Abandon Your Home, Do Not Rebuild? Is that the Aussie Way? By James Reed
The iconic poem by Dorothea Mackellar (185-1968), My Country, has the famous lines:
“I love a sunburnt country,
A land of Sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.”
Bushfires and floods are part of the Australian identity, and so is rebuilding homes after these disasters. Hence, I reject the remarks by the National Recovery and Resilience Agency Coordinator General Shane Stone who said the taxpayer should not have to 'pick up the bill' for those who chose to live on floodplains.
'You’ve got people who want to live among the gum trees – what do you think is going to happen?' Well, by that logic, if one can call it that, people living in most country areas, which face a seasonal bushfire danger, for example, should not rebuild either. When wiped out by bushfires.
With mass immigration, it is no longer possible for areas of land, like flood plains, to be off limits.
A land of seepin
“Australians whose homes were destroyed by floodwater have been urged by the nation's top disaster recovery official to 'face reality' and move away from vulnerable areas.
Entire towns in south-east Queensland and northern NSW have been inundated in the past two weeks, while 200,000 residents in Sydney's outer western suburbs alone had to evacuate as the Hawkesbury and Nepean river breached its banks.
The unprecedented flooding has prompted the federal government to offer lump-sum grants of $1,000 to those whose homes have suffered major flood damage.
But National Recovery and Resilience Agency Coordinator General Shane Stone said the taxpayer should not have to 'pick up the bill' for those who chose to live on floodplains.
'You’ve got people who want to live among the gum trees – what do you think is going to happen?' Mr Stone told The Sydney Morning Herald.
Sydney's west and south-west have been hit by rising floodwaters yet again, just a year after catastrophic flooding in the same region last March.
Mr Stone, a former Liberal Northern Territory chief minister, said councils were also to blame for zoning flood-prone areas for residential use.
'Australians need to have an honest conversation about where and how people build homes,' he said, adding flooded homeowners need to 'face realities'.
'The taxpayer and the ratepayer cannot continue to pick up the bill for these huge, catastrophic damage events.'
Data shows 15 per cent of all Australian homes are now at least susceptible to flooding, according to the Insurance Council of Australia.”
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