Are we really prepared for the climate crisis when it comes to infrastructure?

It was a photo of the Sydney regional line at Bomaderry that got me thinking about Australia’s massive shortfall in climate adaptation.

Heavy rain in New South Wales last weekend washed out sections of the South Coast line between Sydney and the southern New South Wales coast. Transport for NSW identified problems at multiple locations, including Wombarra, Scarborough, Port Kembla, the Macquarie Rivulet, Lilyvale, Coalcliff, Bomaderry and Bald Hill.

A section of the track at Bomaderry was badly damaged, show photos from Transport for NSW.

It’s too early to link last week’s extreme rainfall to climate change, of course. So-called attribution studies rely on careful statistical analysis to establish whether anthropogenic global warming has contributed to the increased likelihood of extreme weather events; they take time and require skilled scientists to carry out.

But certain physical facts are inescapable, such as that every degree of warming allows the atmosphere to hold 7% more water. This makes rainfall events heavier. Climate change is increasing the likelihood of extreme rainfall and flooding, which will make low-lying infrastructure more vulnerable.

What to do about vulnerabilities like this is an example of the scale of the adaptation problem confronting Australia.

There is only a single track after Kiama, and the line is particularly low-lying in places like Bomaderry, where the track winds its way through coastal lowlands south of Wollongong. This means train services to southern NSW are extremely vulnerable to high rainfall events, such as last weekend. The woeful state of Australia’s rail infrastructure is no secret, of course. But Bomaderry is just one of dozens of vulnerable road and rail lines across the country.

Climate change is increasing the risk of drought. Falling rainfall across much of southern and western Australia has huge implications for long-term water security. Over in the west, the crippling drought in recent times has highlighted the vulnerability of much of southern Western Australia’s water infrastructure. The scale of the problem continues to dwarf government investment. Even though WA Premier Roger Cook has just committed $2.8 billion to a new desalination plant, this is likely to be an underestimate given the sorry history of Australian infrastructure costs. Despite this, last year, Bunbury Mayor Jaysen Miguel was still complaining that a lack of water recycling infrastructure meant the town was watering its park and gardens with drinking water from Perth’s main aquifer. Late last year, the Cook government scrapped planned reforms to WA’s water laws.

As a 2018 report on “Profiling Australia’s Vulnerability” by the National Resilience Taskforce noted, climate risks often intersect in damaging ways. Climate damages infrastructure, which in turn makes disaster response harder. Repeated disasters can be especially devastating, as residents of Lismore know to their cost. The taskforce observed that “hazards only lead to disaster if they intersect with an exposed and vulnerable society and when the consequences exceed its capacity to cope.”

Not all adaptation is disaster preparedness. Some systems fail slowly and predictably, but that doesn’t mean they won’t affect us. Higher temperatures reduce the carrying capacity of electricity transmissions lines, reducing the total capacity of the grid. Melbourne’s rail system now has an “extreme heat timetable”, in which services are slowed and limited on very hot days, due to rails bending. During the 2018 heatwave, parts of the Hume Highway melted.

Once you start looking at the coming task of adapting Australian infrastructure to a warming world, the problems are frightening. As the seas rise, nearly every coastal town or suburb will have to grapple with significant coastal erosion. Many local governments recognise that their coastal infrastructure is under significant threat, but completely lack the resources to manage them. Built infrastructure will be affected. A 2023 report by KPMG points out that “intense heat can cause damage to building materials: metals rust, steel and iron beams expand and adhesives crack, exposing buildings to leaks and structural vulnerabilities.”

It’s wrong to say Australia is not adapting at all. Many state and local governments, as well as major infrastructure owners, have formed detailed adaptation plans. There has been a lot of research done on the various risks and vulnerabilities. There has also been some local action: Brisbane Airport has built a new runway that is three metres higher, for instance. But stories of foresight such as this are relatively hard to find.

Significant work has been done in southeast Queensland — Brisbane has a flood action plan — but the scale of the flood risk in Brisbane and the Gold Coast only rises. As the devastating 2011 floods showed, much of Brisbane is at risk of extreme flooding. Yet that hasn’t stopped massive development in historically flood-prone suburbs in inner Brisbane and across the sprawling canal developments on the Gold Coast. 

Adaptation is local, specific and costly. As Bloomberg’s Jessica Nix notes in a recent piece, what matters is the height of a local levee, or the ability of a hospital system to cope with an extreme heat wave. It imposes costs for bridges, roads, dams and electricity lines that in many cases only governments will be prepared to pay for.

While neoliberals might dream of market solutions to climate risk, the reality is that most of the cost of adaptation will need to be socialised, because the private sector isn’t willing or able to step in. The market for private insurance is already failing in some parts of the country, with many homeowners in northern Australians struggling to obtain home insurance.

If the problems are local, the response will need to be general. The states and territories can do their part, but only the Commonwealth has the deep pockets and jurisdiction to plan, fund and regulate the huge challenges of adapting national infrastructure systems and frameworks. And after a decade of Coalition governments, the feds are starting from well behind in terms of a national adaptation policy.

Chris Bowen’s Department of Climate Change is working on a new national adaptation plan, with $27 million set aside in the last budget to work up the details. That $27 million will be the cheapest bit of the future, because adaptation is surely going to cost Australia many, many billions of dollars.