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Lismore City in happier times
IMAGE: Lismore City Council
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The
Sydney Morning Herald,
28 May 2022:
Public
servant David Witherdin holds the fate of the Northern Rivers in his
hands, charged with extensive powers to rebuild the flood-ravaged
region, writes Heath Gilmore.
David
Witherdin is about to begin one of the biggest reconstruction jobs in
Australian history, restoring the flood-blighted Northern Rivers of
NSW, but he also must confront an even bigger task, almost
existential in complexity: can he stop Lismore from drowning?…..
Extensive
powers have been bestowed on Witherdin, chief executive of the newly
created Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation, including to
compulsorily acquire or subdivide land, fast-track the building of
new premises and accelerate the delivery of planning proposals
through the Department of Planning and Environment.
From
July 1, and based in Lismore, the corporation will work with all
state government agencies, seven local councils and the private
sector to
ensure that the reconstruction of infrastructure is co-ordinated and
streamlined.
And,
it is not only the building of new schools, bridges, roads, water and
sewerage infrastructure that Witherdin will oversee. Thousands of
residents potentially will be rehoused in new estates signed off by
him; buildings rebuilt in a manner dictated by him; the order of
infrastructure projects determined by him; and multimillion-dollar
contracts awarded by him. Undoubtedly, developers and big contractors
will lobby him. Further, he will drive a new master plan for Lismore
City that responds to these changes, shaping the social and economic
fabric of lives for generations.
He
will have an advisory board, consult widely with community and local
representatives, but ultimately, he will be answerable to one person:
Deputy Premier Paul Toole.
It
makes this father of three from Newcastle - a trained civil engineer
who worked across the mining, utility, transport and local government
sectors before a senior leadership role with the Department of
Regional NSW - one of the most powerful figures in the Perrottet
government. He has to succeed.
Walking
the streets of towns and villages in the Northern Rivers it becomes
clear why so much power has been vested in a stand-alone, unelected
body. "We'll be pushing through mud literally for the next six
months to make things happen, yeah, literally wading through s---,"
Witherdin says…..
Desolation
is splattered right across the Northern Rivers, in the tongue-twister
towns of Murwillumbah and Mullumbimby, along the winding rivers
bordered by earthier named villages such as Wardell, Woodburn, Coraki
and Broadwater, right up into the isolated dreamscape communities of
the surrounding hills that are cut off by landslides. The region's
population is about 280,000.
Ground
zero is Lismore, known as the flood capital of Australia, with a
population of about 27,000. Four people died in February as rising
water inundated 3045 residential, commercial and industrial buildings
and damaged hundreds of millions of dollars worth of critical
infrastructure.
Large
swaths of the city remain in limbo, waiting for the state or federal
government to make a call on their future. Lismore City Council
believes at least 1000 households should be relocated to higher
ground at a cost of $400 million. And, the region faced flooding
again this week.
Usually,
elected officials in NSW - councillors, mayors and local MPs -
jealously guard their role as the democratically elected repositories
of political power that plays out across our lives. Lismore MP
Janelle Saffin, Ballina MP Tamara Smith and the regions' seven
mayors, however, all support the elevation of Witherdin and his
corporation. This disaster was just too big to argue otherwise.
From
the first day of the disaster, a still wet Saffin, who had to swim
for her life through the floodwater, voiced the need for a single
body to rebuild the Northern Rivers, similar to what happened after
Cyclone Tracy hit Darwin, and the Queensland Reconstruction
Authority, which was created after the 2011 floods.
Saffin
made it her mission to convince the NSW government to back the idea
by being "persistent, consistent". "We were wiped
out," Saffin, a Labor MP, says. "I've been through over 40
years of floods, and even 2017, which was really catastrophic, we
were able to manage to get up, even with a lot of trauma and pain,
but this one was different.
"State
and federal governments can be with you in the immediacy of a big
event. But they get consumed by the daily business of everything else
and everywhere else in the state.
"So
I wanted a commitment from government, with a reconstruction body,
recognising that this event is like no other we've experienced, and
we're going to back you for the long haul.
"Otherwise
we'll be buggered."
An
ongoing NSW Flood Inquiry, chaired by Professor Mary O'Kane and
former NSW Police commissioner Mick Fuller, is conducting hearings
and taking submissions, examining everything contributing to the
frequency, intensity, timing and location of floods, including
climate change.
NSW
Deputy Premier Toole says their recommendations will drive the focus
of the corporation. The first report from O'Kane and Fuller is due by
the end of June.
Toole
says the corporation will look at areas where it makes the "most
sense" to rebuild as well as work with the insurance industry to
ensure reconstruction is sustainable and insurable.
"We
want the NRRC [Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation] to make
decisions on what the evidence is telling us because we're not just
building back for now, this is about future-proofing these towns,"
he says.
The
Northern Rivers can be a chaotic and passionate mix of rural
conservatism, hard-scrabble working class and loud green activism. It
straddles world heritage rainforest, prime farm land and a
multimillion-dollar coastal property market, including Byron Bay.
Ballina
MP Tamara Smith, from the Greens, whose electorate includes Byron
Bay, Mullumbimby, Lennox Head and Ballina, says the community will be
on guard for opportunists trying to take advantage of the flood
disaster.
"The
Greens are very concerned that under the cloak of a natural disaster,
we could see open slather development," she says.
"I'm
less worried about them compulsorily acquiring property, as I am
about them declaring a moratorium on planning laws so developers
could do what they want in certain areas, under the argument of
providing more stock."
Witherdin
will not be drawn on how the lives of Northern Rivers residents will
be safeguarded until the inquiry presents its first report. However,
he says engineering and planning expertise will be vital, especially
in the areas of hydrology and flood modelling. Promising a full and
honest dialogue with the community, respecting their wishes, he
candidly admits that some decisions may be unpopular. "This
won't be easy," he says. "I think as soon as you draw a
line on a map, we will absolutely feel that. But we'll get there. I
know the solutions will be different from town to town, catchment to
catchment. We've got to listen to our community and understand what
they've been through, a lot of pain. I know the corporation will have
the tools in the toolkit and the relevant experience [to meet the
government's aims], but the corporation is there to work with the
community to also find out their best outcomes, not to sort of walk
in there and impose things."
Witherdin
says the work of the corporation will set up the Northern Rivers
communities for the next 50 to 100 years. "As we look to the
future [with climate change], I think we are likely to see more of
this kind of natural disaster - not just in Australia but
internationally," he says. "If we do this reconstruction
well, it could really serve as a great template of what to do in the
future across Australia."
