Premier Dominic Perrottet finally released the Flood Inquiry Report at Southern Cross University this morning.

This is the document Lismore and the Northern Rivers have been sweating over since Professor Mary O'Kane and Mick Fuller submitted the full report to the Premier at the end of July.

While there are 28 Recommendations in the report that the Premier said will be actioned, some elements will take longer than others, critical areas like housebacks will need to wait another few weeks while guidelines and funding is confirmed.

There was a sense of more waiting rather than immediate action with the release of the Flood Inquiry Report which the Premier said were in 2 parts, Emergency Management and Preparedness and Recovery from events of this scale both in the short and long term.

Part 1 key points are:

• The establishment of a permanent State Emergency Operations Centre led by a new Deputy Police Commissioner.
• The establishment of a new agency, Recovery NSW. The Premier called this a reshaping of Resilience of NSW into a leaner nimble agency with a focus on the first 100 days after a disaster.
• The Establishment of a new Cabinet committee called Task Force Hawke that has senior cabinet ministers and senior public servants.
• There will be a back office merger of the RFS (Rural Fire Service) and the SES (State Emergency Services) with less focus on administration and more focus on frontline response. There will be no change to the front office of each organisation.
• Community training with the RFS and the SES
• Ensuring local communities are well set up in terms of evacuation centres and who is running them.

Part 2 (Planning and the Future) key points are:

• The establishment of a permanent reconstruction body known as the NSW Reconstruction Corporation which was based on the long established Queensland Reconstruction Authority model ensuring local and regional solutions.
• House buybacks and land swaps targetted in specific areas.

The Flood Inquiry Report is very in depth and requires more reading and understanding (Flood Inquiry Report) so the above is a brief overview at this stage. The Lismore App will break this down into digestable chunks in the coming week.

(Premier Dominic Perrottet fronts the media at SCU earlier today. Photo: Simon Mumford)

For a Lismore and Northern Rivers resident, housebacks and land swaps would have been the key agenda item. In regards to that, the Premier said "This is something that the government is committed to. I know that is something that would provide uncertainty today in terms of eligibility but that is something that we need to work through."

The commitment from the Premier was that by the end of August there will be the opportunity for people to apply for house buybacks and land swaps through expressions of interest.

The Premier added "This is a long journey that is front of us and we need to make sure we rebuild in a resilient way. In a way that keeps the the character and charm of these wonderful communities in the Northern Rivers."

Member for Lismore Janelle Saffin's response to the report was cirumspect.

"All of us want it to happen today but some of it just won't, at least we have direction. We know that there's a commitment there, we know that the dollars are going to follow but there's still some conversation the state will have with the commonwealth but we've got buybacks, we've got relocatable and we've got land swaps. That's clear. It was a recommendation and there's a commitment there to do it. And the Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation will start that expression of interest process by end of August."

When asked if some of this ground work could have been done earlier rather than wait until the Flood Inquiry Report is released, Ms Saffin said, "I agree that could have been done. We've had property assessments done but we now need need further assessments to say how safe it is to be there or not, and some people want to go and some people don't want to go. So, yes, we could have had some of that done earlier but it will start today."