Tweet of the week

NSW: You have a problem that you need to do something about. pic.twitter.com/Yimr6DrDFX

— Alan Baxter ♛ (@AlanBixter) March 9, 2022

Northern Rivers Flood February-March 2022: going into little Coraki, est. population 1,930

Coraki, Northern NSW, as the flood waters recede, March 2022
IMAGE: The Daily Telegraph

The Sydney Morning Herald, 11 March 2022:

The real disaster has been the failed response, writes Cam Hollows.

I'd been covering the Catholic hospital in Lismore for the first couple of days of the floods. With many other doctors cut off, we'd been treating patients offloaded from boats.

When I heard that Ballina District Hospital was being evacuated to higher ground on March 1, I threw my medical kit in the back of a four-wheel drive.

I also dressed in my wetsuit and dive boots. I had my snorkel too. As I drove into Ballina, power failed as we were passing the Big Prawn.

It was scary. I knew if we couldn't cross from West Ballina, we would be spending the night evacuating people in floodwater in the dark.

But we got to the hospital. It was a long night, treating and moving Ballina patients in a relatively orderly way to a local school where the hospital was relocated.

That night I was just another pair of hands helping out.

It was also my 40th birthday.

As the floods worsened the next day, a colleague and I offered to volunteer at one of the two major evacuation centres in Lismore only to find they were well-staffed. Many of the volunteer medics there had lost their homes or clinics but kept working.

But there was no doctor left in Coraki, the local Bundjalong's people's word for the place. Everybody in the Northern Rivers knows that Coraki - which sits on the confluence of the Richmond and Wilson rivers in northern NSW - is where floods hit worse, as it's where four of the northern rivers meet.

More than 600 people and their pets had already spent a few days crammed into an evacuation centre. With no roads in or out, they'd been cut off from help or supplies for many days.

I hitched a ride there in a JetRanger helicopter. Knowing I was of little use without medical supplies, I signed out as much as I could think of from a local base hospital. And, with help from a medical student, packed it on the chopper.

Looking down from above, it was nothing but brown water and debris as far as the eye could see. It was like Vietnam's Mekong Delta but with fewer boats.

Where Coraki is located, everything was underwater. The water had severed the town in half. Some residents were trapped on islands.

I remember thinking, "We don't need the army. We need the navy."

It smelled worse than many of the more unfortunate places I have been where there is no sewage (I used to live in Papua New Guinea).

Septic tanks were overflowing. The irony is that Coraki is a town full of plumbers who could do little to help because they'd lost their tools in the floods.

Arriving at the evacuation centre in the Uniting Church, I found local nursing, fire and SES staff and volunteers dead on their feet but still functioning. Who knows how? Again, many volunteers there had lost their homes but not their spirits.

They were working in a room filled with human misery. As a medical student, I had spent three months in a trauma hospital in Vietnam. Needless to say, that was better equipped than Coraki last week.

For the next two days and nights, I only napped on a bed requisitioned from a "state of the art" health facility disabled by lack of power and planning.

Together, volunteers and I established a functioning resuscitation centre and a wound clinic.

We treated locals whose feet looked like bags of mince. We patched up rescuers so they could get back on boats. Oldies had run out of medicine. There were loads of sore tummies, and sick and scared kids.

Mental health was a challenge for all generations.

I reviewed a patient's arm that had been savaged by a kangaroo. Locals said they had treated a range of these injuries from roos that had panicked in rising waters.

Before I arrived, local nurses - many stranded from jobs in nearby towns - had triaged patients for medical evacuations, which we started loading onto helicopters.

The locals, including a NSW health nurse who had also been stranded from work, had been doing an outstanding job. But without additional help, it couldn't last.

Until I was relieved after a couple of days, we didn't see an additional NSW or Defence Force doctor or nurse.

I relied on locals and a Queensland optometrist who had been stranded on the island. The irony of a Dr Hollows working with an optometrist was not lost on anyone.

We also had to check on the 50-bed nursing room cut off at the other end of town.

It turned out to be lucky that I had taken my defibrillator with me. A team of locals used it to resuscitate a man who had a massive cardiac arrest in the lounge room of a house nearby. People rarely come back to life outside a hospital.

For the vast majority of my time in Coraki, communication was cut off, and rumours were flying everywhere, one of which turned out to be true. I worried when I heard there was a woman who was pregnant with a severe medical condition who had been sling-lifted to the evacuation centre to Coraki from her trapped home. We finally found her and organised to get her airlifted to safety.

I was very relieved when replacements arrived, former medical colleagues with whom I had shared many sick patients and night shifts in the past.

I got home on Saturday to find a letter from my six-year-old daughter, written while I was away. "Dad, don't want you to go." She wrote she was "wuryd".

I returned to Coraki last Tuesday, the ninth day of the flood. Apart from phone coverage which I had helped organise, no doctor had yet to visit the nursing home. Yet again, aged care had been forgotten.

Australia is a nation where battlers survive natural disasters. But the real disaster was the lack of planning and failed response from government. Our weather has changed, but it is clear our government hasn't kept up.

There are still plenty of people in Coraki - and other places heavily impacted by flooding - living in tents, shelters and cars. I can patch up wounds, but the mental health scars will remain long into the future.

Please be careful putting your hand in your pocket to help out, especially if you can't afford it. Instead, ask what the government has done with the money it has already taken from you in taxes.

Cam Hollows is a doctor in the Northern Rivers and a member of the Hollows Foundation, which his father Fred Hollows, an ophthalmologist, set up. It has restored sight to more than 2.5 million people and distributed 100 million doses of antibiotics for trachoma to prevent blindness. 

Ballina Hospital evacuation to higher ground at local high school
IMAGE: Daily Mail: Australia, 2 March 2022

The 43 seconds when without a moment's thought Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison betrayed the Widjabul Wia-bal people, the unique biodiverse & culturally significant Channon Gorge and the clear wishes of what appear to be a majority of Lismore residents

Listen to this part of Prime Minister Scott Morrison's question and answer segment at the end of his Wednesday 9 March 2022  press conference in Lismore in the NSW Northern River region. 

This is the sacred land, with gorge, watercourse, ancient stone burials and secret business places that Morrison supports destroying. The place where once the water is stopped from flowing freely will permanently inundate core endangered Koala habitat and eradicate endangered Eastern Freshwater Cod breeding habitat.

And for what? The proposed 50 gigalitre Dunoon Dam on Rocky Creek in a catchment area of roughly 50 sq km, even when combined with the existing 14 gigalitre dam on the same creek, would never mitigate or stop flooding of Lismore City and environs.   

I note that Morrison openly blames unspecified Northern Rivers residents who have "resisted" flood mitigation measures (hold all term which includes dams and levees) for the frequency and severity of flood events in recent years.

NSW North Coast Local Land Services is looking for a full-time Emergency Management Coordinator in March 2022

Given the adverse weather events currently being experienced across Northern NSW and climate change promising more unwelcome experiences to come, I'm not sure whether this would be considered an enviable job......

Echo, 8 March 2022:

So, you think you can manage an emergency?

Lismore flood. Photo Darren Bridge

All over the Northern Rivers, amateur crisis response co-ordinators have filled a vacuum left by under-resourced and under-prepared official agencies.

Most community volunteers have felt little other choice and getting paid for the pleasure of helping their neighbours is unlikely to enter their minds.

But doesn’t hard work deserve decent pay? Like, around the $100K mark?

Perhaps it’s time we reconsidered a disaster response system based largely on volunteerism, especially when studies in recent years show fewer and fewer Australians have time to volunteer thanks to work and family pressures.

Emergency work in paradise 

Live and work in Paradise! Photo supplied.

Enter: the NSW government’s Emergency Management Coordinator.

It’s a newly advertised position with a starting salary of around $99K plus super.

An ad for the full time Local Land Services job position earlier this week said it included responsibility for the central & North Coasts including Newcastle, the Hunter Valley, Port Macquarie, Lismore and the Far North Coast.

The job location was negotiable, the ad said…..

The Emergency Management Coordinator would have to be adept at ‘functioning in an operating environment of change where risks and issues require challenging responses’, the ad read.

Other requirements for the role were:

• demonstrated experience in emergency response management situations;

• an ability to negotiate with stakeholders and customers;

• an ability to plan and make recommendations with respect to preparedness for, response to and recovery from biosecurity and natural disaster emergencies impacting landholders;

• previous experience in managing and undertaking a range of projects and associated activities with a view to achieving outcomes.

The successful candidate also needed a current NSW Driver License and an ‘ability and willingness to travel throughout the North Coast Region, including overnight stays’, the ad read.

The new Emergency Management Coordinator would have to report to the government’s ‘Team Leader Partnerships’, form productive relationships with regional stakeholders and provide advice to landholders.......

CLIMATE COUNCIL: Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison must acknowledge climate change in 2022 flood disaster

CLIMATE COUNCIL STATEMENT ON THE FLOODS

07.03.22

BY CLIMATE COUNCIL

This is climate change. Now is the time for leadership.

The scale and speed of the flooding disaster still unfolding across Queensland and New South Wales is breathtaking. Some communities remain cut off and in dire need of fresh water and food, emergency housing, telecommunications, and power.

The emergency response is still underway, but we already know of widespread devastation with lives lost, livelihoods swept away and entire towns destroyed.

As extraordinary flooding and extreme rainfall were sweeping the east coast, hundreds of the world’s most eminent scientists were providing information painfully relevant to what Australians are experiencing.

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change makes it crystal clear that climate change is intensifying extreme weather events including rainfall events like this one.

The report warns that our ability to cope with these events as well as escalating heatwaves, bushfires, and other extremes is rapidly diminishing. It spells out how the decisions of governments this decade will determine how much worse things get.

In short: unless we rapidly and drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions this decade, extreme weather will get much, much worse.

Climate change isn’t a footnote to the story of these floods. It is the story.

Some politicians claim this flooding disaster was something no one could have predicted. The implication is that the heartbreak and loss being experienced by so many Australians right now is unavoidable.

The truth is, scientists have been warning us for decades that climate change will worsen all extreme weather in Australia. Deadlier heatwaves. Devastating droughts. Megafires like Black Summer. Rainbombs such as this.

Many of these flood-affected communities have experienced multiple “unprecedented” disasters in the past 10 years. If we don’t start talking about why this is happening then we won’t be able to respond appropriately to this disaster over the coming months and years. Nor can we adequately prepare for those on the way.

Worsening disaster after disaster – with fewer reprieves between are our reality, because the Earth’s atmosphere is warmer, wetter, and more energetic. This is climate change.

Unprecedented is no reason to be unprepared.

We’ve had decades to respond to expert advice and help communities prepare for a massive escalation in extreme weather.

It’s been almost 500 days since the Royal Commission into Natural National Disaster Arrangements handed its report to the Morrison Government. The Commission acknowledged the role that climate change is playing in worsening disasters such as the Black Summer bushfires: “Natural disasters have changed, and it has become clear to us that the nation’s disaster management arrangements must also change.”

Our frontline responders are being stretched past their absolute limits. Battered communities are struggling to cope, often experiencing multiple record-breaking disasters within a few years. In some parts of Australia people can no longer afford insurance and many will be left with little after these waters recede.

Major investment and careful planning are required to prepare communities and first responders.

Where are our leaders?

Too many leaders are silent or absent. Some are wilfully misleading the public about what little has been done to address the climate challenge. Time and again expert advice is offered but ignored.

Now is the time to talk about the Morrison Government’s inadequate response to climate change, because burning coal, oil, and gas is supercharging extreme weather. 

Those who argue otherwise want debate gagged because they are failing to step up on this issue.

Australians are paying a high price for the lack of meaningful national action to tackle climate change and prepare communities for worsening extreme weather.

Elected leaders must be held accountable.

The media has a critical role to play in explaining why extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and severe. Today, it is remiss to report on any extreme weather event without providing information on how climate change worsens these events, and what should be done in response.

Australians want and deserve better than this.

We call on all federal political parties and candidates to:

1. Tell Australians what concrete steps you will take to prepare and equip emergency services and communities for inevitable climate-fuelled disasters.

2. Actively acknowledge the destructive role that climate change is playing in driving worsening disasters including these megafloods.

3. Explain to the public how in the next term of Federal Parliament you plan to get national emissions plummeting by rapidly scaling up readily available renewable energy and building an economy that is free from fossil fuels.

4. Ensure that towns, cities and communities are rebuilt in a way that takes into account the inevitable future changes in climate and makes them more resilient.

5. It’s time to show leadership and step up to the most critical issue not just of our time, but all time. We have everything to lose, the time for action is now.

DOWNLOAD PDF HERE

The Climate Council brings together Australia’s preeminent experts of climate science, impacts and solutions. We provide authoritative, expert and evidence-based advice on climate change to journalists, policymakers, and the wider Australian community. Our full team of experts can be found here

For further information, go to: climatecouncil.org.au

Or follow us on social media: facebook.com/climatecouncil and twitter.com/climatecouncil

By Climate Council / 07 March 2022

The flooding has not yet stopped in NSW but one of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison's 'captain's picks' is publicly badmouthing flood victims

 

“You’ve got people who want to live among the gum trees – what do you think is going to happen? Their house falls in the river and they say it’s the government’s fault”. [Shane L. Stone, Coordinator General, National Resilience and Recovery Agency, quoted at news.com.au 4 March 2022]

Geoscience Australia (GA) was created in 2001 when the Australian Surveying and Land Information Group (AUSLIG) merged with the Australian Geological Survey Organisation (AGSO).

It has gravitas.

So when it informs the general public that Australia is the lowest continent in the world with an average elevation of only 330 metres, I believe what this organisation is saying.

It points out that (excluding islands) 8,500 sq km of Australia is below sea level and another 2,909,500 sq km is within 0-199 metres of sea level – bringing the total low lying land to 38.9% of mainland Australia’s total land mass.

Additionally, another 3,728,700 sq km or 48.68% of mainland Australia is only between 200-499 metres above the current sea level.

Australia has over 330,000 sq km of coastal zone with an elevation of <30m above sea level. Major Cities only cover around 7,000km² (2%); Inner Regional areas cover about 25,000km²; Outer Regional areas cover around 44,000km² and Remote or Very Remote areas make up about 80 percent of the remaining low lying coastal regions.

To get some idea of the extent of land Australia has that could be considered vulnerable in regions where rivers run, just look at the pink on this map and, then look where coastal cities have been established since 1788.

Geoscience Australia, Elevations, retrieved 5 March 2022

Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Topographic Drainage Divisions and River Regions Map, retrieved 5 March 2022. Click to expand

By 2011 Geoscience Australia’s national topographical mapping had identified approximately 15,000 sq km of New South Wales as being low coastal areas <30m elevation above sea level.

Its mapping had also identified 10,000 sq km of flood-prone inland locations across the state. 

While the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment has identified 37 major rivers in the state - 19 coastal and 18 inland. Along with somewhere in the vicinity of 1,899 tributaries to these major rivers.

Geoscience Australia noted in 2011 that the then New South Wales Land & Property Management Authority (LPMA): recognises that it does not currently have sufficient resources to complete level 3 classification for all data captured, and has an estimated backlog of 9,000 sq km (2,250 tiles) requiring classification in the North Coast regions of Kempsey, Bellingen, Richmond Valley, Lismore, Ballina and Byron Bay. Additional funding is required to out-source this work and LPMA is seeking additional resources over the life of the current program to keep pace with capture, processing and classification tasks. [my yellow highlighting]

One has to wonder - were all 7 local governments in Northern NSW (Northern Rivers region) supplied with a complete topographical and bathymetric assessment of the land within their borders when they came to put their own floodplain management plans/strategies in place by 2014?

So the next time a public service czar wants to have a go at communities experiencing flooding by name calling, blaming entire populations for planning decisions often made a century ago and telling us we should live elsewhere – perhaps he could identify on a detailed map exactly which land across Australia won’t be further impacted by climate change-induced; flood events, land slips, erosion, permanent water level change or become so arid & hot as to become life threatening. Then advise governments of what land being free of such impediments could therefore be considered suitable to build new towns and required infrastructure far away from the 100km wide coastal zone.

Given the water course distribution in NSW, federal and state ministers along with public servants might like to consider which rivers are actually good water sources for large populations relocated from the coastal zone and at the same time guaranteed by science to be moderate to major flood free? A task of epic proportions and one I suspect none would consider undertaking.

Science has been telling us for decades that  Australia is on the frontline of climate change and only a fool would argue that federal and state governments as well as the general population did not have to consider how best to adapt to extreme weather events. Australian society is clearly running out of time in which to organise mass population movements in response to what is likely to be millennia-long changes to seasons of the years and precipitation.

However, before rushing to judgement on ordinary people it would be wise for self-important individuals to first reflect on how long colonial, dominion and then federation authorities have been aware of the effect adverse weather has had on built environments and, why this has never been adequately addressed when planning for residential and commercial buildings as well as town/city infrastructure anytime in the last 234 years.

Just a few of the historic floods which might have given former President of the Liberal Party of Australia 1999-2005 Commander The Honourable Shane L Stone AC PGDK QC RAN (Rtd)  pause for thought but obviously didn't......

"A flood in New South Wales" 1870

Maitland Flood 1893

Lismore Flood undated

Georges River Flood 1956
on Liverpool, Fairfield and Canterbury-Bankstown floodplain 

Nepean River Flood 1961

Picton Flood 2016

Parramatta River Flood 2020

NOTE: All photographs were found on Google Images.

In 2020, for a brief moment in the long life of the federal Liberal-Nationals Coalition it decided to halve poverty in Australia and reduce income inequality. Then the Coalition remembered its real purpose was to keep 18th Century notions of class structure alive & well in Australia and promptly tore that 'brief moment' to shreds

ACOSS & UNSW,  Covid, inequality and poverty in 2020 & 2021: How poverty and inequality were reduced in the COVID recession and increased during the recovery

Medianet Release

02 Mar 2022 12:01 AM AEST - New ACOSS and UNSW Sydney Report shows how poverty and inequality were dramatically reduced in 2020, but have increased ever since

A new report from the ACOSS/UNSW Sydney Poverty and Inequality Partnership shows that during the first ‘Alpha’ wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Australia halved poverty and significantly reduced income inequality, thanks to a raft of Commonwealth Government crisis support payments introduced to help people survive the first lockdown.

It also highlights that over the course of 2021, and throughout the spread of the ‘Delta’ variant, the Federal Government rapidly reversed this extraordinary progress by cutting financial aid and denying it to most people on the lowest incomes.

The latest report from ACOSS and UNSW, Covid, inequality and poverty in 2020 & 2021: How poverty and inequality were reduced in the COVID recession and increased during the recovery examines how people at different income levels fared during those two phases of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

During the first ‘Alpha’ wave of the pandemic, the Coronavirus Supplement and JobKeeper support payments played a crucial role in reducing both income inequality and poverty during the deepest recession in 90 years. Despite an effective unemployment rate of 17% at the time, many people on the lowest incomes could afford to pay their rent and household bills and feed themselves properly for the first time in years. 

When lockdowns eased in late 2020, the Government was quick to wind back financial supports. By April 2021 both the Coronavirus Supplement and JobKeeper payments were gone, leaving a yawning gap in pandemic income supports for about a million people still unemployed, when Delta struck later that year.

80% of people on the lowest income support payment were excluded from the COVID Disaster Payment, introduced in September 2021. Subsequently the number of people in poverty rose by around 20% and a bias in jobs growth towards high paid jobs and a rapid rise in investment incomes lifted income inequality.

A few weeks after lockdowns ended, those still out of paid work lost their COVID Disaster Payment and joined the l.7 million people already struggling to get by on the $45 a day unemployment Jobseeker payment. Financial stress came roaring back as did increased reliance on emergency relief.

ACOSS CEO Dr. Cassandra Goldie said: 

“The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that poverty and inequality are not an inevitable state of being. They grow because government policies allow them to, and in many cases, directly increase them. 

‘’The income supports introduced during the first COVID wave reduced poverty by half and greatly reduced inequality of incomes. We also showed that good social policy, tackling poverty, is good economics. By targeting income support to those with the least, the vital help was rapidly spent on essentials, helping to keep others in jobs.

“We now know what governments are capable of when they set their minds to it. Instead of taking the opportunity to end poverty in Australia and build our resilience to cope with future crises, the Government reversed the gains made during the first year of the pandemic and failed to adequately plan to mitigate the ongoing health risks. 

“Australia’s income support system should sustain people in tough times and help them find suitable employment. At just $45 a day, the unemployment JobSeeker Payment is not up to the task and the Government acknowledged this by almost doubling it. People out of paid work, or without the paid working hours they need, should not have to spend every waking moment worrying about how they will feed themselves and pay the rent.

“Whoever wins the next election will know exactly what levers they need to pull if they wish to end Australian poverty and support jobs. But will they?

“Our response to COVID-19 showed we can end poverty. And when we do, it’s good for all of us. We need candidates, in the lead up to this federal election, to commit to lifting the rate of Jobseeker to at least $69 a day, so that people have the confidence of knowing that they can cover the basics while they are retraining and looking for paid work. Together with investing in social housing, these are the two big levers that could change the face of Australia for good and for the good of us all.

Scientia Professor Carla Treloar, Director of the Social Policy Research (SPRC) and the Centre for Social Research in Health (CSRH) at UNSW, said:

“This research shows that the COVID support payments changed lives. The Government’s decision to take away the Coronavirus supplement and JobKeeper without an adequate substitute, and later on to exclude people on the lowest income-support payments from the COVID disaster payment and prematurely end that payment, locked more people into poverty.

‘’Despite remarkable early progress in reducing poverty and income inequality during the COVID recession, they are both likely to be higher now than before the pandemic. That’s the legacy of the policy response to the COVID pandemic.”

Key Findings

2020: Alpha wave of COVID and recession:

• Between March and December 2020, the average incomes of the lowest 20% income group rose by 8% ($56pw). Those in the next 20% saw their incomes rise by 11% ($144pw). In contrast the average incomes of the highest 20% fell by 4% ($230pw).

• Between 2019 and the middle of 2020, the percentage of people in poverty fell from 11.8% to 9.9% despite the recession. It would have been twice as high (22.7%) without the COVID income supports. 

• Among people in households on the JobSeeker Payment, poverty fell by four-fifths, from 76% in 2019 to 15% in June 2020. Among sole parent families (both adults and children) poverty was reduced by almost half, from 34% to 19%. 

• The income support safety net for those on the lowest incomes was buoyed by the $275pw Coronavirus Supplement, 70% of which went to the lowest 40% households by income.

• The JobKeeper wage subsidy of up to $750pw helped sustain the incomes of middle income-earners at risk of losing wages during lockdowns, as 70% of those payments went to the middle 60% of households by income.

2021: Economic recovery and Delta wave of COVID

• In January 2021 the Coronavirus Supplement was cut to $75pw in January 2021, poverty rose to 14%, well above pre-recession levels. The income of a single adult on JobSeeker Payment fell to approximately 15% below the poverty line. 

• By April 2021 when the supplement was removed completely, and despite an ongoing increase of $25pw to the lowest income support payments, the new rate of JobSeeker payment fell to approximately 30% below the poverty line and a third of recipients reported increasing difficulty trying to make ends meet.

• By September 2021, COVID-19 Disaster Payments were introduced in response to lockdowns during the Delta wave of the pandemic. This was only paid to people who directly lost paid working hours in a lockdown, and was quickly withdrawn when a lockdown ended.

• Over 80% of people on the lowest income support payments were denied the COVID Disaster Payment, despite the ongoing impact of the pandemic on their employment prospects. 

• The Jobseeker Payment was just $391pw and Youth Allowance was just $331pw, well below the poverty line at that time. Around 1.7 million people (around 25% more than before the pandemic in September 2019) relied on these and other income supports set well below poverty levels.

• At the same time, many people on high incomes saw their incomes surge. From August 2020 to August 2021 the number of high-paying jobs rose 251,000 compared to growth in low-paid jobs of 76,000. Investment incomes surged through 2020-21, comprising one quarter of all household income growth in that year. Around two thirds of investment income goes to the highest 20% of households by income.

Read the full report at: https://bit.ly/3LWJtJn

Find out more about the poverty and inequality partnership at http://povertyandinequality.acoss.org.au