DOI: 10.4324/9781003157571-11
8 Between absence and presence
Questioning the value of
insurance for bushfire recovery
Scott McKinnon, Christine Eriksen,
and Eliza de Vet
Introduction
As the ‘Black Summer’ bushfires of late 2019 and early 2020 made clear,
fire is an endemic element of the Australian landscape with often devastating, and now escalating, impacts on Australian households (Hughes
et al. 2020). Insurance has become a critical tool in preparing for the threat
of fire and responding to its impacts, partly because emergency management policies place significant responsibility on households to manage
their own disaster risk (Eriksen et al. 2020). As a neoliberal mechanism
for financialising risk, insurance has significant impacts on disaster policy
and on disaster-impacted individuals (Collier 2014). Insurance can result
in reduced opportunities for government, community, and household-led
disaster mitigation (de Vet et al. 2019), while increasing economic inequality
among disaster-impacted populations (Booth & Tranter 2018). In Australia,
a significant proportion of the population is known to be underinsured,
meaning that their insurance levels are unlikely to cover the substantial
costs of rebuilding post-disaster (de Vet & Eriksen 2020; Booth & Tranter
2018). Nonetheless, insurance contributes to the resilience of many bushfire
survivors by increasing their financial capacity to rebuild (Eriksen & de Vet
2020). It thereby mitigates the substantial stress and anxiety of post-disaster
rebuilding processes (Dixon et al. 2015). Insurance thus plays a valuable role
in recovery, and yet that value is often ambiguous and contingent on a range
of non-financial factors.
In this chapter, we attend to bushfire survivor accounts at two case study
sites in order to explore the uncertain role of insurance within recovery processes. In particular, we consider how bushfire survivors assess and define
both the value of insurance and the insurability of valued objects. Survivors
often prioritise intangible and uninsurable currencies – including wellbeing,
time, and labour – as being of more value than the material possessions
or built structures covered by insurance policies. Equally, many survivors describe a changed relationship to the material and insurable objects
that have been made literally absent (yet which remain emotionally or
mnemonically present) by the flames (Eriksen & Ballard 2020; McKinnon
8 Between absence and presence
Questioning the value of
insurance for bushfire recovery
Scott McKinnon, Christine Eriksen,
and Eliza de Vet
Introduction
As the ‘Black Summer’ bushfires of late 2019 and early 2020 made clear,
fire is an endemic element of the Australian landscape with often devastating, and now escalating, impacts on Australian households (Hughes
et al. 2020). Insurance has become a critical tool in preparing for the threat
of fire and responding to its impacts, partly because emergency management policies place significant responsibility on households to manage
their own disaster risk (Eriksen et al. 2020). As a neoliberal mechanism
for financialising risk, insurance has significant impacts on disaster policy
and on disaster-impacted individuals (Collier 2014). Insurance can result
in reduced opportunities for government, community, and household-led
disaster mitigation (de Vet et al. 2019), while increasing economic inequality
among disaster-impacted populations (Booth & Tranter 2018). In Australia,
a significant proportion of the population is known to be underinsured,
meaning that their insurance levels are unlikely to cover the substantial
costs of rebuilding post-disaster (de Vet & Eriksen 2020; Booth & Tranter
2018). Nonetheless, insurance contributes to the resilience of many bushfire
survivors by increasing their financial capacity to rebuild (Eriksen & de Vet
2020). It thereby mitigates the substantial stress and anxiety of post-disaster
rebuilding processes (Dixon et al. 2015). Insurance thus plays a valuable role
in recovery, and yet that value is often ambiguous and contingent on a range
of non-financial factors.
In this chapter, we attend to bushfire survivor accounts at two case study
sites in order to explore the uncertain role of insurance within recovery processes. In particular, we consider how bushfire survivors assess and define
both the value of insurance and the insurability of valued objects. Survivors
often prioritise intangible and uninsurable currencies – including wellbeing,
time, and labour – as being of more value than the material possessions
or built structures covered by insurance policies. Equally, many survivors describe a changed relationship to the material and insurable objects
that have been made literally absent (yet which remain emotionally or
mnemonically present) by the flames (Eriksen & Ballard 2020; McKinnon