“If we can come up with a set of standards and metrics that are easy to understand, commonly understood and standardised, then it might be costly the first year to comply with those things, but the second, third and fourth year it gets easier because everybody’s using the same language and the same standards,” he said.

Turner said he believed having a national, common operating picture of risks would help drive innovation, rather than stymy it.

“As long as it’s not so onerous that only the entrenched incumbents can afford too meet the obligations,” he said.

He likened it to the introduction of mandatory data breach disclosure during the early days of cybersecurity and the “whole world woke up to the real threat”.

“It took mandatory breach disclosure and it took directors having fiduciary responsibility for the assets under their control before the whole industry moved and started investing ahead of cyber threats.”

The Minderoo Foundation has a fire and flood resilience project, which aims to reduce the harm from extreme weather events by working with communities, industry, government, philanthropy and the research sector to increase resilience.

If resilience is not lifted, Turner said, there would be more parts of Australia that are uninsurable and it would affect people’s ability to get mortgages, and would disrupt businesses.

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“What we’re calling on is corporate Australia to stand up and make more co-ordinated investments in resilience,” he said. “Across the government and industry boundaries, we need to come together and stop being reactive.”

While climate disclosure is not mandatory, some of Australia’s largest companies are already releasing detailed data about how climate change will affect their business.