Flood resilience lags bushfire and cyclone mitigation and a wider community-level approach is needed to reduce risks, a building sector executive has told a Senate inquiry.

Housing Industry Association chief executive for industry and policy Simon Croft said Australia’s bushfire building standards are among the strongest in the world, while cyclone resilience has strengthened over decades.

But flooding has not been addressed to the same extent and requires better infrastructure and community-level mitigation, beyond building requirements, he told the inquiry into climate risk assessment.

“We could put the biggest gutters on the building possible, but if there is nowhere for that water to go, it will actually cause more damage to the building,” he said.

Other countries including Japan have completed “a lot of work in that space”, he told the inquiry committee.

Mr Croft said the National Construction Code’s safety focus has increased resilience to natural disasters, but the document is one part of a wider approach.

The Insurance Council of Australia has called for resilience principles to be embedded in the next code update. Last month, ICA raised concerns over a possible pause to the three-year review cycle, affecting an expected 2028 update.  

“I would still contend that the National Construction Code focus should be about safety and getting people out to a place of safety,” Mr Croft said.

“We don’t want them to stay in their homes in a bushfire event, and those sorts of things.”

He says a code review reset may allow alignment with the National Housing Accord and give time to consider existing property shortcomings.

“If you’re just working on a constant churn of the building code, it hasn’t provided an opportunity to do that.”

The Housing Industry Association is urging the federal government to lead a consistent climate adaptation approach across states and territories, and it backs creating a single risk-rating tool to guide planning decisions, inform insurers and help homeowners strengthen properties.

It proposes a “hierarchy of control” model ranking measures from the most to least effective.

“The greatest opportunity in mitigating climate change lies in upgrading Australia’s existing housing stock,” Mr Croft said. “While new homes already meet high and improving standards, the country’s 8-10 million older dwellings remain the most exposed to extreme weather and require targeted action to lift their resilience.”