New body to help rebuild NSW flood towns

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has taken the first steps towards long-term rebuilding of flood-damaged towns, creating a corporation with planning and land acquisition powers.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Flavio Brancaleone

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has taken the first steps towards long-term rebuilding of flood-damaged towns along the state’s Northern Rivers, creating a corporation with planning and land acquisition powers.

Mr Perrottet said on Monday that the Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation would ­operate beyond his government’s immediate relief response to flood-hit areas by helping communities to rebuild destroyed homes and essential services.

The corporation, which will exist as a unit within Deputy Premier Paul Toole’s Department of Regional NSW and ­report directly to him, will consider proposals to shift services and utilities in riverside communities to safer, higher ground to avoid a repeat of this year’s damage if there is more flooding.

The corporation will have the power to not only work with councils in helping to direct projects to “rejuvenate communities” but also to “compulsorily acquire or subdivide land” and to “fast-track” development proposals through the NSW Department of Planning and Environment.

Reconstruction work for communities damaged by river flooding will target the local government areas of Lismore, Ballina, Byron Bay, Kyogle, Tweed, Richmond Valley and Clarence Valley.

The corporation will consider the need to move schools, essential services, utilities and businesses to safer ground as a preventive measure.

The body’s chief executive will be David Witherdin, head of the NSW Public Works Advisory and the Soil Conservation Service. Mr Witherdin was previously the chief executive of Local Land Services.

He will report to Mr Toole, who is Deputy Premier as the NSW Nationals’ leader under the state Coalition government.

Mr Perrottet said the new ­corporation would lead a “single, co-ordinated whole-of-government approach” to the permanent recovery and rebuilding of communities across the Northern Rivers.

“The NSW government is in this for the long haul,” he said.

He said he understood that communities affected needed certainty with recovery plans, and an independent inquiry already under way would hear from all communities affected as well as taking expert advice from scientists and others.

Mr Toole said the NSW government’s shift from recovery and clean-up in flood-hit areas to rebuilding homes and infrastructure was intended to make the ­region “more resilient in the event of future natural disasters”.

He said that Resilience NSW would continue to be responsible for providing immediate relief, ­including the restoration of ­essential service and clean-up of damaged properties. It would also continue to provide temporary accommodation in the short- to medium-term for people displaced.