Financial Rights Legal Centre joined colleagues and politicians from across sectors and the political spectrum for Community Resilience Week at Parliament House in Canberra last week. Climate-related risks, housing instability and the infrastructure of insurance require urgent and united action. Over the week we:

• joined a Showcase organised by Insurance Council of Australia to bring together organisations and interests supporting Australians in the face of disaster;
• met with the Parliamentary Friends of Insurance, to bring the voices of individuals and households to the tables where influence is exercised, and
• attended Zali Steggall OAM MP's Climate resilience and economic impacts roundtable, charting a course forward and launching her Green Paper.

Our job is to give a voice to the huge numbers of people who seek help from the Insurance Law Service – including those who are increasingly unable to afford home insurance and resilience action as climate-related risks intensify. We will ensure that the voice of individuals and households remains front and centre of every discussion on the issue.

Households don’t have decades to mitigate risks. They are one disaster away from losing their home and financial stability. Already, the tide of demand is rising:

• Incoming telephone calls to Financial Rights almost doubled from 31,922 in FY2024/25 to 62,656 in FY2025/26, representing a 96.3% increase.
• Despite an estimated 70% increase in answered calls, the overall answer rate declined from 65.8% to 57.1%.
• The Insurance Law Service experienced particularly significant demand, answering 3,650 of 16,183 incoming calls.

Many voices have agreed a path forward on housing resilience, but we now need coordination and collaboration. The Housing Resilience Action Plan 2030, developed with Monash University, Financial Counselling Victoria, ARC Justice, Resilient Building Council and Finity, offers a robust, long-term vision for a unified way forward.

Thank you to Susan Templeman MP, Garth Hamilton MP (Co-Chairs of the Parliamentary Friends of Insurance), the Insurance Council of Australia, and Zali Steggall MP for making space to hear stories of individuals and households as decisions are made that affect them.