Table 3.

Participant-suggested strategies for heat-adaptation with illustrative quotes.

Topic	Quotes
Infrastructure/facilities	having a cover over the pool would be excellent (#12; EP) the library being open over summer longer hours so it does allow people to get out if they choose to (#12; EP)
Power subsidies/ Electricity costs	Power subsidies for people living in rural areas, if there is extreme heat, because we tend to get it a little bit hotter and for longer periods than the city (#12; EP) And looking at the electricity issue, it is a big one.... if somehow that can be sorted out, I think that could provide improvement for people to cope with the heat in general (#9; MM)
Rescheduling work and activities	outdoor workers …they may need to look at structuring just the general work day to accommodate the heat (#13; SE) if there’s air-conditioned venues maybe community activities will need to start earlier so that, whether they can get people that have to travel—in the country they’ve often got to travel half an hour or an hour to get to a venue (#13; SE)
Education	there will need to be some sort of public health on ways to manage the heat so that people are aware of drinking more, planning their days, those sorts of things (#13; SE) do the health prevention stuff about what to do and what to expect (#7; SE)
Organisational	as an organization we probably need to get smarter and in busy periods maybe bring some career people up into the region for a couple of weeks at a time (#14; FN) using local structures such as the police or the Meals on Wheels people or the—or other community groups to go and intensify visiting people (#9; MM)
Building regulations	we’ve mandated insulation in buildings and the rating of insulation used in homes are improving steadily, but a long way to go (#1; YP) public housing should all have air-conditioning, I just can’t believe in a climate like Australia’s that you would build a house and not naturally put an air-conditioner in there (#15; EP)
Resources/Support	places like pubs and meeting places and things like that provide cold water and drinks and air-conditioning and beds and stuff like that; and that is assisted by government funding (#7; SE) The other barrier of course is the limited funding to councils generally. I think they need to be empowered financially more to help communities (#7; SE)
More of the same	it will just be an extension of the strategies that are already in place from our perspective (#8; FN) it might be just a case of modifying the way we work as we seem to be doing as we go along just putting some strategies in place to cope with the changing climate (#15; EP)