E&OE TRANSCRIPT
AUSTRALIAN STRATEGIC POLICY INSTITUTE
LETHAL HUMIDITY REPORT LAUNCH
BARTON, ACT
28 MAY 2026
Thank you, David.
I acknowledge the Traditional Owners of this land, the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples, and pay my respects to their Elders and all First Nations people here.
I would also like to acknowledge His Excellency Ambassador Morales and His Excellency Ambassador Sriratanaban for joining us today.
Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
We meet at a time when extreme heat is already affecting communities across Australia, with growing consequences for health, infrastructure, and livelihoods.
That’s why Dr Robert Glasser’s report, Lethal humidity, is both timely and sharply relevant – and I’m very pleased to be here for its launch.
I thank the Australian Strategic Policy Institute for the invitation and Minderoo Foundation for funding the report.
At the outset, I’d like to acknowledge Dr Glasser’s longstanding leadership and significant contribution to our understanding of some of the big challenges of our time.
We saw that leadership in his work delivering the Independent Review of National Natural Disaster Governance Arrangements, which made a compelling case for moving beyond a reactive model of disaster response to a proactive and nationally integrated approach to resilience.
Those recommendations are even more relevant now as the traditional boundaries between adaptation, resilience and disaster management increasingly blur and overlap.
To some degree, that is recognised in the overlap of my own responsibilities as Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy and Assistant Minister for Emergency Management.
I have to say that I greatly valued the opportunity to meet with Dr Glasser early in my appointment to those roles.
Friends, the Lethal humidity report arrives at a critical moment for our nation.
Communities across Australia are living with the consequences of climate change, and prolonged heatwaves of broader geographical distribution are a stark feature of that reality.
Indeed, the heatwave records broken in Southeastern Australia this past summer are proof of that.
Last year we launched Australia’s first National Climate Risk Assessment, providing the most comprehensive and scientifically robust analysis of the climate risks facing our nation.
The evidence from that work is clear: extreme heat is now one of Australia’s most urgent climate risks and it is our deadliest natural hazard.
The biggest impact on property is from floods. The biggest impact on human health is from heat.
And it is clear that heatwaves will become more frequent, hotter, longer, causing more illness, ill-health, and death – unless of course, we respond effectively through both mitigation and adaptation work.
Those heatwaves will also create cascading, compounding and concurrent impacts.
Straining our health system and aged care facilities.
Potentially disrupting food and power supplies.
Damaging critical infrastructure.
Putting strain on our emergency services.
And increasing social instability.
Dr Glasser’s report illustrates those cascading impacts in contemporary examples found around the world.
In Australia, the Risk Assessment tells us the burden of escalating climate impacts like heatwaves will fall hardest on the most vulnerable:
On older Australians;
People in rural, remote and First Nations communities;
Young children;
And people with pre-existing health conditions.
The government’s National Adaptation Plan sets out the principles and framework for guiding a coordinated national approach to building resilience against climate-related risks, including heatwaves.
And I am glad to say that we’re supporting heat resilience through better forecasting and warnings that in-turn facilitate earlier and better targeted preparation and response.
We’re working to deliver stronger health preparedness, guided by the National Health and Climate Strategy.
We are supporting adaptive improvement to the built environment, including through our focus on energy performance.
The 1.1-billion-dollar Social Housing Energy Performance Initiative is a standout in that regard because we’re upgrading the energy performance of 100,000 public and community homes in partnership with the states and territories.
This will improve thermal comfort for some of Australia’s most vulnerable residents, ensuring their homes are naturally cooler in hot weather and are cheaper to run which makes it more likely that a household will use air conditioning in the face of dangerously hot circumstances.
We’re also supporting a range of projects and pilots that test the benefit of things like urban greening, cool spaces and cool corridors, and outreach programs that focus on vulnerable community members.
But these programs and projects are just the beginning. It is crystal clear that we need to bring an adaptation mindset to virtually every area of Australian life.
Mr Glasser’s report rightly refers to sudden onset and slow onset hazards; we have similar made the distinction between acute climate events and chronic climate effects.
These will affect all of us and everything.
And that’s why lifting resilience is everyone’s responsibility, requiring a coordinated response from all levels of government, industry, the non-govt and not-for-profit sector and the broader community.
I welcome the Lethal humidity report’s emphasis on the importance of not thinking in silos when it comes to climate change.
We’re working to improve this across government and between layers of government.
I’m engaging with ministerial councils across portfolios like environment, agriculture and finance on the findings of the Risk Assessment, to drive action on shared priorities and to identify opportunities for further collaboration.
At the same time, the Australian Government is working to deliver a National Adaptation Plan action agenda which itself resonates with the call in Mr Glasser’s report to government for an annual Australian National Resilience Report.
We certainly recognise too that dangerous climate impacts like humidity will undermine stability in countries that have existing developing challenges – and on that basis, the climate focus of Australia’s development assistance program has security benefits in addition to the value of that support in terms of health and broader wellbeing.
In that regard, we’re working with Pacific nations to support adaptation, resilient infrastructure and disaster preparedness with a growing focus on climate-related health risks.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me conclude by saying that Dr Glasser’s report makes a substantial and perceptive contribution to the body of work on the rising threat and cascading impacts of extreme heat and high humidity.
It challenges us to work more collaboratively.
To act with greater urgency.
And to bring our attention, analysis, and action to the ‘before disaster’ segment of the timescale.
The government will consider the report’s recommendations carefully as part of our policy development work on climate adaptation and emergency management.
But the imperative has been established.
It is only through the application of science-informed and prioritised adaptation measures that we can make the most effective and least-cost response to dangerous climate change – both in Australia, and as part of our collective efforts with regional and global partners.
Thank you.
ENDS
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