A response to the 2026/2027 Victorian Budget by Act on Climate Collective Members August Wylynko and Kelly Bebendorf.
“Easier. Safer. More Affordable.”
This is the promise at the centre of Victoria’s 2026-27 Budget. Yet as climate disasters intensify across the State, the budget reveals a government investing in band-aid solutions rather than in reducing systemic vulnerabilities. 'Resilience' in rhetoric but 'response' in funding. Asking us to believe that they are funding community-led risk reduction programs. The real questions are: When will it get easier? Safer for who? More affordable at what cost?
Disasters are no longer isolated emergencies. They will shape and be shaped by the climate we live in. Community-led projects and grassroots initiatives must be centred in this evolving climate to enact and entrench real and lasting change. We called on the Victorian government to introduce a permanent fund for community-led adaptation projects, yet no such fund was introduced. Their objectives are clear: to provide safety and affordability to some, while neglecting the long-term implications of climate change and disasters on others. Every year that climate change remains unaddressed will worsen the compounding effects, especially for those most at risk in the community.
The budget reveals this growing contradiction at the centre of Victoria’s climate policy. The Government talks about preparedness, resilience and adaptation, but funding prioritises emergency response capability after disasters occur.
Key funding mechanisms include:
- $19.4 million for Climate Action funding
- $445 million for Fire and Emergency Management funding
- $1.9 billion for Emergency Management Capability
- $68 million for Disaster Relief Funding
Evidently, the Government continues to invest in emergency response capability while failing to adopt long-term, community-centred adaptation funding. Within preparedness, much of the funding is actually directed to operational response: increasing staff, volunteers, and response capacity.
We are seeing a concerning lack of investment in community vulnerability and long-term adaptation to the inevitable effects of climate change. The Government continues to use the rhetoric of 'emergencies' that need to be 'responded' to and 'managed' rather than to adapt to the changing climate and increased frequency of climate disasters science predicts. This continues the rhetoric of disasters as emergencies to manage, not crises to prepare for.
The Resilience Contradiction
The Government’s funding programs clearly indicate this mismatch. The Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) demonstrates that they know how to use the language of climate action, resilience and adaptation. Yet their actual funding allocations suggest they fail to recognise the urgency of action. At worst, we see this as a deliberate attempt to use the language of resilience and climate action to appease critics while ignoring the wide-sweeping, radical change necessary.
Objective two, climate action, aims to fund programs that enable a climate-resilient future. However, the $19.4 million in funding is solely directed towards reducing energy at Victorian schools through the ResourceSmart Schools program. We argue that this funding allocation is disproportionately small compared to the ambition of the climate resilience objectives.
Objective four aims to support communities in reducing the risk of bushfires. $445 million is being spent on a range of programs. But most of the planned actions relate to personnel and infrastructure.
Objective five aims to achieve energy sovereignty with a budget of $257 million. There are some promising, community-focused initiatives in this category, including the installation of community batteries for First Peoples and Traditional Owners, as well as the support given to households in installing solar panels.
Objective eight aims to increase the sustainability of water. This includes conducting studies and retrofitting houses or repairing some of the waterway vegetation to improve river health. The most promising plan under this objective is the increasing amount of funding given to Traditional Owner groups to 'undertake self-determined water projects' and the much more vague funding set aside for place-based plans and actions for communities and environments 'that encompass multiple values'.
The energy sovereignty and sustainability of water initiatives are the sort of community-led programs we need to see across the board.
Other sources of funding include:
- Public Health funding includes training in emergency management for preparedness.
- Agricultural funding includes research into climate adaptation and support to businesses facing climatic volatility and natural disasters.
Prevention Framed as Preparedness
The Department of Justice and Community Safety (DJCS) states that funding is aimed at reducing the impact of natural disasters and emergencies, including through prevention, preparation, and planning to enhance community safety. However, the funding programs proposed in the budget merely constitute reactive spending on 'preparedness' rather than on the risk reduction we so desperately need.
The Emergency Management Capability - $1.9 billion
The Government states that this substantial amount of funding is being directed towards emergency prevention and mitigation, including supporting local communities. However, all of the performance measurements indicate that funding will be spent on increasing the number of volunteers, staff, phone calls answered, and emergencies attended during and after disasters. Therefore, the 'preventative' funding is actually just spending on measures that will increase reaction times when an event occurs. This increase in disaster preparedness/ emergency response spending is perhaps the clearest acknowledgement in the budget that climate disasters are no longer exceptional events but predictable futures.
The Emergency Preparedness Package (EPP) - $10 million
A package introduced in December of 2025, the EPP was implemented to boost investment in Emergency Services Organisations and development of infrastructure, in the build-up to bushfire season and will continue to be funded this year. It sits both within the Fire and Management output in DEECA and the Emergency Management Capability output in DJCS. This preparedness is in relation to supporting emergency services, not risk reduction and adaptation measures.
Disaster Relief Funding
The sharp increase in disaster relief spending is the clearest evidence that climate disasters are escalating faster than the State is prepared. We are physically and financially underprepared. The Government budgeted $8 million and spent $60 million last financial year. As a result, it has now budgeted $68 million for this next financial year.
The Government clearly understands that disasters are escalating, and yet it continues to deprioritise risk reduction and adaptation measures. This is exemplified particularly by their continued description of disasters as 'unforeseen events' – a stark contradiction to their rising budget for emergency management, which seems to indicate a tacit acknowledgement that disasters are becoming more frequent. The problem is not that Victoria is funding emergency services; it should. The problem is that emergency response continues to stand in for resilience.
The government has once again set objectives that aren’t being met through funding, and has no cohesive, ongoing funding structure for disaster preparedness and climate adaptation. Resilience, risk reduction, preparedness and recovery continue to be conflated, and therefore, no meaningful action is being taken. Reducing risk is not just about funding mitigation or more emergency services for when a disaster occurs. Real preparedness is about investing in communities, reducing vulnerabilities, and supporting adaptation. If the government wants real safety and real affordability, it needs to stop treating disasters as emergencies to react to, but as crises to prepare for.
This article is an opinion piece by Collective members and does not reflect the official opinions of Friends of the Earth Australia.
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