Federal Member for Lismore Kevin Hogan and Shadow Minister for Regional Development Darren Chester met with the six mayors in the Page electorate yesterday to talk about the priorities they have for their respective LGAs (local government areas) and what funding they will need to make those priorities a reality.

The discussion also revolved around the lack of projects announced for the Growing Regions Program in the last two and a half years, plus flood mitigation and insurance following the release of the 2022 Flood Insurance report.

"Well, there's no question that all politics is local, and it's so important that as a federal government, and the coalition took this approach when we were in government, is that we have willing partners at the local level. We want to work with local councils right across Australia because we believe in localism," Mr Chester said.

"We believe that local communities are best placed to make good decisions for the future of those communities. I want to work with local councils right throughout regional Australia to identify their local priorities and then work in a productive, practical and constructive way to ensure that those projects are delivered in a cost-effective manner.

"What we're seeing right now is really an investment strike by the Labor Party when it comes to regional areas. There is no pipeline of projects. We haven't seen a single project start yet under the Growing Regions Program.

"I'll say one other point, regional Australia is a great place to live, to work, to visit and to raise a family. With a little bit more investment from the Commonwealth, our communities will be even stronger in the future. We need to work with local councils to make sure we help local regional areas achieve their full potential."

Mr Chester was asked if it was important to separate regional infrastructure funding and disaster recovery funding.

"As someone who comes from a disaster prone area in Gippsland, I'm very familiar with the impact of fires and floods and storm events, and droughts as well. We need to be front-ending funding for our regional communities towards resilience and mitigation prevention works. Natural resource management through practical environmental works, whether it's hazard reduction, whether it's levy banks, whether it's flood mitigation dams, these are all things that can reduce the impact of our natural disasters on our communities.

"We need to remember that our regional communities generate the wealth that pays for everything in this nation, whether it's through the mining sector, the agricultural sector, it is the regional communities who are creating the wealth that pays for the universities, for the hospitals, for the major transport projects in our cities.

"It isn't much to expect that the Commonwealth work with those local communities to help prevent as much as possible those natural disasters and minimise the impact on our families and our regional communities."

The recent federal inquiry into how insurance companies responded to the 2022 floods made 86 recommendations. One of those recommendations was for the government to intervene in the development of areas within a 1-in-100-year flood risk. Mr Chester and Mr Hogan both made points about how that relates to Lismore and the other local LGAs.

"Well, there's a few points to make in particular. First of all, we are already one of the most, if not the most, urbanised nation in the world. We need people living in our regional communities to generate the wealth of those urban centres need. So we need our farmers, we need our regional centres, we need our mining industry, and we need those people to have houses in those communities," Mr Chester said.

"We need to work with those communities to find ways to ensure that we're mitigating and preventing disasters in the first place. Simply evacuating from regional communities is a stupid idea. We need to ensure that those regional communities are as safe as possible, that we minimise risk for those communities, and that we invest in those communities on the mitigation and prevention measures. And I think that's the most appropriate approach."

Mr Hogan made the point that no one is talking about building on the floodplains once again.

"We're not talking about building more homes on a flood plain; we're not talking about building new industrial estates or a CBD on a flood plain. The situation that we're dealing here with locally is we're here. So the Lismore CBD is where it is, North and South Lismore are where they are. Our industrial estates are where they are, as are the villages down river.

"This is solvable. We can grow. A new development can happen in higher places and flood-free land, which we should obviously encourage. We want our communities to grow in population. We want more jobs for our young people. So we should be able to do that, and we can do that here in this region.

"What we're talking about, given we exist on flood plains or flood affected areas, what we have to do is flood mitigate. And that's not rocket science. There are many precedents to do this. Most capital cities around the world would be flooding if it wasn't for serious flood mitigation work that they've had done for those cities.

"So, what we're talking about when we talk to the CSIRO and we talk to others, they're talking about maybe a $2 billion spend will take a metre or a metre and a half off a flood in our region. Now, if we took a meter and a half off a flood in this catchment, we have a future, and we would be able to get cheaper insurance, and people would reinvest in their businesses in the CBD and the industrial estates."

INSURANCE

Will we need insurance in flood-affected LGAs to be underwritten by the Federal Government?

"I think two things have to happen," Mr Hogan answered, "One is, at the moment, we are flood-affected. There are certain houses where flood insurance is unaffordable, right? So we needed one of the recommendations, it wasn't in the report, which I was disappointed in, which is why we did a dissenting report, is that we should insist that insurance companies offer insurance to people and they can opt out of flood cover. So, if you live in North or South Lismore, one of the villages that were flood-affected, you want to insure for fire and or theft, but don't want flood insurance because you can't afford it, understandable. But if you don't get offered the option to insure against fire, and you don't get the option to insure against theft, that puts you in a whole new area.

"That's not good if you've got a house that you can't insure for anything. That's not good for your community, it's not good for your house, and it's not good for your neighbours. So, I very much want the fact that you can opt out of flood insurance so you can afford that.

"Secondly, going back to mitigation. If we did some serious mitigation work here, the insurance companies would look at that and go, okay, this place isn't going to flood anymore. That area will probably never flood again. Or a flood here will be two metres lower, a meter and a half lower; we're happy to take that on or give a much cheaper premium to do that insurance."

While the thinking is good, the solution may be five to ten years away because building serious mitigation solutions will take time.

"Yes, there will be a lag, but the CSRIO report will be handed down next year, and that will be a whole lot of hydrology options. It'll be a hydrology report. If you do XYZ, that means ABC. But to build those options, that will be a multi year event. Yes, that's right.

"That's a whole other thing because that will be a national offering. We're not the only area affected by disasters. You have Far North Queensland with cyclones, and you have other areas affected by flood. So we'll see what the government does with the report. I mean, that's more complex, but yeah, there are other options about how you can underwrite that, which should be looked at."

LISMORE'S WISH LIST

When it came to passing on Lismore's wish list as part of the Growing Regions Program, Mayor Steve Krieg said five key points were resolved by council during last year's meeting.

"Number one is a study around flood mitigation and water security. We need to determine an area of growth, which we are encouraging actively. We want people to move to this region. How do we give them fresh, clean water?

"Then, we look at things like our bridge to bridge plan, beautifying our river and making it a real asset, a tourist attraction rather than people being scared of our river. Obviously, the rail trail continuation right through to Booyong from Lismore is another thing.

"But there's a lot of work to do here. We were still very much in the early stages of flood recovery. We, as a council, just rolled out the tender for the $ 500-odd million dollar road repair project. So, there's some really exciting times ahead in the city of Lismore and the Lismore LGA, as there are right across the region with the seven local governments represented in our meeting today."

Mayor Krieg was asked about the lack of projects in the Growing Region's Program.

"The statistics have been so damning today. You know, as mayors, we're not across so much of what the federal government rolls out, but to hear that there's not one new infrastructure project being funded over the last two and a half years is a pretty damning statistic. Obviously, we need ongoing infrastructure upgrades and new infrastructure to be built. We really need help from every level of government to maintain the region's base so that we can provide for those growth areas that we want in the Northern Rivers.

"We know the Northern Rivers as a region is one of the highest growth areas in the country. So we need to be able to provide the parks, the toilets in the parks, and the sewage treatment works. Richmond Valley has got some serious concerns in and around their infrastructure for what is potentially one of the big growth areas in our region and in our country, and they need the infrastructure support to be able to encourage that and make it happen.

"There are a lot of big issues. And you know, I'm not here to say, vote one or vote the other. We just need the money to flow and not be stop/start, not be bound up by bureaucracy. We all know that Sydney and Canberra love their paper shuffling. We just need the money to trickle through and make the regions the best place in the world to live."

On that note, Kevin Hogan mentioned the coalition's newly announced Housing Fund.

"So, that is a $5 billion fund that is going to be given to local governments to build the infrastructure to support the houses we need. So that is money. I've spoken to all the mayors about it today. We want to be first in (line) for this. This will build roads, this will build the water infrastructure, the electricity infrastructure and the sewage infrastructure. We want to get our fair share of that."