Australia’s insurance sector is examining how to better respond to Aboriginal cultural burning practices as bushfire losses mount and governments expand recovery funding across Victoria. On Djiringanj country near Tathra on the New South Wales south coast, Kamilaroi fire practitioner Peter Dixon recently led what he described as the first cultural burn at a key site since the 2018 Tathra wildfires. “This is the first burn we’ve done here since the Tathra wildfires back in 2018. Since then, we haven’t been able to get back on country, and the fuel load has built up again,” Dixon said, as reported by ABC.
The Bega Local Aboriginal Land Council (LALC) carried out an earlier cultural burn on the same area in 2017. About six months later, a bushfire swept through more than 1,200 hectares and destroyed 65 homes. Dixon said the treated area behaved differently compared with surrounding forest. “Where we burned, didn’t get scorched. The canopies were still alive, the ground wasn’t cooked to bare soil, and that helped the RFS push the fire downhill, away from houses,” Dixon said.
At the time, NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) representative Gary Cooper said reduced fuel loads in the culturally burned area helped slow the fire’s advance. “The wind change on the day had an influence as well, but because there were lower fuel loads, it did stop the fire progressing further into the township,” Cooper said. By contrast, a 2009 hazard reduction burn in nearby casuarina forest was followed by dense regrowth, increasing fuel loads ahead of the later bushfire.
Although the 2020 NSW Bushfire Inquiry recommended greater use of Aboriginal land management, including cultural burning, the practice is not explicitly recognised in state fire legislation. Minimum intervals between burns set under current rules can conflict with Indigenous knowledge that supports more frequent, low‑intensity, patch‑style fires. Tony Bartlett, a forest fire management specialist at the Australian National University who has worked with Bega LALC, described the situation as a structural mismatch. “It’s like a clash of two cultures at the moment. The concept of lighting a fire to maintain the health of a forest didn’t enter into the legislation,” Bartlett said.
In New South Wales, fire use sits under multiple acts, none of which establishes a clear right to light a fire for cultural purposes. The absence of long‑term outcome data on cultural burning and the lack of a defined legal framework have combined to make insurance cover difficult to secure and expensive for many Traditional Owner groups. Bega LALC – a registered charity that holds more than 800 hectares of forested former Crown land around Tathra, Tura Beach, and Merimbula – pays close to $20,000 a year for public liability cover, regardless of the number or scale of burns it undertakes. Its current policy does not extend to work on private properties, limiting its ability to deliver risk reduction for neighbouring landholders.
Specialty brokers are now looking at whether adapted liability products can better fit cultural burning operations and risk profiles. According to the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA), the Black Summer bushfires generated $2.4 billion in insured losses, and more than 5.6 million homes face some level of bushfire risk. Against that backdrop, head of climate risk and resilience at Howden, Matt Weaver, said the existing products being used to insure cultural burning were developed for different activities. “The products on the market that can be used to insure cultural burning are typically very cost‑prohibitive. Importantly, the terms and conditions within the policies, things like not being able to burn within 1 kilometre of any dwelling, don’t really suit the risk profile or the purpose of cultural burning,” Weaver said.
Howden has produced a white paper on cultural burning insurance and is working with insurers to design a dedicated product, with a target launch by the end of the year. One structure under consideration is a mutual or self‑insurance arrangement where practitioners contribute to a fund that carries a defined layer of risk, backed by commercial re/insurance above an agreed attachment point. Under that model, premiums could fall if loss experience remains low and retained funds grow over time. Weaver also said there is a potential role for public funding to help de‑risk the practice. “It’s important for government to take a role to support and scale up these operations, because ultimately it increases the resilience of our landscapes, infrastructure, and assets. Pre‑event mitigation is always going to cost a fraction of post‑event recovery,” Weaver said. He pointed to a California program in which a US$20 million Prescribed Fire Liability Claims Fund offers liability protection at no cost for cultural and prescribed burners. Over three years, more than 250 projects covering 15,000 hectares have been approved, with no claims lodged so far.
The cultural burning debate is unfolding as Victoria manages a new round of bushfires that have prompted an escalated response from insurers and governments. On Jan. 16, the ICA upgraded its significant event declaration to an Insurance Catastrophe for bushfires affecting 18 local government areas since Jan. 7. As of the declaration, insurers had received 2,369 claims across residential property, commercial lines, and motor, with initial assessments indicating about 30% of property claims are total losses. The catastrophe declaration activates measures to prioritise claims handling, including triage to direct urgent assistance to severely affected policyholders, mobilisation of disaster response specialists, and closer coordination with local agencies. An industry taskforce has been established to monitor and address emerging operational or regulatory issues.
