Written by Hannah Vanderzee
Edited by Beth Mandle
Since Black Summer, the feelings toward climate disasters in Australia have been tainted by a sense of crisis beyond something we can tame.
Long gone are the days where fire could be predictably mapped and politicians felt like trustworthy arbiters of emergency responses. For some in our communities, the dread is far more complex than simply anxiously checking the VicEmergency app or listening to local radio and responding accordingly. In fact, for many, the dread doesn’t hit until climate disasters are on their doorstep.
Multicultural communities across the country face unique and additional stresses and challenges when preparing for, responding to and coping with the aftermath of climate disasters. This past summer has been no different, yet it is not as if critical gaps in emergency management have not been exposed before.
Moreover, the infamous Los Angeles 2025 winter wildfires demonstrated that a city beholden to gridlock at the best of times and a chronically underfunded wildfire response team is more vulnerable than previously thought. All of Australia’s capital cities, save Darwin, have suburbs as close to the CBD as Keilor at high risk of bushfire.
Climate disasters expose a system of flaws and hit many of our neighbours significantly harder than others
The Red Cross explains that “the poorest, with the least stable housing are the ones that suffer most” during natural disasters – of which migrant communities are overrepresented. One of those most glaring issues in emergency responses to climate disasters is that many migrants who come to live, work and study in Australia, even temporarily, often have no idea of the kind of natural disasters the country experiences on a regular basis.
The first encounter with bushfires, for example, can be overwhelming – Eucalyptus trees, unlike European trees, do not make groaning sounds under stress before dropping combustible branches; meanwhile, the sound of approaching bushfires is disorienting and impossible to pinpoint. Similarly, many of the migrant victims of the 2022 Victorian floods had no idea of the danger until they were stranded on their roofs.
This is compounded by serious gaps in emergency response coordination. Not only is the responsibility primarily delegated to local governments and employers of temporary visa holders, meaning there is no consistency state-wide, but information is disseminated by emergency management staff and volunteers who, overwhelmingly, speak only English. This renders radio, the VicEmergency app and even 000 for many, completely useless. Furthermore, in routinely denying migrant community groups consultation with local governments, recovery volunteers have been known to bring culturally inappropriate food and lack the skills to communicate past language and literacy barriers.
The precarious conditions of a temporary visa
The next issue is the precarious conditions of a temporary visa – a toe out of line can cost your residency, something employers notoriously take advantage of. During the 2022 Victorian floods, for example, workers were instructed to stay on farms, move to empty factories with no facilities and ignore road closures. Further, migrants who rent are often forced to continue living in flood-damaged homes or without insulation effective against smoke. Remember, temporary visa holders are not beneficiaries of Medicare, meaning their respiratory and psychological health is left to the whims of their employer.
Insurance is another major issue. People who live in climate disaster-prone areas would be well aware that as climate change has worsened, policy costs have skyrocketed, and insurers have routinely denied compensation to property owners who lose their homes. Multicultural communities face additional barriers to claiming insurance due to inadequate access to legal representation and translation of documents.
“Multicultural communities face additional barriers to claiming insurance due to inadequate access to legal representation and translation of documents.”
The consequence is a ripple-effect on property value, meaning home buyers are choosing more affordable properties that encroach further into bushfire and flood territories. Consider urban planning for new suburbs bridging this interface with major arteries entirely insufficient for peak-hour traffic or stretched CFA and MFB resources that reach wealthier areas well before anywhere else. These combined factors leave little to the imagination for the scale of a future catastrophe, something researchers have been identifying in peri-urban landscapes since Black Saturday.
Simple changes are already known to work
Simple changes, however, are already known to work in preparing our newest community members for climate disasters. The Red Cross & Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience have run workshops and forums in multicultural communities across South Australia that recharged a sense of agency in developing comprehensive networks to deliver education, skill development and strategies for preparing for and managing emergencies.
The Ethnic Communities’ Council of Victoria continues to run similar workshops that centre community cohesion and decision-making. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing funded the establishment of a Multicultural Emergency Management Partnership across regional Victoria to include multicultural communities in Municipal Emergency Management Committees, significantly improving the safety of involved communities during the 2022 floods.
These programs showcase the strengths in equipping diverse community members with essential knowledge about and tools for Australian climate disasters. Community leaders are consistent in their calls, however, for better funding to accommodate a comprehensive, state-wide inclusion initiative that overcomes the irregularities of volunteer and charity organisations.
At the heart of all of this is an evidently systemic undermining of the safety of those who often give the most to our country and receive the least in return. Migrants are the lifeblood of Australia, enriching our culture, creating safe havens and filling labour shortages that keep the country going. Inclusion of multicultural communities in emergency preparedness and responses need to be implemented beyond the municipal level, essential services like radio and the VicEmergency app should be translated completely and analysis into where they are most vulnerable must be conducted.
But we all know the most fundamental mitigator of these issues is the immediate and rapid decrease in greenhouse gas emissions. The reality is, we are living with the irreversible consequences of inaction, yet there is still so much we can do to ensure everyone in our communities is capable of preparedness and resilience.
This article was written by an activist contributor and originally published on ‘The Amnesty Review’: the Substack publication of the University of Melbourne chapter of Amnesty International, where students come to share stories and perspectives on human rights issues. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Amnesty International Australia or its staff.
The publishers would like to acknowledge that this article was produced on the stolen lands of Woiworung and Boonwurrung peoples of the Kulin nation and pay our respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging. We honour their communities’ connection to unceded lands, seas and skies and continued fight for justice.
References
Angus Verley, CFA volunteers in regional Victoria say their decades-old trucks are not up to the job and need to be replaced, 2 April 2024, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-07/cfa-victoria-volunteers-say-old-trucks-need-replacing/103656376
CSIRO, What parts of your house are vulnerable? – Bushfire best practice guide, https://research.csiro.au/bushfire/bushfire-basics/vulnerability/
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