Scott Morrison visits Lismore after NSW floods
Extra flood disaster payments will be rolled out for some heavily-hit Northern Rivers residents but others have been overlooked in a move that one MP has described as “disgusting”.
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Four Northern Rivers shires have been overlooked in extra flood recovery support announced by Prime Minister Scott Morrison during a press conference in northern NSW.
Mr Morrison has announced extra relief payments for residents of the Lismore, Richmond Valley and Clarence Valley council areas.
The Tweed, Byron, Ballina and Kyogle shires have been omitted from this extra help for now.
Mr Morrison said the National Recovery and Resilience Agency would also undertake assessment of possible additional local government areas that also met the catastrophic impact assessment.
He said the disaster was a “national catastrophe”.
“There is no flood event that has occurred in this part of Australia like this in anyone’s living or recorded memory,” Mr Morrison said.
“I’m advised it’s a one-in-500-year flood.
“It overwhelmed everything and it did it at an alarming and disturbing pace.”
Mr Morrison, joined by Page MP Kevin Hogan, Lismore mayor Steve Krieg and Richmond Valley mayor Robert Mustow, visited farms, homes and small businesses in the Lismore area.
His arrival at the Lismore City Council building in Goonellabah ahead of a press conference was met with a group of angry protesters, many of them calling for action on climate change.
When asked about the dire situation many residents faced at the peak of the flood, Mr Morrison said “Australians will always step up”.
Civilians, alongside emergency services, rescued hundreds of people during the disaster.
A Lismore woman set up a live online list of people waiting to be urgently rescued while they could not get through to Triple 0 or the State Emergency Service emergency line.
“Those responses are managed by the state government,” Mr Morrison said.
“I’m not making criticism there; that’s just the assignment of those responsibilities.”
Mr Morrison acknowledged there had been an “unprecedented strain on local and state resources”.
“What you do is you get in, you work together and you work to restore the situation as quickly as you can,” he said.
It was put to Mr Morrison many communities of northern NSW had felt abandoned by his government during the disaster.
“It is very common in natural disasters … the frustration, the anger, the sense of abandonment,” he said.
“This is a very complex and very challenging environment.
“But I am in awe of the collective response that has been put in place.
“I absolutely understand the frustration. I understand the anger. I understand the disappointment. I understand the sense of abandonment.”
He said the federal government was, however, committed to restoring the region.
Page MP Kevin Hogan said everyone in the region had been left with “great trauma” from the past week and a half.
“What we have had happen in this region is quite a traumatic event,” Mr Hogan said.
“We are not saying this is a flood; this has gone beyond a flood.
“We know how to deal with floods in Lismore and the Richmond Valley and elsewhere but this was a natural disaster of unprecedented destruction.”
Minister for Emergency Management, National Recovery and Resilience Bridget McKenzie said Lismore has a “bright, sustainable future”.
Flood mitigation plans
Prime Minister Scott Morrison says the government will finalise the flood mitigation works that need to be done on the Northern Rivers as a part of its flood recovery response.
Mr Morrison said flood disaster payments would be repeated for residents in the Lismore, Richmond Valley and Clarence Valley council areas to take the total from $16.5m already spent to $50m.
He said he wanted to ensure people could have confidence about rebuilding in the Northern Rivers.
“Enough of the talk,” Mr Morrison said.
“People have known what needs to be done for a long time.”
He said decisions needed to be driven by the council but stopped short of offering a solution.
“If further hydrology work is required then we will support that with additional funding to get that completed,” Mr Morrison said.
He said people couldn’t build homes or run businesses in areas where they could not get insurance.
“For insurance companies to be able to insure, then we have to increase the certainty that they have about how these types of devastating floods can impact this region,” Mr Morrison said.
“That’s the future I want for Northern Rivers.
“That’s the hope I want to give.
He committed to funding the works with the state and local government.
Member for Richmond Justine Elliot said she was disgusted the additional funding announcement did not include the Ballina, Byron and Tweed local government areas – each of which fell into her federal Labor electorate.
“It is disgusting considering the extent of the damage to households and the livelihoods of people in this community – the thousands and thousands who do not have a house now,” Ms Elliot said.
“We have so many homeless people who have nowhere to go in the short term who will be excluded from further disaster payments.”
Ms Elliot said the federal government had a large disaster fund which could be utilised.
However when asked if the ALP planned to spend that money if elected into power she said the election was 100 days away and their party would announce their policy closer to the date.
“We are not in government, they need to do it today,” she said.
“The need is so dire, I’m getting so many people calling in tears.
“This is a humanitarian crisis on a huge level.”
Protesters greet PM
Police had earlier kept protesters back from Prime Minister Scott Morrison as he arrived at Lismore’s council headquarters on Wednesday.
A crowd of more than 100 people stood in front of a line of police on the grass outside the Goonellabah building chanting “the water is rising”.
Mr Morrison entered the building through a side door to get a briefing from State Emergency Service personnel.
Mullumbimby resident Rich Latimer took an opportunity to grab the attention of waiting media to call for a more unified flood response between emergency services and the community.
“We need unification,” Mr Latimer said.
“We can’t have agencies vs the community.
“The communities need to be ready for this for the next five, 10, 15 years.”
Mr Morrison will recommend to the Governor-General to make a National Emergency Declaration covering the severe weather and flooding event across NSW and Queensland.
The national emergency declaration is designed to slash red tape between response agencies and will allow the federal government to deploy Australian Defence Forces without waiting for a request from state governments for assistance.
“I have made this decision today, in consultation with the Premiers, after further briefings from government agencies about the situation in northern NSW and seeing the catastrophe first-hand,” a statement from Mr Morrison’s office read.
“We introduced the power to make a National Emergency Declaration after the Black Summer bushfires and it will ensure our Ministers and agencies don’t face any unnecessary bureaucracy as they roll out what communities need.
“The feedback we’ve had from communities, state governments and my own ministers who have visited the impacted areas has helped us identify where the gaps are right now, and how we can get support out the door quickly to where it’s needed.”
His visit to Lismore comes after calls from the community for him to witness the devastation first hand.
They included a heartfelt call from Gold Coast resident Katie Matthews, whose dad Bill Walsh was rescued from his Lismore home by a man in a tinnie after she desperately posted on community Facebook sites pleading for someone to save him.
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