Challenges and responses to disasters

We should learn from the experience of recent government over-reliance on the honesty and competence of private industry, in the scandals with home-insulation and school building. There were too many private interests that made hay while the government lacked the ability to supervise them. This should teach those purchasing from Australian manufacturers to proceed with caution.

“More jobs!” is one response to how the disasters can work for us. But the jobs must be financed somehow, and we will have less income as a nation to pay for them. Unless those who have the money are prepared to pay for Australian goods and services, then those who lack the money will never have those jobs. The demand set up by the destruction will not be strong enough to make Australian jobs safe.

We need two sorts of change in habits to make a profit from this opportunity/challenge. The more the demand for Australian goods and services, the cheaper those goods and services can be, and be competitive against foreign imports. The more foreign imports we bring in, the worse our balance of payments, and the more Australian jobs are lost. Our agriculture has taken a beating. While Australian horticulture and farm produce remain in short supply, imports can take over, and take over so that the Australian products cannot regain even where they were before. Already irrigators have lost dried fruits and orange industries; Chinese apples and United States lemons are in the shops even in the suburbs that have apples and lemons on the ground in backyards. It is consumers, wholesalers and retailers that have the remedy in their hands, or drive the prices of Australian goods even higher through low turnover.

The building industry has been paradoxically living in a dream-world with no climate changes. The McMansions being built near us have dark roofs, no eaves, no space between roof and ceilings, no attention to orientation, no yards for children or laundry, no water-saving features; they demand more air-conditioning and heating than ever before. Now the challenge for the industry and its regulation is to plan houses that will withstand the emergencies that may happen any time - resistant to flood, fire and drought, built on land that is not precious farmland, not hidden among trees that must be cut down to keep the houses safe, not close to water, not far from transport … The population will need to be stable for such limitations on building safely.

The quickest response to these challenges is to shoot any messenger that warns that present behaviour is not adequate to carry on. Labels of all sorts can be thrown around. But on the other hand, we can learn from the past, and we can build a future that is different from it.