Half a million Queenslanders were impacted by floods earlier this year, with the damage bill calculated at $7.7 billion, a report says.
Deloitte has estimated the social, financial and economic costs of the disaster in late February and early March in a new report, commissioned by the Queensland Reconstruction Authority.
"The key findings of this report highlight the sheer extent of the damage caused by these floods," Deputy Premier Steven Miles said in a statement on Wednesday.
The audit considered factors such as human and social impacts, overall damage, and disruption to residential, commercial and public infrastructure.
Deloitte also factored in the emergency response and clean-up and the ongoing environmental factors.
More than half a million Queenslanders were in some way impacted by the unprecedented rain event, with the human and social cost exceeding $4.5 billion, the report said.
About 18,000 homes and businesses in 23 local government areas were hit with a damage bill topping $2 billion.
More than 4500 small businesses were affected, with total damage of about $324 million, while 2250 farms suffered losses of more than $250 million.
"You only need to look at the price of lettuce in our supermarkets to understand the impact this far-reaching, long-lasting event had on our farmers with many of them either losing their crops or losing the capacity to manage their crops," Mr Miles said.
The Insurance Council of Australia said communities were picking up the pieces from the country's third most costly disaster after Cyclone Tracy in 1974 and the 1999 Sydney hailstorm.
"The sheer scale of the extreme weather event that devastated Queensland and NSW is something we have never seen before, and the cost continues to rise," ICA chief executive Andrew Hall said.
