With Christmas on Monday and the end of 2023 less than two weeks away, the Lismore App has asked all levels of government about the flood recovery effort in the last twelve months, in particular, the Resilient Homes and Land Program.

The $900 million program ($700 million Tranche 1Homes, $100 million Lands and $100 million Tranche 2 Homes) was designed to move residents at high risk off the floodplain and into new flood-free homes plus helping others raise their homes to be safe during a big flood and retrofit others to make it easier to clean out during a major flood.

MAYOR OF LISMORE STEVE KRIEG

Resilient Lands is easy to sum up, it's non-existent and probably the greatest disappointment out of the whole recovery process is the fact that nothing's been released other than the promise of $100 million to free up land and to get the infrastructure in place. To sit here nearly two years post-disaster and not have one block of land that's even earmarked publicly for that program is frustrating. It makes me sad and makes me angry.

I think, along this journey that we're on, the thing that you are most fearful of as a community leader is people losing hope and I wouldn't have cared 12 months ago, if the NRRC, as they were known at that time, came out and said we've got six blocks of land earmarked for this part of Lismore or in Goonellabah or in Bexhill or wherever they are, but they're there, and people would at least know that there is something on the horizon and don't lose hope that nothing's happening.

I think a lot of people who were victims of the tragedy of 2022, are really at that point of losing all sorts of hope moving forward because there has been nothing physically announced.

I don't think people would care that it takes another two years before that particular parcel of land is actually fully developed with the road network, the sewer lines and the water. That's how long it's going to take. That's the reality of it. But for some of these people to actually go out and see the site and know that that's got the potential for them to relocate to, is all that they're after.

And if they've got a timeframe in their heads that okay, by 2027 our home is going to be moved up here, you know, that's four years away still but at least you've got that vision, you've got that plan. At the moment, people have got nothing and that's the frustration and that's where the anger comes.

RESILIENT HOMES

Again, I look at it and I see a mess. Unfortunately, I tell the story, and I asked the lady involved if I could use the story because it's relatable to what I do every day, but I was sitting in the dentist's chair and the dental hygienist was literally crying as she was working on my teeth saying four homes out of her street have been bought back and four haven't. And she's like, we were one of the unlucky ones that didn't get offered a buyback. We don't know why. We don't know the logic between why one home was bought back and the next-door neighbour's wasn't.

As the mayor, I can't explain or give her answers or clarity in regards to that either because we simply cannot work out the logic of who gets buybacks and who doesn't. There's no system in place to explain it nor to justify it. And again, that is the anger and the frustration of our community not being communicated to as to why these decisions are getting made.

Unfortunately, I can't respond, because council doesn't have any put into any of this. We lobby, we fight and we argue but at the end of the day, the decisions have been taken out of council's hands and we can only do what we can do at a local government level, which isn't much.

At a local government level, it's expected that we're open and transparent and report back to our ratepayers and it's only just coming out now about the Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation and out of all of the money allocated the $700 million for the Tranche 1 Resilient Homes package. It's anywhere between $40 and $60 million of that has gone in admin fees. Now, to me, as a ratepayer and as a taxpayer, I think well if a $750 million allocation has been put aside for Resilient Homes, then $750 million should be spent on Resilient Homes.

That's not the case, the admin fees are all coming out of that money. The second Tranche, the $100 million has already seen $7 million put aside for admin fees, so that's already down to $93 million. It's a huge chunk and a lot of these really big numbers roll off bureaucrats' tongues like it's nothing but to our community in Lismore, $7 million is 14 houses bought back and 14 families' lives change forever.

I think one day there's going to be an inquiry into the NRRC and its operations and what they've been able to achieve or not achieve and I think the public are entitled to know. I think the rate paying and the tax paying public, not only for Lismore or the Northern Rivers but of this state. This is the state's money and at a local government level, we're accountable for every cent and I think there needs to be a certain level of accountability as to where this money is going and what it's getting used for.

NRRC versus NSWRA

I see a lot of change. The RA are much more engaging with the local community and especially with local government. That's a positive, they want to start working with communities rather than dictating what's happening. The NRRC, hindsight is a wonderful thing in a lot of respects, the structure was not right. And it's okay to admit that we get things wrong from time to time. The NRRC got it wrong. And when we say we, I, as much as I didn't have any say or any control over any of that, as council didn't, but we've all got to take ownership of where we're heading and the reconstruction of the city. That's life, we've got to learn from our mistakes, we've got to do better. There is going to be more disasters and more events around the state and if we don't learn from the mistakes that we've made in Lismore then we've wasted 18 months of taxpayer money and time.

State Member for Lismore Janelle Saffin - Summing up 2023

Thank God for our community who have a huge amounts of strength and endurance. We're loud because we say what we think and that's a good thing. But I think, thank God for our community and I do have to say, I was really pleased to see the NRRC finish and get the work for here subsumed into the RA. I have to say that.

If you ask me how it's been, it's just been wonderful with community. Is it wearing? Yes, it's been wearing. The amount of....not work, I'm a worker, my team are workers, but the amount of work we've done that really was the work of the bureaucracy added on top of everything else. It's been a lot.

I would have hoped to have at least one Resilient Lands Program part announced by Christmas time, but from what I've seen, it's not too far off. But that would have been nice to go into Christmas with that. It's coming but people like to know it, and then that gives us a sense of confidence, and a bit of calmness.

When I've looked at disasters now, everywhere else and I've looked at the review of the Victorian bushfires that happened some years back, one of the things I never want to happen again, is people talk about lessons learned. There were lessons learned in Victoria. I cited Victoria as well as QRA (Queensland Reconstruction Authority), I cited Victoria with David Witherdin and them and we can't keep learning the same lessons over and over. As one of my colleagues calls them, lessons identified until they learned. So, I really, not just hope, but I'm really driving that the lessons really are now learned from here, and that they go forward into the whole state plan for state recovery, mitigation, all sorts of things.

I still think (any future) recovery will take time because we have an expectation it's going to be quick no matter what, but it can be more orderly, and I really want communications to be built in. Communications has been a systemic failure of our recovery and it's like trying to turn the Titanic around because government generally does business as usual with communications. I mean, my communication is quite different to how the government do it but I'm the local member, and I'm not frightened to speak or say things or be open. It's my community.

The missing part I saw was that we never had a recovery coordinator. We didn't have a Northern Rivers recovery coordinator. To start with we got Mal Lanyon later and others I've seen where they've had a recovery coordinator from day one makes a real difference to communication, because they're hired by the government, but they're quite independent, and they go out every day and talk to people and say things and have stand up media conferences and all of that. We didn't have that and that seemed to set the pattern then for the communications. If there's another disaster, I would do everything I could to say, okay we need a recovery coordinator straightaway and that they're not of the bureaucracy.

FEDERAL MEMBER for PAGE KEVIN HOGAN



2023 was a disaster unto itself as well. I think we have to go back to what was identified by the NRRC. We had 2000 homes that were identified, that were in danger, that needed to be bought back. Nothing like that will happen. We will have, I think, maybe 600 to 700 of those homes that will be bought back. So, that's achieved nothing. We're going to have a lot of those homes then removed, so we're going to have a patchwork quilt of houses that have disappeared from the suburb, which will look terrible unto itself, and we haven't achieved anything. Like if you've moved numbers 3, 5 and 7 but 2, 4, 6 and eight are there, you haven't achieved anything.

In some ways, it's been a complete waste of money as well and you're going to have a patchwork quilt of empty properties that are going to need maintenance. How is that going to work and who's responsible for that?

You also have the situation, and I don't blame people for doing this, but you also have the situation where it hasn't achieved any safety improvements either. Some people have sold a house and bought a house around the corner. Now why would you do that? You do that because it gives you a cash injection. You sell a house for $600,000, you buy a house for $300,00, it gives you $300,000 to redo your house basically, in the suburb and the place where you want to live. I understand why people have done that, but again, in the bigger picture, it's achieved nothing and has been a great waste of taxpayers' money.

I personally believe we should have kept that money for flood mitigation. If we can take one or two metres off a flood, no one would have to move and it would have kept farmland safe and our road network safe and the CBD safer as well. This billion dollars almost, that we're going to have spent with these two programs, plus some of the other things that the money has been spent on, hasn't done anything to do with flood mitigation. All in all, it's been a complete disaster, and achieved very little for our community.

With the Lands Program, where are they going to send people? I don't think you'll see anyone in the home from these programmes for up to four years after the event we need. We're coming up to two years now, which is ridiculous in itself. I mean, people can't camp for four years, that's far too slow and taking too long. What they're doing really, is just bringing on land and properties that should be coming about in the natural course of Lismore growth anyway. That hasn't achieved anything.

The Resilient Homes Program, you know, to building back better, has been too slow. People have already had to invest money into their homes and renovate them and do all that type of stuff. They're going through the application process for that and for many people, it won't happen either, because they had to put gyprock and the like back in as quickly and as cheaply as they can, because that's all they can do. And that's happened. So, that's been too slow.

Overall, I think this has been a really badly thought-out process. There's been no macro overview and decisions have been made ad hoc and a big, clear strategy has never been articulated by the NRRC and at a ministerial level. So, I think it's really disappointing. Two years ago now, I said we should start putting money aside for flood mitigation, which will keep the road network safe, the CBD safe and make people safer in their existing homes. We still don't know what they're going to do with that or even if they're going to commit to that.

The main game in town, as far as I'm concerned, and for the wider region, is flood mitigation. I'm still not hearing enough talk from ministerial levels, both state and federal, because whenever I see any politician I say we need to talk about and be committed to flood mitigation. The CSIRO report will be handed down and we need to be saying now our aim is to take a minimum of a metre of a flood or two metres of a flood. We need to be talking like that. We need to be focused on that. We need to be aware already of what we think the cost of that will be and saying OK, where should we be allocating the money optimally. That's where I think it should go.

We will have spent, by the time the report, comes out, probably a billion dollars. What have we achieved with that money? And I think when we look back and have a hard look at what we have achieved? I think it will be very, very little, which is very disappointing.