HOST: Joining us now is Minister for Emergency Management, Kristy McBain, who at the time of the Black Summer fires was the Mayor of the Bega Valley Shire, down the beautiful far south coast of NSW. Good morning, thank you for your time.

MCBAIN: Good morning.

HOST: But before we talk about the bushfire report, I feel it would be remiss of me not to ask about the Optus story this weekend because you are the Minister for Emergency Management. Is it a concern to you that one of the major telcos didn’t give any alarm bells that its emergency call system wasn't working for hours?

MINISTER MCBAIN: Yes, absolutely. I think the Optus outage was absolutely disgraceful. We make sure that telcos provide emergency calls under Australian law and the fact that this is the second outage in only a couple of years, and the fact that no state or the federal government was advised of this outage I think is beyond reprehensible and there has obviously been some significant impacts with the loss of four lives that we know of. But a 13-hour outage is not good enough, and Optus really needs to take on board the feedback that they will be getting, and I understand that ACMA will be investigating.

HOST: Obviously we are here to talk about the fires but I feel like it is related because we are approaching the fire season. What answers would you like to see here? Are you genuinely confident that in the fire season everyone will be able to make an emergency call and get through? 

MCBAIN: After the last Optus Triple-0 outage, there was a review undertaken where there were 18 recommendations. We took on board all of those 18 recommendations. Optus clearly needs to review its protocols. No doubt that they will be employing crisis communications specialists to come in and help them, but what they need to be doing is getting their systems in order so that Australians can have confidence that when they dial Triple-0, it's going to get through to one of our emergency operators. 

HOST: We will be covering that investigation, of course, closely. Six years down the track of Black Summer, I think of towns in your patch, like Cobargo, for example, devastated by fire at the time. How are these affected communities going now? Have they managed to rebuild?

MCBAIN: Look. I think what lots of people don't understand is that the compounding and cumulative effect of the disaster has had a huge toll on communities, not only in my patch, but in many patches like Lismore and Tweed, for example. It's really important, I think, that we give communities some space to deal with recovery and for a lot of people, recovery isn’t going to be a straight line for a various number of reasons. Post obviously Black Summer bushfires, a month after our fires went out in the Bega Valley, and they went out only because of a flood, a month later we were in Covid, so that compounding impact of disaster has had an uneven effect on parts of our community. 

HOST: I want to ask about this ANU report now. It has found that poorer and some rural communities face more significant long-term losses from the Black Summer fires. Are you aware of that disparity, Minister, where some communities fared better than others?

MCBAIN: Oh, look, I don't think that there is such a thing as a community faring better than another in disaster. Everyone is impacted and, as I said, sometimes those impacts can be uneven, but the trauma of an event like the Black Summer bushfire will remain with everyone in the community, whether they were impacted directly or not. I think there has been some significant challenges for a range of people in terms of rebuilding, particularly because of supply-chain issues, when we entered that Covid era, and obviously there has been a shortage of trades right around the country, so people have had to wait a long time to get a trade to come back in. I think the other thing we've seen, obviously during Covid, was we've had a number of people from our more metropolitan areas buy up in regional areas because they love the lifestyle that we get each and every day, but that's had an impact on people trying to recover from bushfires as well.

HOST: Just briefly on that note, because there is another report out this week, the National Climate Risk Assessment, warned that more than a million homes could be uninsurable by 2050 if emissions don't go down. Are you concerned that we are getting to a point where people won't be able to insure their homes?

MCBAIN: Insurance affordability and availability has been an issue for more than a decade now. When we came to government in 2022 we put in place a number of things including a review into disaster recovery funding arrangements and disaster governance arrangements, which we will be responding to. The other thing we've done is created a partnership with insurance companies called the Hazard Insurance Partnership. So we meet regularly with insurers, myself, the Assistant Treasurer and the Assistant Minister for Emergency Management. Really looking at how we as a government federally, but also state and territory governments can make sure we are sharing data across the board, to make sure we are investing in disaster risk reduction in the aim to make sure that premiums come down and really to get a national data insurance set so we can really look at where our dollars are going and hoping to mitigate against the worst of disasters as they come. There is more work to do in this space, but it's really important that those communication lines remain open, and I'm really keen to work with the Assistant Treasurer to make sure insurers are also holding up their end of the bargain when we are investing in mitigation and disaster risk reduction.

HOST: Minister, great to have you with us, thanks for joining us.

MCBAIN: Thanks for having me.