Member for Lismore Janelle Saffin has been in parliament this week, and the previous two weeks was in America on a fact-finding mission to do with flood recovery, mitigation and insurance.

The Lismore App caught up with Ms Saffin to discuss what she learned for Talking Lismore, our new podcast series.

Ms Saffin was on a high because of the change in legislation in the rice industry.

"Look, I enjoy Parliament, and it's hard to describe it, but there are good things, like last night, the rice vesting legislation went through. That means our Northern Rivers rice growers, who've been squeezed out of the export market because of the monopoly and the rules that applied, can now access that, and it means that they can seek other opportunities. So, you know, we do good things in Parliament at times."

Ms Saffin was referring to a piece of legislation that existed from the 1920s where one business group was allowed to control the export market in Australia. As 97% of Australian rice is grown in the Riverina (think Wagga Wagga), that was the only area in NSW to be able to export rice overseas. The legislative change means businesses like the Natural Rice Company, based near Kyogle, can begin to export rice, thus grow their market and compete on a level playing field with other rice growers in the state.

"We've got up to about 40 growers, we do dry land rice, and as I said last night in the debate, I said that doesn't mean there's no water, it means no irrigation, and the changes last night weren't made for that, but it means that we save on water with the way we're growing a lot of the rice, and also we lessen the methane emissions as well from the particular way we grow it. And the Natural Rice Co. in Kyogle has a factory, and for them, it's fantastic. I did call out Tony Carusi because he's been the person I've liaised with mostly about all of this, and he said he thought he'd be dead 50 years before this would happen."

As mentioned in our June story on this potential legislation change, the Natural Rice Company can now look at a $15-20 million investment into its infrastructure, given there is more certainty for its future.

Ms Saffin said that rice feeds the world, so this could be a game changer to develop the rice industry in the Northern Rivers, not just in growing rice but developing new strains of rice that can be grown without irrigation and lower methane emissions.

When the discussion moved to her U.S. visit, Ms Saffin said she didn't discover a groundbreaking way to deal with floods.

"it reinforced some of the things we already know and are going through. What I found really interesting, most people are going through what we are going through. How do we deal with this new world of continuing disasters, some of them bigger than we've ever had before? That was a commonality. How do we deal with it? Do we move from where we are? Do we stay? How do we do that? How do we still attract business? How do we get enough money to pay for it? But the biggie, the biggie, was insurance."

"We, when I say we, the Community Leaders Forum, the four state MPs, two federal MPs, seven mayors, so representing communities and councils, we have a submission ready to go to the Federal Parliamentary Standing Committee on Economics. It's doing the insurance review, and we've put forward a recommendation. It will be lodged next week.

"We did get people who have absolute expertise internationally as well as locally in insurance, and they did a case study of Lismore and came up with recommendations that will go forward about insurance. The one thing in one place I was at, and I won't name it in the States, they said, Janelle, look, yes, we have issues, like with flooding water, etc, etc, but they said the key issue for us that will be the one sort of turning point or could damage us, is insurance not having insurance."

"They do underwrite insurance in certain areas, but people are supposed to do certain things as well. So, they do underwrite. In the United States, each state handles insurance. So, that's interesting. We went to Sacramento in California and met the Commissioner of Insurance, and he's done a lot of terrific work in insurance, and I understand he'll be down here in October to talk to the Insurance Council of Australia.

"It's just interesting watching how they do their work and how they almost underwrite people. So, in our submission that's going to the federal parliamentary inquiry, we looked at the cyclone pool in Northern Australia that came in in 2022, and they've had seven events since, which is enough to look at how that can work. It works by declared cyclone events, from when they're declared until when they're undeclared. And it underwrites reinsurance. And in the insurance world, there's a whole lot of reinsurance.

"We looked at the New York neighbourhood centre program, and it's a parametric model where people sort of pool funding. It's like this, I would say, if I get a flood in Lismore, and it's at 12.4 meters, so you agree on what it might come to or beyond before the event. I will give you $3,000, and I will get 300 if that event happens.

"It's a different way of doing insurance in the UK. It's Floodre UK. Houses built after, I think it was 2009, can attract insurance, and it's a 25-year program. But the way I looked at that, there wasn't enough focus on mitigate, adapt, retrofit, make things more resilient. I think whatever we do with insurance, we still have to have that mitigation, adaptation in there along the way."

You can listen to the full podcast with Member for Lismore Janelle Saffin by clicking Podcasts via the Lismore App or by clicking here to listen via the Lismore App website.

Ms Saffin also talked about worker accommodation. A vital part of our rebuild as we move into the construction phase.