Flood crisis: Can Australia win the fight against natural disasters?

The stories of people scrambling to the roof of their homes to escape rising waters. Of people displaced and feeling abandoned by authorities they thought could be relied on when disaster struck.

The former ACT emergency services boss and retired army general understands the feeling of being abandoned in a crisis.

Mr Dunn and his wife experienced it in the days, weeks and months after bushfires roared through the South Coast town of Lake Conjola on New Year's Eve in 2019, killing three people and destroying and damaging dozens of homes.

In the absence of state or federal help, Mr Dunn helped coordinate the local community recovery association for 10 months before the couple packed up and left the seaside hamlet.

"It almost forced me to tears and I didn't think it would," he says of the flood disaster.

"There is just this feeling of abandonment because our world is now so connected. To know that feeling is being experienced up there - it is just so saddening.

"Something has got to change."

The question is: what?

Two years on from the horrors of Black Summer, the east coast flood catastrophe has again exposed Australia's vulnerability to natural disasters.

And two years on, similar questions to those asked during and after the deadly fire season are being raised again by experts and the public as the massive clean-up continues on the rubbish-lined streets of towns such as Lismore.

Why didn't state and federal governments do more to prepare for the disaster, and respond quicker as the emergency unfolded?

Where was the ADF when inundated towns needed them the most?

And can the Morrison government be serious about combating natural disasters if it doesn't lift its own targets for combating climate change?

Australian Community Media this week spoke to emergency experts and members of communities struck by recent disasters amid the fallout to the latest catastrophe.

All made a similar observation: when are we going to learn our lessons?

Zena Armstrong is the president of the Cobargo Community Bushfire Recovery Fund, which was created shortly after fires tore through the South Coast village on New Year's Eve in 2019.

Ms Armstrong says the floods have been "triggering" for some in her community, in part because of a sense lessons from previous disasters - including Black Summer - haven't been heeded.

"It's as if each time there's a disaster we go right back to the beginning," she says.

"All of the lessons that have been learned in communities, which have been reviewed endlessly by governments at both the state and federal level, are just not being acted on."

Ms Armstrong says as a starting point Australia needs clear policies to tackle climate change, which the science shows is responsible for increasing the frequency and severity of natural disasters.

Two reports published during the latest crisis - one from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the other authored by the Climate Council - warned that extreme flood events would occur more frequently as global warming worsened.

Prince Charles, in a message relayed via Governor-General David Hurley on Friday, said the floods and "ferocious" Black Summer fires were a reminder extreme weather events were becoming more common.

"Climate change is not just about rising temperatures," the statement read.

"It is also about the increased frequency and intensity of dangerous weather events, once considered rare."

For Mr Dunn, climate change is not a "footnote to the floods" but rather the "main game". All other steps to mitigate disasters count for nothing, he believes, if temperatures continue to rise.

"We have wasted two decades of time where we should have been driving down emissions and spending money on mitigation, but we've had these climate wars [in federal politics] which are just insane," he says.

"Our communities are now bearing the direct brunt of the negligence from our leaders."

Prime Minister Scott Morrison managed to evade climate protesters as he toured flood-ravaged Lismore on Wednesday, but he couldn't escape the topic when he fronted the media.

Mr Morrison said it was an "obvious fact" the climate had changed and admitted Australia was becoming a harder country to live in because of natural disasters.

But he defended the government's record on emissions reduction and argued Australian action alone wouldn't fix climate change.

"What's not going to fix it is just doing something in Australia, and then in other developing countries their emissions continue to rise," he said.

"That won't change the climate here in the Northern Rivers."

As of Friday morning, more than 6600 ADF personnel were on the ground across Queensland and NSW helping with the flood clean up.

Some northern rivers locals believe troops should have been deployed in greater numbers as flood waters swelled almost a fortnight ago, when their communities were forced to rely on neighbours' boats and privately hired helicopters to help with evacuations and food deliveries.

Defence Minister Peter Dutton has strongly rejected criticism of the army and was on Friday maintaining troops could not have been sent out any earlier.

The ADF's role in responding to natural disasters was a focus of the royal commission into the Black Summer fires.

The report concluded the army should "not be seen as a first responder for natural disasters, nor relied on as such".

Chris Barrie, a former Chief of the Defence Force, agrees the army isn't the answer.

"The ADF has less people that what [former NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner] Shane Fitzsimmons had to put out the bushfires in NSW [during Black Summer]," he says.

"He had 78,000 volunteers. Our ADF at best has just over 60,000 people and that includes logisticians and medicos and everyone else.

"If anyone thinks that the real answer to this problem is to put in the Australian Defence Force, I've got news for them - and it's not good."

Mr Barrie has again suggested the idea of a universal service scheme, in which young people would help in everything from emergency services to aged care.

"The whole point is that we need young, energetic Australians to roll up their sleeves and be ready to do stuff," he says.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese this week said the idea of a dedicated unit inside the army to respond to natural disasters was worthy of consideration

Asked if he supported a civil defence force, Mr Dunn said: "No, that's what the SES [State Emergency Service] is for.

"The SES definitely needs bolstering, as does the rural fire service and country fire services."

The flood crisis has again put the spotlight on the amount of money governments are spending, or not spending, to prevent or soften the blow of natural disasters.

Labor hammered the Coalition before and during the latest catastrophe over its reluctance to draw on the Commonwealth's emergency response fund, which has swollen to $4.8 billion since it was set up in 2019.

The government can access $200 million a year to fund emergency responses and disaster mitigation projects, but has so far allocated only $100 million through two rounds of a flood proofing scheme.

Emergency Management Minister Bridget McKenzie has repeatedly accused Labor of playing politics with the fund amid the flood crisis, reiterating the money was only ever intended to be used as last resort.

She pointed out the government has offered more than $860 million worth of support for flood-affected communities in NSW and Queensland since February.

Commonwealth disaster relief payments had been paid to some 490,000 people as of Friday.

Mr Morrison on Wednesday signalled the Commonwealth would finally dip into the fund to pay for flood mitigation in Lismore, prompting Labor's Murray Watt to accuse him of only stepping up because an election was on the horizon.

Labor has pledged to spend up to $200 million every year on disaster prevention and resilience projects if it wins the next election.

Mr Dunn put forward a range of ideas to shield against disasters and extreme weather events, including building flood levies and constructing more desalination plants to shore up water supply amid droughts.

He disagreed with National Recovery and Resilience Agency boss Shane Stone's suggestion at the height of the flood crisis that inundated homes shouldn't be rebuilt, comments which prompted Labor to demand his resignation.

But Mr Dunn says other planning decisions can be used to mitigate against natural disasters. He suggested more multi-storey developments be built in regional areas, helping to meet housing demand without having to approve properties in disaster-prone areas.

"We have to start flying some kites because what we're doing here ain't working," he says.