \u2013 including new infrastructure, flood overlays in the planning scheme and a mapping project that measures the flood risk of every property. The next riskiest towns, according to the modelling, are Ballina and Tweed Heads in NSW, and Belair in South Australia.<\/p>\n \u2018Making polluters help pay for the damage isn\u2019t a pipe dream but right now, it\u2019s a \u201cbuyer beware\u201d market.\u2019<\/p>\n Climate Valuation founder Dr Karl Mallon<\/p>\n Climate Valuation founder and director Dr Karl Mallon concedes the study\u2019s limitations, but says it\u2019s based on the best data available, similar to that held by insurance companies that don\u2019t release it. It\u2019s an early warning sign. \u201cWhat we said is, \u2018Take a very good look at Lismore [a NSW regional city devastated by floods in 2022]. And if you\u2019re in one of these 86 places, you\u2019re just waiting for a flood to hit.\u2019 And that was controversial.\u201d He applauds Shepparton\u2019s efforts and says insurance companies should be required to consider prevention efforts when setting premiums.<\/p>\n Mallon says the insurance crunch has been coming for decades, and it shouldn\u2019t be up to individuals, often on lower incomes, to pay to upgrade their houses; fossil fuel companies should pay their share. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a bunch of people in Australia who are suffering, and we\u2019ve got a bunch of fossil fuel producers in Australia and, if you do the numbers, they are responsible \u2026 Making polluters help pay for the damage isn\u2019t a pipe dream but right now, it\u2019s a \u2018buyer beware\u2019 market.\u201d<\/p>\n In December 2022, the national cabinet agreed that \u201cthe days of developing on floodplains needs to end\u201d. That has not quite happened \u2013 although more restrictions do apply \u2013 in part because the housing crisis means there is intense pressure to build 1.2 million new homes by 2029.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n In NSW, the biggest climate risks are floods and coastal hazard \u2013 about 85 per cent of the NSW population lives within 50 kilometres of the coastline. NSW Planning Minister Paul Scully says there are \u201c200-odd years of decision-making in NSW, where if we had our time again … we wouldn\u2019t have let homes be built in particular areas\u201d. The task is huge. Committee for Sydney chief executive Eamon says natural disasters have cost the NSW government an average of $1.6 billion a year since the 2019-2020 bushfires. This is 1000 per cent higher than the $154 million a year in the six years before that. Governments need to \u201cshift their mindsets\u201d to deal with the two great intergenerational challenges \u2013 housing and climate change, he says: \u201cWe should be treating them with the same level of existentialism.\u201d<\/p>\n The state has made progress. It now embeds climate resilience into the planning laws, funds councils to plant street trees, and this year adopted a Build Back Better policy. The Reconstruction Authority, established by the former government in 2022, has produced a disaster mitigation plan <\/a>and is working on regional versions for the high-priority flood-prone Hawkesbury-Nepean Basin in western Sydney and the Northern Rivers in the state\u2019s north.<\/p>\n \u201cThe government\u2019s taken a very deliberate position after the 2022 independent inquiry into floods that we wouldn\u2019t be building homes on dangerous floodplains any more,\u201d Scully says. But opinions differ about what constitutes a \u201cdangerous\u201d floodplain, and the pressure to release land for development to solve the housing crisis is real. After initially ruling out rezonings planned for thousands of homes in Marsden Park North and West Schofields in western Sydney<\/a>, the government later decided to allow a reduced number of new homes with \u201cstrict conditions\u201d.<\/p>\n In the Northern Rivers, the NSW government tried a buyback program for homes deemed impossible to defend \u2013 by the end of June, 826 buybacks had been completed. A related $100 million Resilient Lands program was meant to fast-track flood-safe land for homes, providing 4382 lots. So far, it is yet to deliver any land for housing. A report by the NSW Auditor-General in May this year was scathing<\/a>, branding both programs as \u201cnot effectively planned before implementation\u201d. Scully concedes the problems, but insists things have improved. NSW is given credit for solid plans, but so far, the funding is not there. \u201cBecause of the sheer volume of disasters that have occurred in the last half-decade, there is a growing anxiety among local councils in regional areas that it\u2019s getting out of control,\u201d said Darcy Byrne, president of Local Government NSW and mayor of Inner West Council. \u201cWe don\u2019t have enough funding to mitigate risk before disasters occur.\u201d<\/p>\n In Victoria, the government has recently taken over responsibility for flood mapping the whole state and to become the decision-maker when imposing future planning restrictions. Until now, this has been the responsibility of individual councils, one that many were not meeting. Updating flood maps is often controversial among locals who see their home decline in value. In 2022, the shire of Baw Baw completed the mapping<\/a> but, in the face of a backlash from residents, dropped its planning amendments.<\/p>\n \u2018We don\u2019t have enough funding to mitigate risk before disasters occur.\u2019<\/p>\n Darcy Byrne of Local Government NSW<\/p>\n Some floodplains are still being developed for housing. In Echuca, one development was approved on a piece of land that was underwater as recently as the 2022 floods. Planner Jane Keddie, the vice-president of the Planning Institute of Australia, said climate adaptation policies in Victoria were taking a back seat to building 800,000 affordable new homes by 2034, \u201ceven when an application (to build) will result in more people being exposed to that hazard\u201d.<\/p>\n Victoria\u2019s policies on bushfire resilience in new buildings led Australia, and it allocated $264 million towards adaptation in the 2025-26 budget \u2013 though close to one-third of that is going to rebuilding after the summer bushfires in the state\u2019s west. Victoria has eight high-level Adaptation Action Plans, but a recent upper house parliamentary committee report<\/a> found that \u201cactions identified by the [government\u2019s adaptation] strategy were underfunded and under-resourced\u201d.<\/p>\n The pressure largely falls on local governments \u2013 those managing planning schemes and most sensitive to local needs. Melbourne\u2019s Lord Mayor Nick Reece explains the dysfunction: \u201cThe federal government has all the money, the state government has all the laws, and the local government has all the problems.\u201d Councils can pass amendments to insist on higher environmental standards than the legislated minimums, but they must be approved by the state government. Six years ago, Reece\u2019s council proposed then-leading environmental rules for new commercial buildings, including mandates for solar energy, and options for cooling, such as green roofs and the retention of mature trees. It had the support of the Property Council, the peak body for the development industry and, says Reece, while upfront costs would be higher, the \u201cpayback is extremely quick\u201d because the buildings would be cheaper to run. The amendments went to an independent panel of experts, which approved them in October 2024. Since then \u2013 nothing. It sat unapproved on the desk of the state planning minister Sonya Kilkenny. \u201cIt\u2019s extremely frustrating,\u201d says Reece. Kilkenny declined an interview.<\/p>\n The wet season is nearly over and Darwin, Australia\u2019s northern capital, is lush. Large trees emerge from the centres of roundabouts, the sea beyond the northern suburb of Nightcliff sparkles and around the CBD, white high-rise apartments nod to the relaxed air of the tropics.<\/p>\n Look deeper, and Darwin is in trouble. Heat is known as a \u201csilent\u201d killer: major heatwaves have caused more deaths since 1890 than bushfires, cyclones, floods and severe storms combined. It\u2019s not just heat. Northern Australia faces what are called \u201ccascading\u201d risks. In the tired office of Environment Centre NT \u2013 the territory government cut its $100,000 funding last year \u2013 Kirsty Howey checks her phone. It\u2019s March and she and everyone in greater Darwin has received a \u201cboil water alert\u201d after torrential rain pushed Darwin\u2019s dam to overcapacity and the pump station shut down. Water authorities called it an \u201cunprecedented situation\u201d to avoid contamination. Howey, a lawyer who joined the centre as its head in 2020, ticks off the past few months. First, Cyclone Fina in November, the most intense cyclone system since Cyclone Tracy<\/a> on Christmas Eve 1974, and \u201ca remarkable early-season tropical cyclone\u201d as reported by the Bureau of Meteorology. Winds were so strong that a section of the Royal Darwin Hospital ceiling collapsed.<\/p>\n Then another \u201cunprecedented\u201d event, according to NT Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro. On March 7, after what was already weeks of massive rainfall, the Katherine River peaked at 19.2 metres<\/a>. Residents huddled in schools and patients were evacuated from the local hospital. Hardly a breath was taken before severe Cyclone Narelle made landfall in Queensland<\/a>, the Northern Territory and Western Australia, an extremely rare event.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything\u2019s falling apart,\u201d says Howey, soon to become the CEO of the Wilderness Society. She knows that sounds hyperbolic but insists, \u201cit really is. I\u2019ve been here [in Darwin] for 21 years. I\u2019ve never seen anything on this scale, and there\u2019s no money.\u201d The NT Environment and Planning Minister, Josh Burgoyne, declined an interview. In a statement, he said that recent floods and cyclones \u201chave demonstrated the importance of ensuring our communities, infrastructure and economy are prepared for extreme weather events\u201d. The government had made announcements including a $100 million Flood Recovery Fund to include early-warning systems, flood mitigation and resilience projects.<\/p>\n Scene six: Under a tree at Batchelor, James Parry relives the \u201crivers roaring\u201d and a crocodile turning up in his backyard before he was evacuated from his home in Daly River, known as Nauiyu, south of Darwin. In March, almost 400 people were evacuated, many by helicopter. They were moved to Darwin before shifting again to temporary accommodation in Batchelor. The damage and mud in Daly River was so severe it would be three months before the last resident went home. That flood was the second in just over a month \u2013 Parry, 53, was evacuated twice in a single wet season. It\u2019s time, he says, for the Aboriginal community to move to higher ground, and \u201cget out of the water zone; otherwise we\u2019re going through this every time we get rain, the river comes up.\u201d That idea has been voiced many times, but so far, has not happened. It\u2019s not clear who makes that decision, and who pays for it.<\/p>\n Greater Darwin is home to 159,000 people who love it for its casual lifestyle, the fishing, the spectacular sunsets, the long walks along the beach. It\u2019s hot year-round, but it\u2019s the \u201cbuild-up\u201d in October and November that is most oppressive, with crippling humidity unrelieved by rain. November is the hottest month, with an average nighttime minimum of 25 degrees and, during the day, an average maximum of 34 degrees which, because of the humidity, feels more like 42 degrees. That is dangerous, and it\u2019s not just about temperature. It was once believed that humans could adapt endlessly to heat \u2013 Territorians are proud of their toughness. But a 2010 study<\/a> co-authored by Professor Steven Sherwood, the deputy director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of NSW, put a hard limit on heat stress. A \u201cwet bulb\u201d temperature of 35 degrees \u2013 a combination of both temperature and humidity \u2013 was the upper limit for human survival because the air becomes so moist, sweat cannot evaporate to cool down the body\u2019s core temperature.<\/p>\n That landmark work has since been refined, especially in real-world \u201cheat chambers\u201d that have found lower limits to heat stress, a 31- or 32-degree wet bulb temperature for even younger people under high humidity, and as low as 23 to 28 degrees for those older than 65. That is deadly, and northern Australia is bumping up against those limits. On oft-quoted study in 2023 found that if global warming reaches 2.7 degrees \u2013 highly likely \u2013 much of northern Australia faces \u201cnear unliveable conditions\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Sherwood says that at 2.7 degrees of global warming, few people could handle living in Darwin and the health of those who did would suffer. Humans \u2013 as well as many native animals and livestock \u2013 have not lived under those conditions before. \u201cIt tells you that there would start to be heatwaves that people would find very, very difficult to cope with.\u201d Grandiose plans proposed by governments over the years to \u201cpopulate the north\u201d to 4 or 5 million people make Sherwood \u201cshake my head\u201d. \u201cThat might have made sense without global warming, but I think that\u2019s not going to work. I don\u2019t think we move people up there; we\u2019re going to end up moving back.\u201d<\/p>\n If there is a farcical symbol of the Territory\u2019s failure to protect people from heat, it is the 55-metre shade structure over a section of Darwin\u2019s Cavenagh Street, where surface temperatures can reach 70 degrees. In 2017, then chief minister Michael Gunner led a delegation to Singapore, a \u201cgreen oasis\u201d that could teach Darwin a thing or two about how to flourish in a tropical climate. With him was award-winning NT architect Lawrence Nield, who developed a vision to cool Darwin by 2.7 degrees by mass-planting the right kind of trees, coating black bitumen to cool it down, and creating a Cool Darwin Authority to oversee urban planning. Cavenagh Street was a trial \u2014 tropical vines would grow over the structure in about 18 months, a quicker solution than waiting for trees to mature.<\/p>\n What followed was a comedy of errors. The vines chosen weren\u2019t suitable, they were pruned too savagely, and they never grew over the structure. The opposition at the time \u2013 now the government \u2013 mocked the idea of greening the CBD as a foolish priority compared to crime, health and education. A few months ago, the government announced the vines would be removed.<\/p>\n Nield, the architect of Cavenagh Street and now retired to Sydney, looks on in despair. Yes, the vines didn\u2019t work but they should have been replaced by something better, he says \u2013 and the need to cool down Darwin remains urgent. \u201cI feel my six years [as NT architect] were wasted,\u201d he says. The local council is doing its best to boost the canopy cover over Darwin, but it only controls 13 per cent of the municipality. It has given away thousands of native trees for residents to plant in their own backyards.<\/p>\n![\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/01ba25898243edf12a5b12056fe0a49c7e9187a66f65f6e990deea2ccd118cf1.gif\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Rania](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/dd7f3449b1af13ca2614d7000dfc26a8c56fd724.jpeg\")
Rania Omar, 26, waters her plants outside her granny flat in Blacktown. She believes that more greenery would help make Western Sydney cooler.Sitthixay Ditthavong<\/p>\n![\"Insurance](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/a6620825aaf3ba7af3ad656ea87b2944c4b921b4.jpeg\")
Insurance Council of Australia CEO Andrew Hall says resiliency is the more urgent challenge than emissions reduction.Dominic Lorrimer<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/5e87c0d2f7c376792ff7a70e9bff968eecd1835f.jpeg\")
A local resident paddles through a flooded street in Shepparton, Victoria, in 2022, during a flood that destroyed 80 homes.Diego Fedele<\/p>\n![\"Huge](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/39512b9a295d6883b7792da35013d896600fa0c6.jpeg\")
Huge seas in northern NSW caused by ex-tropical cyclone Alfred in March 2025 \u2013 the first time in decades that a tropical cyclone threatened to make landfall on that part of the coast.Getty Images<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/dfadcf46d25b6d41f986c0817eede2e41ffd62e0.jpeg\")
A development in Marsden Park with dark roofs and minimal trees and black roads and driveways where temperatures will be high in summer and there will be a reliance on air conditioners in Western Sydney.Janie Barrett<\/p>\n![\"Firefighters](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/51c67f0784b6379c17ebbbae268f38e1b51aa848.jpeg\")
Firefighters are increasingly faced with \u201ccatastrophic\u201d fire conditions – the highest possible level of bushfire danger – such as this 2019 fire in Hillville, New South Wales.Getty Images<\/p>\n![\"James](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/cee264aaa6212e36eeccd9ed74b56d1c027460d0.jpeg\")
James Parry, who was evacuated from Nauiyu, south of Darwin, in March for the second time in the wet season, relives the \u201crivers roaring\u201d and a crocodile turning up in his backyard before he was evacuated from his home.David Hancock\/Skyscans<\/p>\n![\"Sunset](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/fb870046675694d2ea36727f4222860c518a0b8e.jpeg\")
Sunset in the Northern Territory, which is particularly exposed to global warming and dangerous \u201cwet-bulb\u201d temperatures that are a threat to life.David Hancock\/Skyscans<\/p>\n