Robert Oakeshott (Lyne, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to urge the Commonwealth to work with the states on a solution to a problem affecting many coastal communities. Coastal erosion is much more than an environmental story. It is a human story of homeowners desperate to save their properties from the consequences of climate change—more frequent and intense storm surges resulting in intense erosion over very short periods of time. Coastal erosion also means the loss of a great deal of public land and public infrastructure.

In the past week, the coastline in my electorate of Lyne has taken a battering and some beaches are almost unrecognisable. In Port Macquarie, Lake Cathie and Old Bar there is significant community angst about what will happen to private property, public infrastructure and the long-term outlook for entire neighbourhoods. As homeowners and businesses try to cope with the stress and distress of a natural disaster unfolding before them, there is one question in desperate need of an answer: how on earth are local ratepayers expected to hold the line on their own?

The Old Bar Beach Sand Replenishment Group is an example of a group that has been in a desperate fight with Taree Council over possible mitigation measures for one location at Old Bar, but the simple truth is that the council does not have the wherewithal to go it alone. This is a message I have delivered time and again in this place since becoming the federal member in 2008 and yet I share my community's frustrations that despite the enormous economic, environmental and social costs attached to coastal erosion, we are no closer today to a cooperative strategy involving all three levels of government than we were four years ago.

When I started on this journey with Old Bar residents in 2008, the Commonwealth was not engaged at all on this issue. We have had cause for celebrations, albeit small ones. We have had a national report on coastal erosion, an inquiry and, back in October 2009, a commitment from the then Prime Minister to lead a national response to the impacts of climate change on coastal communities.

The WorleyParsons report, incorporating a coastline hazard definition study and management plan for the coastline between Black Head and Crowdy Head, was delivered back in 2010. In 2011, the Old Bar Beach Sand Replenishment Group undertook a feasibility study into an offshore reef to try and find an answer to address the erosion problem. After 14 months with the New South Wales Office of Environment and Heritage, a draft coastal zone management plan is expected to go on public exhibition at the end of July, but in reality every one of the proposed options involving physical works is beyond the capacity of ratepayers and the council to fund.

However, despite the numerous warnings from the science community and despite the thousands of words in reports, studies and planning documents recommending action, my community, and many others, see little to no evidence of a working relationship developing between federal, state and local government on this issue. So, words aside, what has happened in the past four years? I am concerned that we have not progressed at all.

Old Bar has lost three homes and another 60 are at high risk, as is public infrastructure. The council's conservative estimate of foreshore lost to erosion at Old Bar is eight metres in just eight years. The Old Bar Beach Sand Replenishment Group—it is a community group—puts the loss at 30 to 40 metres over the same eight-year period. This is a slow-moving natural disaster.

I am told that the foreshore in front of Old Bar Public School is disappearing at a rate of 80 centimetres a month. Where the education department thought they had 50 years before their property was threatened, they now have five years. And this problem is not confined to Old Bar; it is also at Chepana Street in Lake Cathie and Lewis Street in Old Bar. There are 15 communities, including Belongil Beach, Lennox Head, Wooli and Collaroy, that have been named erosion hot spots in New South Wales.

It is a problem we know will get worse, based on predicted sea level rises of a metre-plus by 2100. Without necessarily linking it to climate change the reality is that coastal erosion is real and is an enormous public policy issue for the three tiers of government. Without a coordinated strategic response we will be in court at all three tiers of government. Landowners will be without compensation, and that is the worst-case scenario for all. We can do some preventative work—some mitigation and adaptation work—and have a coordinated strategy through the three tiers of government now if there is a level of consensus and support in recognising the problem and wanting to resolve it. I raise this issue again in the House as a plea for the Commonwealth to engage the state and local authorities in working together to get a coordinated strategy on coastal erosion.