Only the title of Cohen's article is correct and at half at best

Comments on Barry Cohen “All Australians are entitled to be insured against natural disasters”, 7/02/2011, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/all-australians-are-entitled-to-be-insured-against-natural-disasters/story-fn59niix-1226001071520

While your idea of government help on insurance may attract some applauds, it will in fact make the matter worse and will result in more losses of lives and properties.

With government assistance on insurances, people may falsely think that they will be safer and may take less responsibility to take the most appropriate measure to mitigate risks to natural events.

Government must learn lessons from those natural disasters. But there is the right way and wrong way to lean them.

Government should never encourage people to take unnecessary risks and should never create moral hazard problems for the public and taxpayers.

Instead, it should provide sufficiently the required and appropriate information for residents to make the correct decisions as to where to live, to buy and/or build their properties and bear the consequences of their own decisions.

Further, your idea that the costs of some government or local councils decisions or mistakes should be shared by all taxpayers is grossly unfair to those governments or councils that have done the right thing and those people who have avoided to take those risks, or insured by themselves out of their own pockets.