‘Public disservice’: Ex-Suncorp chief hits out at 1-in-500 year floods narrative

Former insurance boss Geoff Summerhayes says calling the recent floods a “one-in-500 year event” is a disservice to the public that will delay the overhaul needed in infrastructure and planning to better protect Australians.

Mr Summerhayes, who was Suncorp’s chief executive between 2008 and 2015 and later a board member of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, said extreme weather had become the “new normal”.

“What’s been so surprising is how surprised people were. This sort of narrative that you can’t plan for something that hasn’t happened before, I don’t think actually cuts it anymore.

“That was an appropriate narrative when we lived in a more stable climate. But the past is no longer a predictor of the future.”

Flash flooding in Queensland and NSW broke previous records, displaced communities and left a wreckage of businesses and homes in what is shaping up to be Australia’s most expensive flood event for insurers.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison called the floods a “one-in-500 year event”, while NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet called it a “one-in-1000-year event” and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce called it a “one-in-3500 year” event.

Mr Summerhayes said this narrative was misleading because it suggested record-breaking weather events would not be repeated. “We are doing a disservice I think to the Australian public by a using narrative that is contextualising these events as that they’re not going to happen again for another 500 years,” he said.

“We would all hope that will be the case. We would all hope the black summer bushfires might not happen again at a scale they did.

“But the science is telling us something different. The science is telling us these types of events are going to be more frequent, more extreme and they are indeed not in the category of 1 in 500 years.”