Wyrallah Road Public School's recent exhibition of students artwork was an "was an astounding success"

 

ECHO, 29 November 2024:

Despite a rainy evening it seems there was no holding back the success of the Wyrallah Road Public School Art Show last week.

Celebrating art and their young artists the community, young and old, came and supported Wyrallah Road Public School (WRPS) at their fundraising art show and the streets were lined and the school hall buzzing.

‘Eight large collaborative class pieces were auctioned and sold, raffle tickets were flying out with a mountain of prizes from many of the small businesses that make Lismore vibrant and an art competition with prizes of first, second and third for each stage was judged by Mayor Krieg, former mayor Jenny Dowell, and art teacher Lisa Newman,’ said orgainser Vicky Fitzsimmons.

‘It was an astounding success.’......

 ‘All in all WRPS students, families and the wider Lismore community came and celebrated being bolder and brighter, together,’ said Vicky.

STATE OF PLAY NSW NORTHERN RIVERS 2024: The risk of property uninsurability continues to concern the region

 

When record flood events hit south-east Queensland and Northern New South Wales in the first quarter of 2022 the Australian insurance industry was already dealing with est. 85,953 open insurance claims, driven by six declared insurance events that occurred in 2021 [Insurance Council of Australia, November 2023].

In September 2022 the Insurance Council of Australia observed:

The south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales flood has so far cost the insurance industry $5.28 billion – almost triple the cost of the 2011 Brisbane floods and now the second most costly extreme weather event in Australia’s history.

At that point in time the Insurance Council was asserting that:

At present no region in Australia is uninsurable, however worsening extreme weather events are driving up premiums in parts of the country most exposed to extreme weather risk and rendering insurance unaffordable for some.

A neat piece of hair splitting made despite the fact that three months before, the Climate Council had issued a media release highlighting an analysis indicating that:

One in 25 Australian properties will be effectively uninsurable by 2030, due to rising risks of extreme weather and climate change.

An analysis which, in breaking the Northern Rivers region into the two federal electorates which encompass its land mass, predicted that in the Richmond electorate 20% or 22,274 properties were at "high risk" while up to 11% or 11,691 properties were at "high risk" in the Page electorate.

In Yamba alone, in the Clarence Valley section of the Page electorate, in a worst case scenario 5,237 properties are likely to become progressively uninsurable across a 70 year span commencing in 2030. A number that would contain all residential dwellings and other buildings in present day Yamba. 

While the Lismore City section of the Richmond electorate, in a worst case scenario is likely to see 5,711 properties become uninsurable over the same time period.

In the two years since the Insurance Council's statement the word "uninsurable" has continued to crop up in discussions concerning flood prone land and existing homes that had been built on such land - and as a region we have continued to twist this way and that trying to comes to terms with a grim reality.

The National Insurance Brokers Association in its October 2023 short submission to the federal parliamentary Inquiry into insurers’ responses to 2022 major floods claims was frank it its assessment of the insurance situation for so many households:

Increasing insurance losses due to more frequent natural disasters, as well as changes to actuarial and underwriting models and underlying risk profiles, have resulted in significant increases in insurance premiums in many parts of the country.....

The paradox of insurance is that those who are most impacted by natural perils, i.e. low socioeconomic households, are least likely to be able to afford to protect themselves from the effects of such events. Uninsurability has the potential to exacerbate existing inequalities by trapping vulnerable populations in high-risk areas and exposing them to greater social harm. Low socioeconomic households are less likely to be able to recover from natural disasters due to lower household incomes and less secure work. Low socioeconomic households are also more likely to be engaged in part-time or casual work. This demonstrates that the impacts of uninsurability will disproportionately affect those who are least able to protect themselves against these impacts.

The issue continues to be problematic for the NSW Northern Rivers region.......

Echo, 23 August 2024:

Insurance isn’t something that you necessarily have front of your mind most of the time but when you lose your house in a flood it suddenly takes on a whole new importance.

Insurance means that you have the opportunity to rebuild, to try to put your life back together – but flood insurance is not available to everyone, particularly those in flood risk areas and leaves them extremely vulnerable following natural disasters such as the 2022 flood.

Flood rubbish around You Are Here sign in Lismore, 7 March 2022. Photo David Lowe.

For a town like Lismore, and many others around the world, this lack of insurance means that they are unable to effectively rebuild following floods. The Inquiry into insurers’ responses to 2022 major floods claims has highlighted that ‘areas with low insurance cover have significantly worse post-disaster outcomes that negatively impact households, local businesses, and local economies’.

This Inquiry was commissioned by the then NRRC for the Community Leaders Forum that was led by Lismore MP Janelle Saffin, NSW Parliamentary Secretary for Disaster Recovery and made up of State MPs Tamara Smith (Ballina), Geoff Provest (Tweed), and Richie Williamson (Clarence); Federal Member for Page Kevin Hogan; and mayors Cr Steve Krieg (Lismore City), Cr Chris Cherry (Tweed Shire), Cr Kylie Webster (Kyogle), Cr Michael Lyon (Byron Shire), Cr Sharon Cadwallader (Ballina Shire), Cr Robert Mustow (Richmond Valley) and Cr Peter Johnstone (Clarence Valley).

‘I thank its authors, academics from the University of Queensland’s Business School – Professor Paula Jarzabkowski, Dr Katie Meissner and Dr Matthew Mason – who are very learned in this area,’ Ms Saffin said.

‘They have made a case study of Lismore that can be extrapolated across the Northern Rivers region, New South Wales, and indeed, other places in Australia....

...Whatever is done, government needs to be very involved in the response, and we must require mitigation and adaptation to be in the mix,’ she said.

Ms Saffin has made a submission, on behalf of the Community Leaders Forum to the Federal inquiry into insurers’ responses to the 2022 major floods claims utilising this report as the basis for that submission.

‘This analysis shows that the current problem of insurability will remain a wicked problem for Lismore, with no foreseeable reduction in the pricing of private sector flood insurance,’ states the report.

‘Without access to affordable insurance:

• Lismore property owners will struggle to attain or maintain mortgages;

• Lismore landlords will struggle to provide a robust residential or commercial rental market;

• Lismore businesses are likely to have their credit and growth compromised;

• The commercial attractiveness of Lismore is likely to suffer.’

Mitigation, relocation and adaptation key

Ms Saffin noted that the submission found that there is no single, per-existing solution for the complex problem of uninsurability in Lismore.

It makes four recommendations about the potential of a new insurance ecosystem for Lismore:

1. A national risk pool is a tested solution that, when well-designed, could support affordable insurance in Lismore for residents and small businesses providing it is accompanied by a medium and long-term program of risk reduction including relocation.

2. Small parametric products, which can be spent flexibly by policyholders, have potential to provide economic benefit to Lismore business owners supporting them with rapid response to business interruptions, particularly from small-scale events.

3. Parts of Lismore fall within the uninsurable zone and could be considered for insurance innovations to support planned migration and provide insurance cover during any transitionary period.

4. Lismore residents and business owners will benefit from a sustained program of embedding risk management capabilities throughout the community to support them in reducing their risk and increasing their financial ability to respond to hazards.

Tweet of the Week

 

Two years ago today, I was sitting in the roof cavity with water lapping at the roof, waiting for the SES to rescue us. It took the SES 2 days to call me back. By then our neighbour, Sandro had rescued us in his tinnie. I remember it just wouldn’t stop raining & I thought it… pic.twitter.com/3K7IPPes8b

— Eddie Lloyd (@worldzonfire) February 27, 2024

 

NSW GOVERNMENT 'NORTHERN RIVERS RESILIENT LAND STRATEGY' STATE OF PLAY 2023: in its current form not worth the paper it is printed on

 

Northern Rivers Resilient Lands Strategy –Summary Report: Helping provide a safer, more sustainable and more resilient Northern Rivers, 1 June 2023:

The Northern Rivers Resilient Lands Strategy is part of the Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation (NRRC)’s $100 million Resilient Lands Program.

The Resilient Lands Program is part of a suite of measures the NRRC is coordinating to deliver a sustainable supply of land and housing for flood

impacted residents in high risk areas in the Ballina, Byron, Clarence Valley, Kyogle, Lismore, Richmond Valley and Tweed Local Government Areas.

The Resilient Lands Program has been designed to complement, not replace, business-as-usual land release and housing development in the region. The Resilient Land Strategy identifies land that will be accelerated for delivery with funding support provided under the Program.

The Resilient Lands Program is being delivered in conjunction with the NRRC’s $700 million Resilient Homes Program that focuses on raising, retrofitting and voluntary purchase of homes impacted by the 2022 floods.

After the Acknowledgement Of Country the aforementioned four short paragraphs are the NSW Government, Dept. of Regional NSW & Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation (NRRC)’s introduction to its long awaited draft resilient lands strategy.

It goes on in the Foreword to state:

The Strategy identifies 22 sites that could support

climate resilient residential development across each

of the Northern Rivers Local Government Areas. Fifteen

sites have been earmarked for immediate on-ground

investigations, to enable flood impacted residents to

move out of areas severely impacted by the 2022 floods.

The Strategy also identifies a further seven sites of

strategic significance for long-term resilience. These

sites that are identified as potentially suitable for

development in the longer term may help reduce the

need to undertake a similar region-wide land suitability

assessment should future natural disasters occur in

the Northern Rivers.

The authors of this draft document end the eight paragraph Foreword with a nausea inducing bout of self-congratulation:

The Resilient Lands Expert Panel, who has assisted in

the preparation of the document, is thankful that our

skills and professional expertise have been able to

contribute to the recovery initiative but humbled by the

experience of people who lived through the flood event,

many of whom remain impacted. We hope that this

document will assist in ensuring that safe and secure

accommodation can be made available for all affected

going forward.

That last paragraph on Page 5 completed setting the tone for what is essentially a twenty-four page collection of pious wishes, vaguely-worded ‘plans’ and the carefully worded announcement of a funding feeding frenzy by land speculators and both private & corporate property developers.

Given the political influence of the development & construction industry lobbies, it is easy to suspect that ‘affordable housing’ will be taking a back seat in the NSW Minns Labor Government’s specific plans for north-east New South Wales – albeit these plans were inherited from the Berejiklian-Perrottet Coalition Government which preceded it.

At Pages 7 & 8 the draft document states:

Land identified in the Strategy was also reviewed by the Resilient Lands Expert Panel (the Panel), an independent panel of experts with backgrounds in urban planning, environmental management, community development, Indigenous knowledge and climate resilience.

The Panel’s recommendations identified 22 short, medium and long-term development sites across the seven Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Ballina, Byron, Clarence Valley, Kyogle, Lismore, Richmond Valley and Tweed with potential capacity for up to 10,300 dwellings.

Work has now commenced on the planning and delivery of the 15 short-term sites identified within the Strategy. This will ensure residents impacted by the 2022 floods can relocate to new housing as soon as possible.

The Strategy also identifies a further seven medium and long-term sites for broader regional planning efforts to support longer term community resilience.

What does the Resilient Lands Strategy mean for

residents impacted by the floods?

The Strategy identifies a total of 22 potential development sites across the Northern Rivers on both private and public land. Fifteen sites are for immediate investigation for flood impacted residents with capacity for approximately 7,800 dwellings. Seven further sites with capacity for approximately 2,500 dwellings have been identified as sites of strategic significance for longer term resilience…..

Why doesn’t the NRRC just acquire and develop land?

In some instances, acquisition and development of land by government will have a role to play under the Program. However, using a range of approaches that aim to remove barriers and encourage the delivery of land and housing by the development sector and government will maximise housing supply outcomes across the region.

For example, using the entire $100 million available under the Resilient Lands Program to acquire land and develop housing could be expected to deliver approximately 200–300 dwellings to the market over the next three to four years.

On the other hand, a modest, up-front investment by government to deliver important water and sewer infrastructure upgrades that are preventing the release of land can unlock significant housing supply and better support the feasibility and delivery of residential development areas.

Taking an approach that is tailored to the characteristics of each individual site will ensure the Program delivers the most housing in the right locations as possible.

Where any financial support is provided to the development sector through the Resilient Lands Program, it will be conditional on prioritising access to any new housing for flood affected residents.

I think that the Labor MLA for Lismore Janelle Saffin put it best when she told ABC News on Friday, 2 May 2023:

Ms Saffin said the corporation's communication skills left many questions unanswered.

"We are desperate for detail, our community that has been physically and psychologically battered, and this doesn't give us any more detail about when, time frames, how, who," Ms Saffin said.

"I've been a very vocal critic of the NRRC's inability to communicate and this release just highlights it even more."….

"We've all watched the series Utopia [and] the idea of comms management is not to do anything," Ms Saffin said.

While Greens MLA For Ballina Tamara Smith was quoted in The Guardian on the same day:

The MP for Ballina, Tamara Smith, called on the government to release better maps that provide more detail.

“How can we as a community make informed submissions about what will be huge new residential developments when we don’t actually know where they are?” she said.

“Our community deserves utter transparency and I am disappointed that we are not getting more information in order to make meaningful submissions to the draft.”

In another section of that article these succinct quotes also mirrored the feelings of more than a few locals:

A mayor who spoke to Guardian Australia on condition of anonymity said they believed the government was being “very optimistic” with its goals, calling the lack of detail so far provided to councils and the community “really crap”.

This is an example of mapping used in the draft document at Pages 15 to 22:

It would appear that the state government and its agencies are determined to play those land strategy cards close to their chest and at the same time minimise whatever negative media reports may emerge.

It is doing this by treating the entire Northern Rivers regional population of est. 312,747 men, women and children (.idcommunity, 2022) as so many mushrooms which need to be kept in the dark. At the same time holding a media briefing in which the Draft Resilient Lands Strategy was explained in some detail (accompanied by visual aids) and all journalists questions answered—under a total ban on dissemination of said information by said journalists.

This Northern Rivers resident’s assessment of the state of play in June 2023?

The NSW Government, Dept. of Regional NSW and Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation have provided local government and communities with:

1. no genuine time frame;

2. broad statements but no real details;

3. an incorrect assessment of some land being shovel ready for development in 2024;

4. maps so ill-defined that they are all but useless in identifying which land is to be developed;

5. no outline of the type/number/provisional costings of tenders that might be required for land preparation and supporting infrastructure or tenders which have already been approved; and

6. an unrealistic expectation that this particular Resilient Lands Strategy can deliver what has been promised to the people of the Northern Rivers region.

At 5 am - 6 am, 8 March 2023 (AEDT) this morning both Lismore and Grafton air quality monitoring stations were not reporting data – along with three other regions.

 

The NSW Government monitors air quality across the state.

In the Northern River region this monitoring in theory encompasses the northern part of the North Coast planning region from the NSW-Qld border region down to the Clarence Valley.

Air quality in Northern NSW is generally considered to be good.

However there are only two permanent official air quality monitoring stations in the Northern Rivers region, at Grafton and Lismore.

These stations principally monitor fine particles in the air on an hourly basis and publish the hourly average at

Lismore: https://www.airquality.nsw.gov.au/northern-rivers/lismore

and

Grafton: https://www.airquality.nsw.gov.au/northern-rivers/grafton.

Principally the monitoring is of:

PM2.5 are fine particles in air with a diameter of 2.5 micrometres or less. PM itself is short for 'particulate matter', another term for particles. They are generated by combustion processes from sources such as vegetation fires, motor vehicles and industrial activities. PM2.5 is reported in unit of microgram per cubic meter (µg/m3).

These small particles can get deep into the lungs and be absorbed into the blood stream. Short term impacts include difficulty in breathing and worsening of asthma or chronic bronchitis symptoms. They can also cause irritation of eyes, nose and throat.

PM2.5 Ratings

PM10 are particles in air with a diameter of 10 micrometres or less. PM itself is short for 'particulate matter', another term for particles. They can include dust or sea salt, as well as smaller particles generated from combustion processes such as vegetation fires, motor vehicles and industrial sources. PM10 is reported in unit of microgram per cubic meter (µg/m3).

These particles can pass into the lungs. Short term impacts include difficulty in breathing and worsening of asthma or chronic bronchitis symptoms. They can also cause irritation of eyes, nose and throat.

PM10 Ratings

However, it is somewhat disconcerting to notice that in 2023 the Lismore station in particular is experiencing gaps in the hourly record due to “Station not reporting data”.

Given warnings concerning the possible risk of grassfires across the state from September-October 2023 onwards, I'm sure it would be appreciated by many in Northern NSW if any technical/performance problems are corrected before the next fire season.

And the uncertainty continues for Lismore flood victims.....

 

Australian Associated Press AAP, 28 October 2022:

Flood victims in northern NSW have described the government’s $520 million buyback scheme as a “cookie cutter” package designed without adequate community consultation.

The $520 million buyback scheme is the centrepiece of an $800 million package co-funded by the NSW and federal governments, to give 2000 flood-impacted residents of the Northern Rivers region the opportunity to raise, repair or retrofit their houses.

For homes in the areas most at risk – Lismore and the surrounding Northern Rivers region – governments will offer to buy the home and land from the owner.

But victims of the Lismore floods criticised the scheme on Friday, saying it lacks detail and was developed without their input, nearly eight months after the town was devastated.

“Nobody’s actually spoken to us about what our community’s needs are prior to determining the package,” flood victim and domestic violence worker Vicky Findlay told AAP.

“I feel like it’s a bit of a cookie-cutter approach.”

Ms Findlay’s North Lismore home was inundated during flooding earlier this year, destroying bedrooms and leaving her without a kitchen.

Her son, 27, has a disability and is on a waitlist for social housing, meanwhile living in a caravan on their property.

“I imagine we will get a buyback, but the problem for us is that we can’t leave unless our son is given social housing,” she said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the package offers a way forward for communities devastated by repeated flooding this year, adding governments could not continue to allow homes to be built on floodplains.

“This is the biggest agreement of its kind, ever, in response to a very significant event,” he told reporters in Lismore on Friday.

“We need to do better on planning, but we also need to do better than thinking we can just do the same thing over and over again.”

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet will lead discussion at a national cabinet meeting about improving planning to ensure floodplain developments didn’t continue.

Mr Perrottet said rebuilding with resilience in mind would avoid past mistakes, adding the days of developing on floodplains in the state were over.

“I’ve already spoken to the planning minister in relation to this,” he said.

Criminal lawyer and Lismore local Eddie Lloyd, who was rescued from a roof during floods earlier this year, said residents living on floodplains remained unsure about which support packages they would be eligible for.

“We hoped that this would be a community-led recovery and rebuild,” Ms Lloyd told AAP.

“The really disappointing factor for us is that the community haven’t been consulted.”

Labor leader Chris Minns welcomed the Commonwealth-state funded package but said it was vital the Northern Rivers were not forgotten.

“It’s a tricky policy situation. I think everybody acknowledges it’s not as simple as coming out with an announcement within days of a natural emergency … I’m glad that we’re now where we are at,” he said.

The program will be open to residents in the Ballina, Byron, Clarence Valley, Kyogle, Lismore, Richmond Valley and Tweed local government areas.

The voluntary buyback scheme will be offered from Monday to home owners in the most vulnerable parts of the Northern Rivers, where renewed flooding continues to pose a serious risk.

They will be offered money to raise, repair or retrofit their property, or sell it to the government, based on expert assessments of the damage, its safety risks and potential future flood levels.

Many assessments will have already taken place, Mr Perrottet said.

Those eligible will be given a payment based on a valuation of the home and land.

Up to $100,000 will be available to raise homes and up to $50,000 for retrofitting in cases where flood risk can be mitigated by better building.

The state government will also spend $100 million buying new land in flood-safe locations for new developments with the Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation.

It appears that the rot set in at the Bureau of Meteorology within a few months of Scott Morrison becoming prime minister and sadly when BOM was needed most it is alleged in had become highly dysfunctional

“There absolutely needs to be a royal commission into what happened at Lismore. I saw grad mets barely off course in charge of things they would never have been in charge of up until that point. Lismore happened right in the short-staffing period. We go into that event, everyone is already fatigued and working long hours.” [The Saturday Paper, 22 October 2022]

The Saturday Paper, 22 October 2022:

The workplace culture at the Bureau of Meteorology is so toxic that a man was hospitalised twice for psychiatric care, another had a heart attack while working extreme overtime, and was asked to come back earlier than a doctor advised, and at least five more staff took stress leave because of panic attacks and anxiety regarding management oversight.

More than 20 staff have left the media and communications division at the BoM in the past 18 months. The entire marketing team at the agency was “bloodlet” and removed during a restructure and rebranding effort that consumed the time and resources of the weather office during a period of intensifying calamity relating to climate change and natural disasters. Senior meteorologists have also left.

Since June last year, the bureau has spent more than $260,000 with Elm Communications Canberra Pty Ltd, just trying to plug gaps in its public affairs workforce.

Although many of the concerns relate to the media division, meteorologists and other staff have complained of “the severe dysfunction” in this area infecting other parts of the service. Gag orders have been issued to prevent forecasters from speaking to journalists unless their comments are pre-approved. Media managers have explicitly banned the mention of climate change in connection with severe weather events.

In one case during major New South Wales flooding in March last year, an edict was issued that BoM forecasters and other specialists were not to speak to any media after a meteorologist was accused of “fluffing” his lines on climate change.

A spokesperson for the BoM denies this.

In addition to the above concerns, The Saturday Paper can reveal the Commonwealth agency admitted some months ago to staff that it has not been paying overtime correctly and has so far failed to reimburse employees. Indeed, it stopped communicating with them in August about the issue.

The bureau says, in a response to The Saturday Paper, that a “discrepancy” was identified and “an audit of overtime payments is currently under way and all payments made dating from 1 June 2021 are being reviewed”.

The Saturday Paper has spoken with 20 current and former staff members at the bureau to establish a distressing and farcial account of a government agency’s response to a changing climate.

Details in this account that do not appear within quotation marks have nevertheless been provided by individuals who spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals…..

“There is so much focus on rebranding efforts like this and all of this window dressing and, in the meantime, the staff are really struggling to get the work done. We have lost so many people due to the [public service] transition to national production.”

Under these reforms, which began after the appointment of Andrew Johnson as director of the BoM, regional forecasting centres in every state and territory have been shuttered. State managers have been sacked and a national desk has been created instead. Johnson has pushed the project with fervour. The new branding, complete with public insistence that the Bureau of Meteorology be referred to respectfully as the Bureau, was, according to sources at the BoM, “completely driven by him”……

The Saturday Paper can reveal that the planned name change and new “corporate presence” began more than three years ago and cost far more than has been reported. In December 2018, the BoM paid almost $90,000 to brand specialists The Contenders for work on the new “positioning project” between then and April 2019. When a new general manager of communications – Emma Liepa – took over in April 2020, she “canned the project” and restarted it using her preferred contractor, The C Word Communications Agency Pty Ltd, owned and operated by Jack Walden. The BoM has characterised this contract as a “preliminary analysis” of perceptions about the agency and its “position in the marketplace” and not part of the “Brand project”.

Walden’s The C Word agency won a $70,000 contract in September last year in a “limited tender” to progress this project. Walden is now a senior manager of communications delivery at the BoM, having started in late November last year.

The Saturday Paper understands that Walden was hired as an EL2 “upper”, the same pay band as his boss Liepa, and is an ongoing public service employee. Walden also worked with Liepa in her previous role at the Victorian Healthcare Association. The Saturday Paper is not suggesting there is anything inappropriate in his employment.

“In this case, a conflict of interest was advised,” a BoM spokesperson said.

“There was no overlap between the work as a consultant and work when he [Walden] commenced as an employee with the Bureau.”

Internally, the rebranding has been prosecuted with fervour by Liepa and her colleagues but resisted and mocked by more junior staff. This is at odds with a BoM statement that says the sentiment, and feedback, from employees has been “overwhelmingly positive”.

“Recently Andrew Johnson launched the new 2022-2027 strategy and rounded off the presentation by telling us all that we had to print off the strategy, read it and he would be testing us if he bumped into us in the office,” a staff member says. “He was dead serious.”

A forecaster who cannot be identified because they still work with the BoM said the “reaction around me on shift over the last few weeks to the new branding announcements has been somewhere between exasperated laughter and anger”.

They continue, “That this is prioritised by management, over severe long-term understaffing of mets [meteorologists] – seemingly not of management and consultants – combined with a huge top-to-bottom restructure of the public service hitting the really hairy stages.

“All of this at the tail end of three La Niñas in a row with the potential for most of the east coast to flood so easily. Meteorologists are tired and overworked. The public reaction today was honestly wonderful and heartwarming. I’m so happy the public saw the bullshit instantly.”

Neither Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek, whose portfolio includes the BoM, nor her office, was aware the agency was about to launch its controversial edict and new look publicly in the middle of a flooding crisis across Victoria. When she demanded an urgent briefing, the response from senior bureau managers was “cagey” and “unsatisfactory”, according to people familiar with the exchange. Internally, BoM staff were told that they were to move full steam ahead and that the minister’s office was happy.

But what the minister’s office did not know, because the BoM did not tell them, was that the full cost of this rebranding was closer to $750,000, with some of that cost completely unnecessary after the banishing of The Contenders and early work done by that firm.

When Plibersek’s people demanded a full list of contracts, this was not mentioned. The Saturday Paper has confirmed this separately using information provided by concerned employees. Bizarrely, the BoM hired EY Sweeney on a $93,000 contract in March to conduct market research regarding the rebrand. What the consultants found was that just 15 per cent of people recognised the Bureau of Meteorology as “the Bureau” – the preferred name for brand recognition in the now-failed repositioning. More than 60 per cent, however, associated “BoM” with the agency.

What matters, according to every staff member who spoke for this piece, is that this side quest isn’t just a bad look. While these dramatic restructures and fiddly public relations exercises unfolded, some of the worst flooding in Australian history happened in northern NSW.

Residents in Lismore in particular were trapped after catastrophic flooding appeared to catch officials off guard. While the SES, itself struggling with a new centralisation plan, is responsible for issuing evacuation orders, they rely on information from the national meteorologists and hydrologists at the bureau.

“The BoM went into this PST [Public Sector Transformation] understaffed, and only lost countless more staff during PST, not realising that not everyone wants to uproot their lives and move to Melbourne or Brisbane,” a meteorologist said.

“There absolutely needs to be a royal commission into what happened at Lismore. I saw grad mets barely off course in charge of things they would never have been in charge of up until that point. Lismore happened right in the short-staffing period. We go into that event, everyone is already fatigued and working long hours.”

At this time – when a meteorologist was due to speak at a press conference about the unfolding flooding emergency in NSW, next to Premier Dominic Perrottet – there was a particular sensitivity within the agency about the warnings provided to the public. This forecaster was told they could speak only from pre-approved lines.

A separate source, who is no longer with the BoM, told The Saturday Paper that the organisation was “down 24 or 25” meteorologists and there were “no meteorologists in management”. The source said good people were slowly forced out, especially meteorologists: “There is such a strangled culture there now.”

After being appointed by the former Coalition government to head the BoM, Johnson set about an aggressive reform program, parts of which former employees concede were much needed. But it happened so fast it caused serious issues across the business.

“The rate of change, ineffective change, that has happened has been a huge problem because there are so many conflicting priorities, that the bureau basically just ground to a halt,” a source says.

“All the money just got funnelled into [PST] and squandered through massive use of contractors and people who didn’t have core knowledge of the bureau, so it took lots of time to ramp up to speed and the like.

“Really important projects like ours just got buried and not funded because all the money just got funnelled off into these other areas.”

One of the projects that was delayed and underfunded was the upgrade of the bureau’s warning systems – a multi-part program with many moving parts – which was left in disarray.

As science was censored or relegated to the sideline and messages became more tightly controlled, the culture at the BoM deteriorated even further. In July and August this year, tens of thousands of dollars were paid to the conflict resolution firm Momentum, which promised to mediate workplace disputes and teach staff how to get along…….

The full article can read here.