The recent Los Angeles wildfires were shocking in their scale and ferocity. More than 10,000 homes were destroyed, with losses estimated at over US$250 billion. In an interview on the ABC's  7.30, fire expert Professor Char Miller, from Pomona College in California, explained that building in high-risk fire zones in the Los Angeles foothills has escalated in the past five to 10 years, partly setting the scene for the destruction we have just witnessed.

When asked who was responsible for those decisions, he responded, "Planning commissions and zoning commissions, all of whom greenlight these subdivisions." He said, "If it's a policy problem, then we can make better policies. But at the moment, there doesn't seem to be the political will."

Experts warn us that it is only a matter of time before a fire event at the scale and of the ferocity of the Los Angeles fires happens here in Australia. In The Sydney Morning Herald in January, NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner Rob Rogers said:

"In the northern beaches, the north shore itself, and the southern suburbs, there's quite a lot of bushland and significant areas of national park, and then you've got housing built on the ridge tops [...] That's because of historical planning and we can't change it, but obviously that makes fire management more difficult."

It is true that we cannot change historical strategic planning and land use decisions, but we can make better decisions today. I am particularly interested in consideration of bushfire risk in land use decisions because of the Patyegarang—formerly Lizard Rock—planning proposal in my electorate of Wakehurst. That proposal, brought by the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council, seeks to create a new 370-home subdivision in an area of bushland on Morgan Road in Belrose. The NSW Rural Fire Service has consistently opposed the rezoning due to fire risk, but it is yet to be finally decided.

The catastrophic Los Angeles fires and our own devastating 2019-20 fire season carry important lessons for strategic planning in urban bushland interface areas in our own State, including the Patyegarang-Lizard Rock proposal. The profound ramifications really start to hit home when it comes to insurance. My office has been speaking with experts who follow these matters closely, and a fascinating and disturbing picture emerges. Since the 2019-20 bushfires, forest fire cover in Australia has increased significantly but, largely, it is still available. I suspect it will not be for long. Unlike flood insurance, there has not been a threshold where insurers leave the market. In recent years insurers in California stopped insuring for forest fire cover. In January 2024 State Farm Insurance announced it would not renew 30,000 home owner policies, including 1,626 in the Palisades. Many other insurers have done the same. Dr Karl Mallon, climate risk expert and CEO of Climate Valuation, said:

"This has not happened in Australia yet, but it is unreasonable to think it won't. California and Australia are the two fire hotspots of the developed world."

Dr Mallon paints a picture of "mortgage prisoners". To exchange contracts, banks require an insurance policy on the property. That means when owners go to sell, if insurance is unavailable or prohibitively expensive, sellers are limited to cash buyers who themselves will not be able to get insurance. Those houses will essentially become stranded assets. When new subdivisions were being approved in the past, we did not know that. Today there is no plausible deniability for governments and no claim of ignorance. That raises serious questions about liability, a point explained in an extraordinary contribution to the Sydney North Planning Panel hearing for the Patyegarang rezoning from the head of sustainability from Landcom in December last year. She said she could not "in good conscience or with my expertise, recommend to our board that this project proceed". She said:

"The climate-related physical compounding risks are too extreme and insurmountable regardless of any redesign or restructuring of the proposal […] As these risks are foreseeable, the proponent would not only be at risk of future class actions, it would also unreasonably expose people and properties to insurance risk, mortgage risk, and risk to life."

I understand the planning department's motivations in wanting to find ways for the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council to generate income from its lands. However, we cannot right past wrongs by committing new wrongs that deny the facts of escalating fire risk and put lives at risk, including those of volunteer firefighters. Will we make the right decisions that avoid future human suffering, or will we continue to recklessly greenlight subdivisions that we know are bushfire traps? Do we really want to put volunteer firefighters, let alone residents, at risk? The Government was smart when it abandoned building on high-risk flood plains in Western Sydney. We should be smart and stop building in bushfire zones too. How many lives and structures need to be lost in bushfires before we plan smartly for the future?

13 February 2025, 16:48.