A private body whose decision gates a public outcome, like the electricity retailer and the private certifier — and here the dependency is absolute. Government disaster payments are measured in hundreds or low thousands of dollars. The rebuild is paid for by the insurer or it is not paid for.

Two features shape the recovery process.

The claim gates everything downstream. Scope of works, builder appointment, development approval and construction all wait on settlement, and a disputed claim stops the sequence rather than slowing it. Disputes are handled outside the disaster system entirely, through the insurer's internal process and then the Australian Financial Complaints Authority, on their own timeframes.

Underinsurance and non-insurance are the silent variables. A household without cover, or with cover well below replacement cost in a market where premiums in high-risk areas have risen sharply, faces the rebuild with the disaster payment and whatever they have. Nothing in the Commonwealth arrangements is calibrated to that, and this database cannot see it: a household that does not rebuild generates no application, no queue position and no statistic.

That is the same invisibility recorded for legal assistance turn-aways — the people who fall out of a system entirely are the ones no dataset contains.