Bushfire management practitioners cannot get insurance even though the prescribed burns they conduct reduce risk, the federal inquiry into small business cover has been told.

The Australian Bushfire Management Association wants a government-funded insurance pool and support in educating underwriters and the Insurance Council of Australia “to enable them to understand the risk mitigation embedded in contemporary prescribed burning”.

In a submission, it says: “To spell out the irony: the insurance industry has basically abandoned the most powerful risk management practice (prescribed burning) available that can protect the fire-prone property that it underwrites.”

ABMA members have conducted more than 300 prescribed burns since 2020 with no reported losses, but some are leaving the industry because they cannot obtain cover, the submission says.

Insurance brokers have told them only one underwriter in Australia will consider covering the risk of fire spread.

“Prescribed burning by the private sector is not new, and liability coverage for this activity is not a new product; in fact, it was implicit in policies across our sector in the past that prescribed burning is a normal and essential activity in Australia,” the ABMA says.

The pool of insurers has shrunk since the 2019 Black Summer bushfires, although there was no link to prescribed burns, according to the ABMA, which formed in 2020 in response to the withdrawal of insurers. Members include land management and fire management companies, private landholders, Indigenous ranger programs and cultural burning practitioners.

Find the inquiry submissions here.