Planners are calling for a shake-up of their industry and the planning system in the wake of the devastating floods across south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales. As flood waters rose across Brisbane, Brent O’Neill, the director of design at Wolter Consulting, logged on to his computer and asked: “As development professionals, what is our responsibility to ensure we do not put people’s lives and property at risk? “I cannot help but reflect on the numerous times that as professional planners and engineers we continually push councils on the development footprint and boundaries, proposing engineered solutions to significant hydrological issues, ultimately rewarded by our developer clients when we achieve higher densities, or development in flood prone areas,” O’Neill wrote on LinkedIn. O’Neill told the Guardian that the aftermath of the floods was an ideal time to question “the ethical obligation of planners and the development industry”. “Ultimately, we’re there to represent community needs and values and if we’re not doing this, we need to do better,” he says. The planner and academic Dr Laurel Johnson says the planning industry needs to return to its roots. “The health of individuals and communities is at the heart of modern planning practice, which grew from a response to the dreadful health outcomes in post–Industrial Revolution European cities,” Johnson says. “But we’ve moved from that really clear mission of planning in the public interest to become facilitators and enablers of development.” Johnson says the planning industry needs to “pause and recalibrate”, given the dire warnings contained in last month’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. The IPCC says unchecked climate change will dramatically increase the frequency of deadly flooding to several times a year and will cause sea levels rise to the point where, in some coastal areas, retreat is the only option. Johnson says if her industry does not advocate for the public interest, communities will lose the chance to decide their future. “What’s happening now is that insurance companies are determining this because there are some areas where it’s not feasible to rebuild.” Broader planning problems O’Neill and Johnson say the planning issues that have manifested after the recent floods are reflective of broader problems within the system. Johnson says the planning system is overly complex. “There’s even a Planning Institute of Australia award called the Hard Won Victory, as if beating the planning system is to be awarded,” she says. O’Neill says while the adversarial system could “produce excellent innovation, we do have to be cautious if that it is creating bad outcomes”. Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning “An example is where you have two technical arguments, where one says the site will flood, and another says it won’t. We end up with two experts arguing about flood modelling, which might not produce an ideal outcome.” He says Brisbane city council planning rules introduced after the 2011 floods required development applicants to provide technical reports to show their proposed project won’t flood. However, O’Neill says Queensland’s performance-based Planning Act means developments on flood-prone sites can still be approved with some risk. The Brisbane councillor Jonathan Sri says the significant impact of the floods on his neighbourhood shows the system is flawed. “Since 2011 developers have been saying, ‘We know what we are doing: we’ve got a good flood-management plan, we’ve designed according to the flood levels, trust us, it will be fine’. “It turns out they were completely wrong in many cases.” Building on flood plains O’Neill says the increasing impact of climate change means decision-makers have a “moral and professional obligation to play a much stronger role in planning for change … to push back a bit” and to “pause and ask if we’re doing the right thing”. However, he says state and local governments need to rethink laws around building on flood plains, as planners alone cannot be moral gatekeepers. The Queensland deputy premier and planning minister, Steven Miles, said at a media conference this month he planned to talk to councils about how they could change their planning schemes to cope with the projections for more frequent and more severe natural disasters: “I have visited flooded areas … that, frankly, should not have been built upon.” Miles said the government and councils needed to work together to “mitigate flooding risks ... but also ensure that going forward we’re not building new homes on locations that are prone to flooding .” Sri says the impact of the floods on the low-lying suburb of Rocklea, where the city’s produce markets were inundated and a major garbage-truck depot was isolated by flood waters, shows council needs to rethink zoning laws . “We’ve got impacts to power, to sewerage, to school facilities, to waste disposal, to the food supply chains,” he says. Sri says governments have to take responsibility for the impact of the floods. A Brisbane city council spokesperson says: “An independent review into Brisbane’s preparedness for floods is being undertaken by former governor Paul de Jersey. We will publish the report and respond to its recommendations once it is finalised.” Sri says new rules need to look “at the cumulative impact of just how much development there has been, not just in low-lying flood areas but in areas higher on the hill”. “We don’t just need to be talking about the amount of development within creek catchments and within creek flood plains, but we actually need to be talking about the amount of development up the hills where the proliferation of concrete and hard-stand surfaces means that water hits those sites and then runs straight down,” Sri says. Buy back flood-prone land Sri, Johnson and O’Neill agree governments need to buy back flood-prone land. Sri says: “In suburbs such as Rocklea and Fairfield, the western side of West End, and the low-lying parts of Milton and Auchenflower, the government needs to offer optional buybacks to all residents in low-lying areas around creeks and the river and preserve that as green space or sports fields or other land uses that aren’t as severely affected by flooding.” He says: “The government should also be compulsorily acquiring any sites in these areas where developers are proposing to develop new residential, industrial or commercial buildings.” By promoting development on flood-prone land, O’Neill says governments are increasing the likely risks of flooding, ultimately placing the ongoing costs “back to the private sector, both owners and developers”. He says it is time for the industry to engage with all levels of government to have a hard discussion about priorities. “It’s about saying we’re a river city and we are facing a $1bn bill to rectify the recent damages.”