Promise check: Spend up to $200 million per year via the Disaster Ready Fund on disaster prevention and resilience

At the 2022 election, Labor promised to spend up to $200 million per year via the Disaster Ready Fund on disaster prevention and resilience. Here's how that promise is tracking.

(Image by ABC News: Harriet Tatham)

In an effort to improve Australia's disaster readiness, Labor promised to invest up to $200 million per year on disaster prevention and resilience via a Disaster Ready Fund before the 2022 election.

In a press release announcing the fund in January 2022, then opposition leader Anthony Albanese and then shadow minister for disaster and emergency management Murray Watt said the plan involved "revamping" the Coalition government's $4.7 billion Emergency Response Fund.

Twitter update about Labor's Disaster Ready Fund

"Three years after it was announced, the ERF has not spent a cent on disaster recovery and has not completed a single disaster prevention project," the press release reads.

"The only thing it has done is earn the Government over $750 million in investment returns.

"Labor will revamp the failed ERF so that it spends up to $200 million per year for disaster prevention and resilience".

According to a policy document available on Labor's website, the fund will "curb the devastating impacts of natural disasters by investing in important disaster prevention projects like flood levees, sea walls, cyclone shelters, evacuation centres, fire breaks and telecommunications improvements".

Assessing the promise

This promise will be delivered if legislation passes parliament which allows for the Emergency Response Fund to be renamed the Disaster Ready Fund and allows for up to $200 million per annum to be drawn from the fund for disaster prevention and resilience.

The fund will also need to spend a substantial amount of this $200 million per year for this promise to be considered delivered.

The promise tracker may draw on publications from the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) in assessing the promise.

Here's how the promise is tracking:

19 May 2023

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RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.

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Promise check: Spend up to $200 million per year via the Disaster Ready Fund on disaster prevention and resilience