No relief for owners of unsellable homes despite report confirming failures

Residents of a flooded retirement village in Melbourne’s north-west face being marooned in homes rendered unsellable after a new report rejected a government buyback scheme, despite finding serious mistakes were made in planning the development.

Forty-seven villas in the Avondale Heights retirement village Rivervue were flooded when the Maribyrnong River burst its banks in 2022, causing $7 million in damage.

Flooded Rivervue resident Stan Korkliniewski, pictured with wife Cheryl, is calling for a relocation or buyback scheme.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui

The villas were finished in 2019 and, according to a parliamentary report tabled this week, built after Melbourne Water relied on inaccurate modelling and ineffective mitigation works to green-light their construction on the floodplain.

“Mistakes were clearly made,” the report found.

The report stopped short of recommending a buyback scheme, as has been implemented in other states, arguing it would be too costly for the Victorian government. NSW – which also saw severe flooding two years ago – has a voluntary buyback scheme.

Instead of buybacks, the report recommends the government fund the retrofitting or raising of flood-prone homes. Priority would be given to the thousands of residents who were flooded statewide in 2022, including the more than 600 properties in Melbourne’s west.

Rivervue Retirement Village during floods in 2022.Credit: Rivervue

The Victorian flood inquiry report, which includes 73 recommendations, took 18 months to complete and was sparked in the wake of an Age investigation into the disaster that uncovered failures in the emergency warning system and planning decisions.

Rivervue resident Stan Korkliniewski’s home was hit by floodwaters in 2022. He said he was not interested in retrofitting the property for flood resilience.

He was disappointed there were no recommendations to relocate affected residents within the retirement village or to buy back their homes. “A lot of us have come here at later stages of life seeking peace and security and all that’s happened is we have lost our wealth. The government should recognise that,” he said.

Korkliniewski said there was enough evidence laid out in the report about faults in the planning process for a class action to be considered. “It’s not a question of if we get flooded again, it’s a question of when,” he said. “We in the west get treated like second-class citizens.”

The impact to property values at Rivervue is spreading beyond just homes that were inundated in 2022. One unit that was not flooded has not received a buyer offer in the two years since it was put on the market. A property expert with knowledge of the situation, but who asked not to be named to speak freely, said it was frustrating that a buyback scheme was rejected by the parliamentary committee.

“There’s the contagion impact of the village being known as flood-prone. I feel for those who have actually been flooded because their houses are worth virtually nothing,” he said.

The report found that inadequate record-keeping by Melbourne Water regarding the Rivervue development resulted in a lack of transparency about the decision-making process in the early 2000s.

A Melbourne Water spokesman confirmed that it was the relevant referral authority that had reviewed the proposed retirement village plan. Melbourne Water found the developer “had removed the flood risk” – despite this, the village flooded in 2022.

The spokesman said Melbourne Water had, since the village flooded, been working with Rivervue residents to support development of an emergency management plan for the site.

He also said retrofitting could be “an appropriate response to flood risk in some cases”.

David Ettershank, a Legalise Cannabis MP and the inquiry’s deputy chair, said Melbourne Water’s inability to explain what had happened because of “historical events” was not good enough.

In a dissenting report, Ettershank said it was “hardly likely to encourage public confidence that ‘lost in the mists of time’ barely extends back 15 years”.

Ettershank had hoped the report would deliver more solutions for flood-hit residents along the Maribyrnong River. “What we’ve not come up with are long-term resolutions for these people’s terrible problems,” he said.

“It’s absolutely incumbent upon government to actually start looking at solutions for those people, not simply noting their complaints.”

The report noted the Flemington Racecourse flood wall built by the Victoria Racing Club in 2007 had “increased the extent and duration of the flood in [the suburb of] Maribyrnong”.

The flood wall around Flemington Racecourse on October 14, 2022.Credit: Aisha Dow

The wall increased flood levels by up to three centimetres in some residential areas and lengthened its duration. Some properties flooded would likely have avoided inundation had the wall not been built, an earlier report overseen by Melbourne Water found.

The parliamentary report found that construction works on the river, designed to offset the impact of major flooding on locals, failed to work.

The Allan government has until January to respond to the report. Water Minister Harriet Shing’s spokeswoman said the government was considering the report’s recommendations. She said the state was investing more than $22 million for council flood planning and spent $2.5 billion with the Commonwealth supporting flood-hit communities.

Victorian Greens leader Ellen Sandell said the report showed major failures in Victoria’s planning system.

“While the report makes some good recommendations, I’m disappointed that residents ... are still facing significant costs and uncertainty for poor government decisions. These residents deserve justice and compensation.”

Rivervue Retirement Village in Avondale Heights.Credit: Rivervue

The report questions the reliance on mitigation works to justify floodplain development, but Maribyrnong Community Recovery Association president Madeleine Serle criticised the lack of mitigation solutions for at-risk residents.

“We want to continue to push for federal climate change disaster funding to do whole-of-catchment mitigation work,” she said.

Other recommendations in the report include overhauling the state’s early warning system and emergency management, and disclosing when a property is flood-prone in vendor statements.

It also suggests limiting development in flood zones, requiring that the Inspector-General for Emergency Management review every natural disaster and that floodplain management authorities produce more frequent, peer-reviewed models.

The report is highly critical of inadequate management of flood levees in rural areas and recommends increasing the flood storage capacity of Lake Eppalock, in northern Victoria.

Rivervue owner Tigcorp was contacted for comment but a spokesman said they could not respond by deadline.

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