Tweed Shire Mayor Chris Cherry: "I think that [the 2022 flooding] has been a big wake up call for all of us."

 

IMAGE: Google Earth snapshot showing 40 Creek Street, Hastings Point & environs. Retrieved 7 August 2023. Click on image to enlarge.

In the matter of Development Application DA20/0386 for a 13 lot subdivision (11 residential lots, 1 drainage lot and 1 residual dedicated riparian lot) at Lot 156 DP 628026 No. 40 Creek Street, Hastings Point made on behalf of Queensland-based Palm Lakes Works Pty Ltd on est. 17.77 ha of flood prone, environmentally sensitive, estuary land which includes preferred koala habitat and SEPP14 wetland.

The Tweed Shire Council meeting which refused development consent saw councillors cast their votes 6 to 1. The sole councillor in support of the DA, was former National Party campaign director and former mayor Cr. Warren Polglase, who in speaking to the motion was moved to utter words to the effect that he did not believe that climate change was occurring here not having seen it with his own eyes. 

Echo, 7 August 2023:

Click on image to enlarge

The Tweed Shire Council has refused a development application (DA) for an 11-lot subdivision at the site of 40 Creek Street, Hastings Point.

The site is zoned residential but ‘has significant environmental constraints as well as being flood prone’ according to the staff report. Despite that, Council staff recommended approval of the DA.

Mayor Chris Cherry told the Council meeting (3 August) that in 2019 she had been one of the councillors to propose ‘in-principle support’ of the subdivision.

‘Looking through that and looking at what that support was based on, it was conditional support based on this application not increasing its development footprint. It was based on it complying with a number of different conditions that were very important to the council of the day and the community.’

Councillor Cherry said point six of the in-principle support stated that:

‘Any future development application that proposes to increase the number of lots, reduce the size of lots or vary any other developments controls to intensify yield or the development footprint or further impact on the buffer or environmental areas will not be looked on favourably by Council.’

Cherry went on to detail a number of ways that the current DA went beyond the basis of the in-principle support, saying that in ‘the proposal in 2019 only three of the lots were intercepting into the 75m ecological buffer zone. Now most of them are, I think seven of them now [are] into that 75m buffer zone. So the developable footprint has increased.

‘The lot for the existing house was 800 square metres in the plan in 2019. It is now 1,470 metres square.

2022 flood

‘There are a lot of changes that have been made that increased the impact of this development. But the biggest thing that has happened in the time since the in-principle support was given is the 2022 floods. I think that has been such a big wake up call for all of us. And we’ve heard today from the flooding experts, from Floodplain Management Australia and the planning expert who came forward, just how much consideration we should be giving to the location, to the impact of storm surge in a climate change future that we are most definitely going to see. And I think it is imperative that we take this very seriously. [my yellow highlighting]

‘Most of you would have seen the article in the Sydney Morning Herald [saying] that it is inexplicable that Hawkesbury Council keeps approving developments of a floodplain when they have gone through such a massive flood. It is the same for us. We can’t keep repeating the same mistakes. We can’t keep saying it will be okay. To put 2.2m of fill across this site to get flood immunity for the new residents is simply not the way. That’s not good planning. That’s not the way we need to go forward as a community…..

Full article here.

Gumbaynggirr custodians are calling for our help to protect forests of the proposed Great Koala National Park

 

Approved plans for forestry operations at Newry State Forest were made active last week.(Supplied: Bellingen Activist Network) IMAGE: ABC News, 3 August 2023.

Nature Conservation Council of New South Wales, email, 5 August 2023:

The battle to protect the Great Koala National Park is ramping up. Will you support the Newry Forest protest camp and Gumbaynggirr traditional owners to protect this culturally and ecologically significant site?

…., for the past few days Gumbaynggirr custodians, environment groups and the wider community have peacefully protested to save the forest from logging destruction.

The forest has recently won a few moments of temporary reprieve from the bulldozers in the past few days. The campaign has had a series of powerful protests and received coverage in the Coffs Coast Advocate, NBN, NITV, and The Echo.

Gumbayngirr traditional owners Sandy Greenwood, Uncle Micklo Jarrett and Uncle Bud Marshall.

But the fight is not over and those at the camp are calling out for your support.

“If we don't act now our deeply significant cultural heritage will be desecrated, our beautiful old-growth trees will be logged, rare flora will become extinct and our koalas and endangered species will literally have nowhere else to go.” Sandy Greenwood, Gumbaynggirr Custodian.

This alliance has catalysed around a peaceful protest camp at the entry of the forest. This camp has served as an important place for meetings, events and interviews with journalists.

Are you able to put your name down to help out at camp?

Sign up here to get involved

Whether you’re able to visit once or take on a weekly task—there is something for everyone to do.

“It would be a disaster and a disgrace to see some of our totemic animals like the Koala disappear for motives of greed.

“The ancestral beings gave us our lore, our culture, and taught us how to live in harmony with the land. Everything was precious – we needed these places to survive. If they keep going like this we won’t have forest left. This forest needs to be a sanctuary for our people and other animals.”

Gumbaynggirr spokesperson, Micklo Jarrett.

This campaign to protect Newry State Forest relies on people like you stepping up and working together.

Please sign up here and a camp organiser will get in touch with you about next steps.

In the inspiring words of Sandy Greenwood: “The time to act is now—we will save our forests.”......

Ed Mortimer

Organising Director

Nature Conservation Council of NSW

https://www.nature.org.au/

In 2023 Science has the tools to refine its climate change predictive scenarios, never-the-less the Earth's land masses & oceans continue to heat up because neither world leaders, governments nor industry will accept what is now the increasingly urgent evidence of their own eyes

 

“Warming oceans cause sea levels to rise, both directly via heat expansion, and indirectly through melting of ice shelves. Warming oceans also affect marine ecosystems, for example through coral bleaching, and play a role in weather events such as the formation of tropical cyclones” [The Conversation, 14 September 2021, reporting on research by Kewei Lyu, Xuebin Zhang & John A. Church]

This is a Australian Bureau Of Meteorology visualisation of sea surface temperatures around the Australian coastline on 4 August 2023 as El Niño conditions continue to be expected to arrive within weeks.

On 1 August BOM stated:

The Bureau's El Niño Alert continues, with El Niño development considered likely in the coming weeks, despite the current lack of atmospheric response. When El Niño Alert criteria have been met in the past, an El Niño event has developed around 70% of the time.

Sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the tropical Pacific are exceeding El Niño thresholds, with climate models indicating this is likely to continue at least through to the end of the year. In the atmosphere, however, wind, cloud and broad-scale pressure patterns mostly continue to reflect neutral ENSO conditions. This means the Pacific Ocean and atmosphere have yet to become fully coupled, as occurs during El Niño events. El Niño typically suppresses winter–spring rainfall in eastern Australia.

And this is what is being discussed by climate scientists in our region.

Asia Oceania Geosciences Society, 20^th Annual Conference, Axford Medal Lecture given by UNSW Emeritus Professor John Church, 2 August 2023:

What do we really know about 20th and 21st Century Sea-Level Change?

Abstract: Accelerating sea-level rise in much of the world will result in growing impacts through the 21st century and beyond. Despite the clear identification of an accelerating rise, many uncertainties remain. Understanding historical sea-level change is a prerequisite for building confidence in useful and accurate predictions of future changes.

For many decades, our limited knowledge of the contributions to sea-level change could not explain the rise measured by coastal tide gauges – the sea level enigma. New and improved in situ and satellite observations of the ocean, improved understanding of the “solid Earth”, and better understanding and improved modelling of the climate system have helped resolve this enigma. A number of recent studies have argued that the sum of contributions from both observations and model estimates to sea-level change over the satellite era, the last half century and since 1900 adequately explains the observed sea-level rise, which means the sea-level budget is closed. The major contributions are from ocean thermal expansion and contributions from glaciers, with an accelerating ice sheet contributions over the recent decades.

Our recent work has explored the sensitivity of global and regional sea-level reconstructions to poorly known land motions and the factors causing temporal and regional variations in the rate of rise. With this knowledge, existing reconstructions of global mean sea level are mostly not significantly different to each other from 1900 to the present, both in the time-averaged rate and the temporal variability. However, while the average rate over 1900 to present is similar to that from the sum of contributions, the rate of reconstructed GMSL rise is significantly smaller/larger than the sum of contributions prior to 1940/after 1970. Why is this? What do we really know? What are potential explanations for this continuing enigma?

And what can we project about future sea level, both for the 21st century and beyond. And can we constrain projections for the 21st century and beyond?

One of the notable take-aways from this lecture appears to be:

..that one of the main impacts of sea level on society will be how we adapt.

“We will have to adapt to that sea level rise we can no longer prevent. Of particular concern is very significantly increased rates of coastal flooding events and eventually inundation of some coastal areas,” Prof. Church said.

“We are already experiencing more severe and more frequent coastal flooding events impacting an increasing number of people.

“This century, we could expect up to about a metre of sea level rise with unmitigated emissions. This could rise to several metres over coming centuries. Today, an estimated 200 million people live within one metre of current high tide level, and by mid-century over a billion people are likely to live in the low elevation coastal zone, which is within 10 metres of current sea level.” [UNSW Newsroom, “'Urgent action is required’: UNSW climate expert on what’s to come as sea levels rise”, 2 August 2023]

A reminder that much of the NSW Northern Rivers coastal region is predicted to experience significant levels of inundation at an average global surface temperature rise of 1.5°C.

Climate Central, north-east NSW (Northern Rivers) mapping, 2021. Click on image to enlarge

BACKGROUND

John Church is an Emeritus Professor in the Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales. He has published across a broad range of topics in oceanography.

His area of expertise is the role of the ocean in climate, particularly anthropogenic climate change, and in understanding global and regional sea-level rise. He is the author of over 180 refereed publications, over 110 other reports and co-edited three books. He was co-convening lead author for the Chapter on Sea Level in the IPCC Third and Fifth Assessment Reports. He was awarded the 2006 Roger Revelle Medal by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, a CSIRO Medal for Research Achievement in 2006, the 2007 Eureka Prize for Scientific Research, the 2008 AMOS

R.H. Clarke Lecture, the AMOS Morton Medal in 2017, a joint winner of the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Climate Change Category Prize in 2019, the AAS Jaeger Medal in 2021 and the Royal Society of NSW James Cook Medal in 2022. He is an Officer of the Order of Australia, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society and the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society.

Cartoons of the Week

 

A tale of two former leaders

Scott John Morrison & Donald John Trump at the height of their  political careers before the fall into public disgrace and infamy

Getty Image circa Sept. 2019

As both men are seen in Australia in July 2023

Blameless
Cathy Wilcox

In a pickle
Jon Shakespeare

A classic doorstep interview with the mother-in-law of a NSW politician

Excerpt from an article in The Sydney Morning Herald on 3 August 2023:

Outside her large home in the seaside suburb of Merewether, Santina Manitta berated reporters and warned they would be shot for asking questions about the family’s property holdings at the heart of this saga.

As for her besieged son-in-law, she had this to say: “My son is a f---ing politician. F--- you and f--- them.”

Pressed over why her son-in-law had been sacked, Manitta could not offer any explanation.

“Truly, sincerely, I don’t give a s---,” she said. “Look, you’ve got to understand politicians are there because they’re f --- ing dumb.

“I told you if my son get arrested, good, I’m happy for him ... because he should never have been a politician. It is wasting his time.”

It was only hours after Crakanthorp was sacked as a minister and referred to the corruption watchdog for failing to disclose “substantial” private family holdings and breaching the ministerial code of conduct.

tenor.com

Nationals MP for Page Hogan fails to understand that neither climate change nor the weather gods obey governments

 

No amount of intervention can stop heavy rain or high tides and, in this age of rapidly changing climate, flood mitigation is not just about building levies and dams.

Flood mitigation now means the implementation of actions to reduce or eliminate the long-term risk of flood-damage to buildings and infrastructure which include building disaster resilience into the reconstruction process, while at the same time lessening the impact on communities.

I for one am glad to see that those four tranches in the Northern Rivers Recovery and Resilience Program will make major road evacuation routes more reliable through road & bridge raising. That extra water pump capacity is entering local government systems and pumping stations will be more flood resilient. While in some council areas town drainage will be upgraded where required and in others earth mounds are being created to manage flood flow direction or provide stock refuge.

It is embarrassing to see that the National Party has learnt so little from the unnatural disasters of 2019-20 and 2022, that Kevin Hogan feel comfortable contributing nothing but grumbles and gripes.

Clarence Valley Independent, 2 August 2023:

Federal Member for Page Kevin Hogan has criticised the Albanese Government’s $100 million announcement for 20 projects in the Northern Rivers Recovery and Resilience Program as they won’t lower flood levels.

Last Friday, Federal Minister for Emergency Management Murray Watt visited Coraki to announce the latest tranche of funding which will see raised bridges, widened flood channels, and improved drainage in the townships of Woodburn, Coraki, and Lismore as some of the projects.

Mr Watt said the projects would help communities be more prepared for future disasters.

“We know the job is far from done when it comes to recovering from the multiple recent floods, and we continue to work with all levels of government to roll up our sleeves and fast-track work where possible,” he said.

“But while we’re recovering, we must also prepare for the future.

“The majority of these new initiatives will improve community connectivity and economic resilience through transport infrastructure and evacuation route upgrades, and they complement the work we’re doing through other programs, like the Disaster Ready Fund which saw over $17 million invested in Northern Rivers projects in round one.”

New South Wales Minister for Emergency Services, Jihad Dib said the NSW Government is working to reduce the risk natural hazards pose to communities across the state to build resilience.

“The Northern Rivers Recovery and Resilience Program means we can support communities in the region as they prepare for disaster, with the aim of reducing loss of life, the load on our emergency services and the overall impact of natural hazards,” he said.

Projects included in the funding include raising the level of two low set bridges at Tatham to improve access between Casino and Coraki during floods, widening Browns Creek flood channel at Lismore, new and upgraded pump stations, town evacuation plans, plus reforestation and revegetation in the Clarence, Richmond, Tweed and Brunswick catchments to provide nature-based flood mitigation.

But Kevin Hogan says the money should have been used for flood mitigation projects.

“The community would feel exceptionally disappointed by projects announced by the Federal Government today as they contain no effective flood mitigation works,” he said.

“These are all flood resilience projects.

“They are not flood mitigation projects, which is what this funding was intended for.

“Spending on flood mitigation means the level of water would be lower in future flood events.”

The 36 local projects funded under the initiative have been recommended by CSIRO following an $11.4 million review plus extensive community consultation and have been agreed by the Federal and NSW Governments.

In which Liberal backbencher & MP for Cook Scott Morrison once again seeks to rewrite his history over that period in which he was first Minister for Social Services, then Treasurer and finally Prime Minister of Australia

 

The following is a video of Scott John Morrison's Members Statement of 31 July 2023 on the floor of the Australian House of Representatives......

https://youtu.be/U4IPnkt75Xc

Video supplied

During his Member's Statement (Hansard 31.07.23 at 16:10, p.83) Morrison asserted in part:

•  “I do, however, completely reject the commission's adverse findings in the published report regarding my own role as Minister for Social Services between December 2014 and September 2015 as disproportionate, wrong, unsubstantiated and contradicted by clear evidence presented to the commission. As Minister for Social Services I played no role and had no responsibility in the operation or administration of the robodebt scheme.”

• “In relation to the commission's finding regarding untrue evidence, I also reject this as unsubstantiated, speculative, and wrong.”

• “Finally, the commission's allegation that pressure was applied to department officials that prevented their giving frank advice is wrong, unsubstantiated and absurd….How could I have pressured officials into developing such proposals while serving in another portfolio?”

• “Throughout my service in numerous portfolios over almost nine years I enjoyed positive, respectful and professional relationships with Public Service officials at all times, and there is no evidence before the commission to the contrary. While acknowledging the regrettable—again, the regrettable—unintended consequences and impacts of the scheme on individuals and families, I do however completely reject each of the adverse findings against me in the commission's report as unfounded and wrong.”

• “The latest attacks on my character by the government in relation to this report is just a further attempt by the government following my departure from office to discredit me and my service to our country during one of the most difficult periods our country has faced since the Second World War. This campaign of political lynching has once again included the weaponisation of a quasi-legal process to launder the government's political vindictiveness. They need to move on.”

This is the second time Scott Morrison has risen to his feet in 

the House of Representatives to self-servingly defend his 

personal politically indefensible actions.

That first time he was defending the fact that as then Prime Minister of Australia (24.8.2018 to 23.5.2022) and Minister for the Public Service (29.5.2019 to 8.10.2021) he secretly appointed himself to five additional key ministries, beginning this portfolio grab in March 2020:

 

• Minister for Health from 14.3.2020 to 23.5.2022;

• Minister for Finance from 30.3.2020 to 23.5.2022;

• Minister for Industry, Science, Energy and Resources from 15.4.2021 to 23.5.2022;

• Minister for Home Affairs from 6.5.2021 to 23.5.2022; and

• Treasurer from 6.5.2021 to 23.5.2022.

Bringing the total number of portfolios he had full governance over - if he wished to exercise this power - to seven by 7 October 2021 and six thereafter.

Covert actions which on completion of a formal independent inquiry by Honourable Virginia Bell AC which found: 

"As the Solicitor-General concluded, the principles of responsible government were “fundamentally undermined” because Mr Morrison was not “responsible” to the Parliament, and through the Parliament to the electors, for the departments he was appointed to administer.

Finally, the lack of disclosure of the appointments to the public was apt to undermine public confidence in government. Once the appointments became known, the secrecy with which they had been surrounded was corrosive of trust in government."

caused the House of Representatives on 31 November 2022 

by a vote of 80 to 56 to censure him with these words:

“Therefore [the house] censures the member for Cook for failing to disclose the appointments to the House of Representatives, the Australian people and the cabinet, which undermined responsible government and eroded public trust in Australia’s democracy.” 

At the moment he rose to his feet to make his 31 July 2023 statement to the House the Liberal MP for Cook appeared literally friendless, with very few members of parliament remaining in or returning to the Chamber to hear him speak.

IMAGE: Snapshot via @Terrytoo69, Twitter, 1 August 2023



However, lest anyone imagine Scott Morrison deserves pity,

I give the last words in this post to.....

Mr Morrison, you are a bottomless well of self-pity with not a drop of mercy for all the real victims of Robodebt pic.twitter.com/tdDiK6O6TK

— Bill Shorten (@billshortenmp) August 1, 2023