Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

Tropical Cyclone Alfred came down the coast, as we know, and certainly affected my area just an hour or so south of Brisbane where the eye of the storm was. I want to go through a bit of a sequence of events there. I'll also get on to what this did and what the event that we had in 2022 in my region triggered, some of the consequences of that and where we're still at with that.

The big difference for us with this tropical cyclone that was moving down the coast was that, unlike the event we had in 2022, we had a lot of warning. We were talking about this for four or five days, waiting for this to maybe occur. I know the member for Flynn, here from Central Queensland, is probably thinking, 'What were you worried about?' You have these things all the time, but tropical cyclones aren't that common in our area. For them to come down that far south is unusual. They happen about every 20 or 30 years, and some of the ones that have come down have caused quite severe havoc, so we were very, very concerned about it.

A lot of work went into preparing for it. The great thing is that we were preparing for the worst, but we were certainly hoping and praying for the best. As to the type of work we had done, we had the SES; we had Scott Tanner, who started to lead the recovery or the first responders for this event; Brendan Moon from NEMA arrived. A lot of politicians arrived from both state and federal governments. Everyone was actioning everything they could and getting prepared for what may or may not happen.

The good news was that, when the event hit, although there was certainly a fair bit of rain—on my property I probably had about 400 or 500 millimetres over four or five days—we had breaks in between that which meant that the water could get away and the flooding wasn't severe. There was still major flooding. All rivers got to their major levels or categorisations, but certainly the water got away and there wasn't as much severe damage as there could have been.

To give you some perspective on this, in the 2022 event—and I'll talk about Lismore at this stage—the flood was forecast to come through at 11½ metres when everyone went to bed, and it came through at 14½ metres. And that changed at two in the morning when everyone was asleep. Three metres of extra water was a lot of water and it was two metres higher than we had ever seen. That's why a lot of people were in danger and a lot of people were at risk of drowning through that event. This event that we just had was 9½ metres. So 9½ metres versus 14½ metres is a big difference. It's why the event certainly didn't cause the carnage that it could have.

I want to now talk about the 2022 event, what this event did and what it triggered and where we're still at with this in relation to disasters. What happened after the 2022 event was that we had two choices to make. Get your head around this: we had thousands of homes that were flooded—not a hundred, not a few hundred, but thousands of homes. In many thousands of them the water came up to the gutter, and people had to scramble out of their homes. Remember: water had never reached these levels before. We've had floods. As the member for Flynn would know, when you live with these things you know what to do, you know what to expect and you have plans. Everyone had their flood plan. Everything was built for a flood of around 12 to 12½ metres. Houses had been lifted. People had flood plans for their businesses. They had mezzanine levels in a business or they took cars or trucks or whatever to levels above the 12 to 12½ metres. Everyone did that in 2022—and everyone did that in this event too—but what happened was the water went two metres higher, which meant that people were sleeping in their beds when water started coming in at two in the morning and they were in danger. They couldn't get out of their houses. They couldn't go anywhere except to scramble to their roofs, which was dangerous. You had old people having to do this. You had children having to do this. You had people swimming underwater, literally, to get out of their house and then to get on top of it. You had pets. You had all sorts of stuff. To this day, it's quite a miracle for me and my community that only four or five people, very sadly, drowned, but one of them died before that night. The fact that only four people died was very sad but still a miracle.

Post that event, the community had a big decision to make. It was like, 'We now have to look at 14½ metres as the level that this can happen at.' The town is built for 12½ metres. There is a levy that is only built for 10½ metres that does some protection for the CBD. There are a lot of industrial estates. With all due respect, in my mind Lismore is a bit too big to fail and a bit too big to move. So a decision had to be made—what were we going to do? There were two choices. It's not rocket science. You either move everyone or you mitigate. What do I mean by mitigate? You do something that means the next flood will be lower because of the work that you've done than it otherwise would be.

A very poor decision was made three years ago. A decision was made by the NRRC, a state corporation, to move everyone. What did that mean? They identified 2,000 homes that they thought were endangered and needed moving. Three years on, if we are lucky, maybe half of those homes will get moved. What does that mean? If this tropical cyclone had been another event similar to what we had, people wouldn't have been any safer. The ridiculousness of it—this might make you, Deputy Speaker, cranky as it makes me—is that nearly a billion dollars has been spent to identify these houses, and they're going to buy back about half. It will be co-funded by the state and federal governments. You may well say, 'What does that achieve if you are moving only half of the houses?' and I would say: 'That's a very good question. It's not as much as that money should be doing.'

Another joke about this is the way this was designed to run. Work it out. If your sell your house as a buyback—they're buying back the houses for around $600,000—guess what? That doesn't stop you from buying a house that someone who can't wait for the buyback is selling on the private market for, say, $300,000. So you can buy back a house for $300,000 and have $300,000 left over to renovate it, because you want to stay there because your kids go to the school up the road and you work down the road. I don't blame people for doing that, but it's obviously a huge flaw in the scheme. I know a number of people who've done that. They sold on the flood plain and bought back on the flood plain and had a bit of money left over to renovate the house. What has that achieved for people's safety? Nothing.

Three years on, we have a situation where the CBD isn't more protected. A lot of people have had to go back into their businesses in the CBD and in the industrial estates. They've spent a lot of their own money to do that, and they did it because, in some cases, they had nothing else they could do. This is their business; this is their livelihood, and they've had to reinvest. But nothing has happened yet that has made their business safer in the CBD or in any of the industrial estates, and a lot of the people in those 2,000 homes will not get an offer for a buyback either. So we have a real dog's breakfast of a situation. This event triggered what a dog's breakfast it is, because not much has really happened to make a lot of people safer.

My community has been traumatised by this. I think we have collective PTSD, because this was the biggest disaster in Australia's history. The biggest disaster in Australia's history was what this region went through. All that got triggered—kids get triggered when it rains heavily. A lot of business owners and a lot of personal friends of mine were almost in cathartic positions on their beds on Saturday, terrified about what this event might have been.

Anyway, there is a solution to this, and I encourage people in charge of the state entities here and the state government, which will have to request this. When in government federally, we commissioned through the CSIRO a flood mitigation hydrology report about what the options are here. Basically, without going into where and how this would happen, the options are that you can hold back water, and, if you hold back water for a couple of days, you can let the water get away or then let it go so the flood is lower that it otherwise would be.

I think a metre to two metres off a flood would make our community safe and give it a future. People would invest in confidence. I'm told that taking a metre to two metres off a flood would cost about $2 billion. Before you go, 'Oh my God, $2 billion,' let me remind you and this chamber that that 2022 event was a $15 billion event. The federal and state governments spent all the money on disaster recovery, not on prevention. A metre and a half would cost $2 billion and mean that Lismore, the wider Northern Rivers region and the whole Richmond and Wilson catchments—so you're talking about places like Kyogle, Casino, Ballina and all the villages—would be part of this, making this region safer. That's what we have to start talking about.

At the moment we have a dog's breakfast of a situation. We're spending a billion dollars for a marginal return. It's why some of these people have moved on, and good luck to them. Mitigation is the only long-term solution for our region.

See this speech in context