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Chris Pearce, The Shadow Minister for everything to do with insurance last week called for a national set of building regulations and standards because of the weather events that damage Australia so badly.

Mr Pearce, Shadow Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law, told the Insurance Council of Australia Regulatory Update seminar that 19 of the 20 most significant losses in Australia since the 1960s had been because of the weather.

He was essentially referring to the Far North Queensland flood situation. How tragically prophetic he was with the worst natural disaster in Australian history, the Victorian bushfires, taking more than 180 lives that have been found so far.

Mr Pearce was not making any recriminations about the flooding that followed the deluges in Far North Queensland. Nor have any come publicly from Australia’s worst bushfire day February 7 2009 that had not yet murderously obliterated towns and villages in Victoria – and fires were still razing areas on February 13.

On a broader note, he told the conference that emissions control of anything that was in an area of human control would result in benefits to the insurance industry – and thus its ability to pay insured victims of any weather event. A national building code would improve resilience of buildings and this should be included in any legislated mitigation policy.

Prophetically he urged building controls and codes as part of national fire strategies – beyond municipal council regulation.

He also noted that the Insurance Council was fully supporting the advent of the National Natural Disaster Council.

For the bushfire devastation, through the Insurance Council, the general insurance industry’s Catastrophe Coordination Arrangements were quickly set up in Victoria.

The Insurance Council has an Insurance Taskforce working with the Victorian Government and other organisations involved in the recovery, especially the Housing Industry Association and the Masters Builders Association.

Now Alan Hunt, former bipartisan respected planning minister in the Victorian Liberal Government of the 1970s has been reported in The Age “calling for the reintroduction of ‘firm rules’ to prevent further residential in ‘hazardous’ areas”. He led the way originally.

For Victoria, the insurance industry has never reacted so fast and so strongly and so generously. It was prepared. Insurers had loss adjusters poised on the perimeters of devastated areas to go in as soon as police and fire authorities would let them.

Insurers had emergency hotlines set up on air from Sunday and claims staff heading to the respite patches in the scorched land ready to hand out as much as $5000 to each claimant policyholder – as well as offering gratuitous assistance where needed.

The after effects of Cyclone Larry in March 2006 under the aegis of General Peter Cosgrove must have helped in the logistics, infrastructure and insurance staff rapid deployment that follow disasters including the ravaging hail damage in Blacktown NSW and the Mackay floods in Queensland – and now tragically Victorian bushfires.