The flooding continued into March,spreading to surrounding towns in the Northern Rivers region. Four lives were lost and scores were left homeless,with more than 4000 homes deemed uninhabitable. Lismore’s CBD was completely destroyed and local businesses crippled.
Images of devastated residents standing in the rotting remains of their water-damaged homes and businesses are hard to forget. Survivors have told of the “” that has infected those who are still trying to rebuild their lives.
The costs of repairing and recovering from that damage are staggering. One estimate in the Northern Rivers and south-east Queensland in that period is $9.6 billion. Rebuilding Lismore is estimated at about $1 billion.
The east coast floods of early 2022,including at Lismore in northern NSW,were the most expensive insurance event on record in Australia.The Sydney Morning Herald
The events of 2022 have prompted significant reflection on how to recover and how to better prepare communities for events such as flooding,fires and cyclones.
Governments have poured money into mitigation projects in the wake of the floods,with the centrepiece to date a joint federal and state $800 million funding plan that allowed Lismore residents to raise,repair,retrofit or have their home voluntarily bought back.
These efforts to aid the recovery of the region are commendable. But,as we report today,about 97 per cent of disaster funding historically has been spent on response and recovery,with just over 3 per cent spent on disaster risk reduction nationwide.
It is well overdue to examine the imbalance in that distribution.
A CSIRO report released last year revealed the extent of,which had critical consequences. It begged the question as to how much could have been avoided.
A CSIRO research team led by hydrologist Jai Vaze and armed with $11.4 million from the National Emergency Management Agency is attempting to find an answer.
There have been many suggestions as to how to reduce future risks,including more permanent relocation of residents,flood levees,detention/retention basins in the upper catchment,bypass channels and enormous revegetation programs.
Whatever their research finds,it is widely expected that any methods to reduce risk will be expensive. It will have possible applications beyond the Northern Rivers to the many other Australian communities that face significant disaster risk.
Governments will need to set the policy and then funding will need to be raised.
All tiers of government have signalled a desire to shift towards risk prevention. The costs of prevention measures are likely to be significant,but recovering from disasters also has profound economic impacts – on taxpayers,insurers and banks,as well as on the health and livelihoods of local communities.
Climate modelling suggests the likelihood of future disaster events is increasing. Bushfires,floods,coastal erosion and inundation,as well as storms and cyclones,are all seen as posing a growing threat in coming years.
The Minns government has indicated the business sector – insurers,banks and superannuation funds – could play a role in helping finance the multibillion-dollar mitigation projects that will be needed to protect the state.
Emergency Services Minister Jihad Dib describes it as “critical work” and says that “governments cannot do this alone”.
The newly formed NSW Reconstruction Authority is exploring funding and financing options,including a special sustainability bond,and the creation of a special mitigation fund to drive investment in risk-reduction projects. The authority last month launched its first State Disaster Mitigation Plan.
The plan stressed the need for cost-sharing “between all sectors,including private asset owners,insurers and the banking industry”,particularly those with a stake in avoiding disaster impacts.
Federal Minister for Emergency Management Murray Watt says the government will need time to consider recommendations made by the CSIRO team.
This masthead urges our corporate citizens to consider how they can contribute to efforts to prevent the type of devastation such as that experienced by the Lismore community and we remind Watt of his pledge not to put CSIRO recommendations on the backburner.
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