The reform window is open: Why the current response to the Colvin Review is the moment to drive systemic change 

Australia’s disaster funding system is now entering a period of reform. The Australian Government has outlined a new Disaster Recovery Funding Framework, intended to replace existing arrangements with a model that is simpler, more consistent and faster to deploy. The Framework introduces nationally consistent assistance packages, a clearer 50:50 funding partnership with states and territories, and a stronger focus on reducing future disaster risk through initiatives such as the Resilient Infrastructure Scheme. 

Importantly, the Government has also signalled that the Framework will be implemented progressively, with design elements still being finalised in partnership with jurisdictions and local government. 

This creates a critical but often under‑recognised window. 

Periods of reform are not just about updating funding models or administrative settings. They are the moments when systems are most open to change – when assumptions are challenged, relationships are reset, and new ways of working can be embedded. If this opportunity is missed, the risk is that reforms improve mechanics without shifting the underlying system dynamics that continue to drive rising costs and worsening outcomes. In recent years, those costs have escalated sharply: the Commonwealth alone allocated $11.4 billion to disaster recovery in the 2024–25 Budget, with no signs of this number slowing. The longer the system remains weighted towards response and recovery, the more these costs compound. 

The question for governments and system partners is therefore not just how to implement the new Framework, but how to use this transition period to tackle the underlying drivers of cost and complexity. Without this, even well‑designed reforms risk being absorbed into the existing system – improving consistency and process, but leaving coordination challenges, fragmented investment and reactive funding patterns largely intact.

The proposed Framework represents a meaningful step forward. It aims to simplify access to recovery funding, improve consistency across jurisdictions, and introduce a stronger focus on reducing future disaster risk (with more proposed initiatives to follow). 

However, if these additional reforms are not systemic in impact, the underlying challenges that have shaped successive reviews are unlikely to be resolved by funding changes alone. Spending remains structurally weighted towards recovery, even as the cost and frequency of disasters increase. Coordination continues to be inherently difficult because resilience cuts across portfolios and levels of government, while existing governance and funding arrangements are still largely siloed. Investment decisions are not yet consistently supported by a shared evidence base, which limits the ability to confidently reprioritise funding over time. At the same time, data remains dispersed across agencies and sectors, with no single integrated view of risk, exposure and outcomes. 

The current reforms are designed to improve aspects of this system – particularly consistency, partnership and support for betterment. But their ultimate impact will depend on how they are implemented, and whether they are complemented by broader, system‑level change. This is what makes the transition period so important. 

Alongside implementation of the new Framework, there is a practical agenda that governments can advance immediately to drive longer-term value and alignment. 

First, the move to a more consistent funding model creates an opportunity to embed adaptive pathways,  linking near-term recovery decisions with long-term risk reduction. Rather than treating each recovery investment as a discrete event, governments can begin to sequence decisions over time, ensuring that infrastructure, land use and community investments evolve as risk changes. This requires funding approaches that support cumulative, coordinated investment, rather than a series of isolated projects. When done well, this allows recovery spending to progressively reduce risk, not simply restore what existed before. 

Second, the introduction of nationally consistent assistance provides a platform to establish a shared outcomes framework for resilience. Without a common definition of success, alignment across jurisdictions will remain limited. A national framework, spanning economic, social, environmental and infrastructure outcomes, would enable governments to move beyond activity-based reporting and towards a consistent view of what constitutes impact. Over time, this would support clearer prioritisation, reduce duplication in reporting requirements, and create a basis for tracking progress nationally. 

Third, governments can continue to deepen engagement with the insurance sector. These partnerships – particularly around data sharing and place-based initiatives – are increasingly important as insurance affordability becomes a direct pressure on households in high-risk locations. The opportunity is to align resilience investments more deliberately with insurer risk signals, so that interventions such as retrofitting, land-use change or local mitigation works translate into measurable reductions in exposure and, over time, more sustainable premiums. This is one of the clearest ways to connect system-level investment with tangible outcomes for communities. 

Finally, the introduction of the Resilient Infrastructure Scheme highlights the need for a more consistent and transparent basis for investment prioritisation. At present, decisions are often made within program or jurisdictional siloes, drawing on partial data and with limited comparability across regions. Developing a national risk prioritisation map would provide a shared evidence base to guide these decisions. Such a view would integrate hazard and climate risk data with insurance losses, socio-economic vulnerability, infrastructure exposure, land use patterns and population growth. The intent would not be to centralise decision-making, but to enable more consistent, defensible and strategic choices about where investment can deliver the greatest reduction in risk. Over time, this would support better sequencing of investments, stronger alignment across portfolios, and clearer articulation of value for money. 

It is worth saying plainly that systemic change is hard. It is easy to call for “system reform” or a “shift to resilience”. It is much harder to change arrangements that have evolved over decades around response and recovery. Progress will be incremental, benefits will take time to fully materialise, and much of the work – integrating data, coordinating across jurisdictions, aligning funding settings – will be complex and contested. But this is precisely why the current transition matters. 

The implementation of the Disaster Recovery Funding Framework is not just a technical reform exercise. It is the moment when the system is most open to change, when governments can align around shared outcomes, build the evidence base needed to guide investment, and embed new ways of working that endure beyond individual programs and provide national benefits. 

It is undisputed across all levels of government that we need to spend less on recovery; at some point we must cut off the tab. These current reforms offer a point of inflexion to instil the systemic changes needed to shift the sector from responding to disasters as they occur, to reducing their impacts before they happen. 

Get in touch to discuss how we can help you shift from reactive to proactive resilience across policy, strategy, data, and governance. 

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