How’s it going in Lismore?

Because I’m originally from Lismore in Northern NSW and maintain strong connections to the area I am often asked by friends and colleagues “How’s it going in Lismore?”.

It’s a reference to the catastrophic floods that occured two years ago, the worst national disaster in recent Australian history.

In the case of my own family, a number of them were rescued from flood water that had reached the second story of their homes. They were literally standing on the kitchen table, with water up to their chest.To be honest, they’re lucky to be alive, and I remember vividly the phone conversations from the night in question where I genuinely believed I would never speak to them again, that they were about to drown. Thankfully that never happened.

The devasation was immense. Two years on, there is still much to do, it will likely take decades to fully recover, and the town will be dramatically different to the one in which I grew up.

Yesterday I went to the NSW Parliament for a presentation, organised by the NSW Member for LIsmore, Janelle Saffin, but attended by some other North Coast politicians also. It was also great to see Heath Gilmore there, also originally from Lismore, but who works for the Sydney Morning Herald, and who wrote some wonderful articles about the impact, interviewing my brother-in-law and nephew amongst others.

And as an explanation, a “buyback” is where the NSW Government has issued people with a pre-flood house and land valuation in exchange for the land and property. In the case of my own family, the buyback was more than 250% of the post-flood property.

Radio Transcript

Jo Shoebridge : Well, it’s two and a half years since the flood and there has been a lot of work going on behind the scenes to develop plans for the future of Lismore specifically and the Northern Rivers more generally. And much of it has been through the Living Lab, Northern Rivers, which has an office in Woodlark Street. Well, yesterday, Lismore MP Janelle Saffin hosted an important presentation in Sydney to provide an update on the current thinking on issues, including the future of land vacated by buybacks and the important issue, of course, of flood insurance. And you’ll hear more about flood insurance after seven. James O’Brien from ABC Radio went to the presentation at New South Wales Parliament and he put together this report, which includes Janelle Saffin’s experiences and thoughts after visiting New Orleans in the United States.

ABC News Archives : In the United States, hundreds of thousands of people have fled the low-lying southern city of New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina closes in with winds of around 260 kilometres per hour. The mayor of New Orleans has issued an unprecedented mandatory evacuation order for the city, saying it’s facing the storm that most officials have feared.

Janelle Saffin: Janelle Saffin, State Member for Lismore.

James O’Brien : And you’ve just been to New Orleans?

Janelle Saffin : I have been to New Orleans and I had to learn how to pronounce it properly. New Orleans? New Orleans.

James O’Brien : So, 20 years after the cyclone and the flooding, the terrible flooding, how are they going?

Janelle Saffin : It’s still a work in progress, even after 20 years. Yes, a lot’s been done and a lot’s been rebuilt and reshaped. And some people moved away from areas where they were totally inundated, but they’ve set up other housing developments. But also what they’ve learned to do is live with the river and the water and adapt to it, at the same time mitigate. And that’s what we need to do in the Northern Rivers in New South Wales.

James O’Brien : Are there any specific things that you saw that you thought, hey, that a great idea?

Janelle saffin : One thing I saw was how they use the big drains and waterways that exist to develop parklands and recreation lands around them. And in a sense, you heard today, Professor Elizabeth Mossop talked about Sponge City. So there are things that you can do architecturally, design-wise, to actually soak up a lot of the water. Not, you know, not massive amounts, but you can actually soak up the water. I’ve looked at that in China too. Haven’t been to China, but I’ve looked at what they’ve done there with Sponge City.

James O’Brien : So what’s the significance of having this presentation today in the New South Wales Parliament?

Janelle Saffin : It was an exposé of us in the Northern Rivers, what we’ve created in a partnership with SCU, UTS and Reconstruction Authority to say this is how we not only rebuild and reconstruct, this is how we prepare and future-proof ourselves against disasters that will come.

Elizabeth Mossop : Elizabeth Mossop, I am the academic director of the Living Lab, Northern River.

James O’Brien : Now what you’ve outlined obviously is what happens after North Lismore is effectively cleared from housing and a lot of South Lismore, which is my part of Lismore. But what’s going to stop those areas just becoming empty paddocks?

Elizabeth Mossop : I think it’s really important to do the right kind of planning to get great outcomes for those areas. South Lismore is only getting a relatively small number of buybacks. So I think what you do there is you involve the community very, very closely in figuring out what to do with the vacant lots. You call for expressions of interest from the community, you know, and I think we’re fairly agnostic about what the uses might be. It doesn’t really matter, provided they are positive, the community are happy with them, you know, and that they bring benefit to those neighbourhoods.

In North Lismore, I think it’s a very different case because it will be largely open space. But there’s a big opportunity there with this massive area of green space right next to the downtown, recreation, sports facilities, recreational trails, connection to the rail trail, the opportunity to really do some culturally activated Indigenous land management and a big opportunity for landscape restoration, increasing biodiversity and the opportunity, I think, for carbon sequestration and also possibly some kind of enterprises around agroforestry or maybe growing bush foods. So, you know, there’s quite a lot of work to be done here, but I think the direction is really clear, and I think it could be an incredible asset for the city. And I think that’s what you’ve got to be looking for, rather than thinking about it in this positive way, rather than something that is empty.

James O’Brien : So how much of this is going to rely on government support? How much from the private sector, partnerships, all of those sorts of things?

Elizabeth Mossop : Well, government holds the keys in terms of the land ownership. And so they are the decision makers in this. But I do think that partnership with private organisations, partnership with community-based organisations and non-profits, we might think all of that is going to be key in terms of how these things move forward. And it really will be a question of, I think, being pretty creative about how you look at this and, you know, different solutions for different places.

James O’Brien : But like you say today, it’s going to take a while, isn’t it?

Elizabeth Mossop : Yeah, but we can start tomorrow. You know, these recovery processes take years. They’re really slow. But the important thing is I think you’ve got to show progress. And I think with many of these things, we’ve got a lot of experience. We know what good answers are. We should be trying them out. And, you know, we haven’t done this before in Lismore. So some of this stuff will be a matter of piloting and testing it and evaluating it and maybe changing a bit and doing it again. But I think the important thing is to get going.

Chris Cherry, Mayor of Tweedshire, do you feel a bit left out or how’s it going? It’s always difficult. There are seven shires that were deeply affected in the flooding in the Northern Rivers. And, you know, Tweed is one of those. And obviously we understand that there’s so much focus on Lismore in terms of the scale of what happened there. But I think, you know, sometimes we forget that there were 2,200 homes, 2,200 families in Tweed who lost their homes flooded as well. And we lost 500 houses there. So we are very much deeply affected as well as a whole region.

ABC News Archives : This was the day that changed everything for residents of Woodburn. But the flooding that wiped out Tanya Hundy’s supermarket was followed by an even more frustrating problem, wrangling with her insurer. The insurance companies seem to rule everybody.

James O’Brien : Janelle, you also mentioned there’s some work going on with insurance in the next couple of weeks. What’s going on?

Janelle Saffin : With the community leaders and the Reconstruction Authority, we developed a submission to the federal parliamentary inquiry looking at insurance. We’ve all appeared before it. I have. And it was developed by people who really are experts in the area. We’ve got a great submission going forward. We’re recommending about three different options for insurance.

There’s a midway point. Until such time as we have the mitigation and adaptation, we do need government involvement. And that submission will be launched in the next week. And it’ll be online. So like subsidies for insurance or what? If you have a look, there’s a cyclone pool for Northern Australia. We’ve now had seven events. That’s one model, a pooling. There’s what they call parametric insurance. I’ve looked at models in the UK, Flundray, UK, where the government steps in for 25 years. I’ve looked at the New York Neighbourhood Centre, where a whole group get together and buy their own insurance. I’ve engaged with the Insurance Council of Australia for the last two years. I’ve said, you can buy various products as well. In Australia, we tend to just do what we call indemnity insurance, all or nothing. So it’s looking at a range of options. But we will need some government support because we can’t have communities that are not insured.

Jo Shoebridge: Janelle Saffens, Lismore MP, speaking there to James O’Brien. You also heard from Professor Elizabeth Mossop from the Living Lab, Northern Rivers, and Tweed Shire Mayor, Chris Cherry.