In March 2022, Liberal Party MLC, Catherine Cusack announced her resignation from parliament (effective in August) over the federal government’s handling of the flooding disaster on Australia’s east coast.
It saddens me to realise that, having served 19 years in NSW Parliament, one of my best achievements has been accomplished by quitting and surrendering five years remaining in my term as a Liberal MP. I am not sad to be going – just dismayed that such a drama should have been necessary to rectify the atrocious injustice in the Morrison Government’s politicised funding for flood victims.
I am most sad to realise many young journalists, public servants and citizens accept such unethical behaviour by a federal government as being ‘normal politics’ – when in fact it is not normal at all. It is completely unacceptable and I have spent considerable time trying to understand how it can even be legal to discriminate between flood victims who suffered catastrophic losses on the basis of their location rather than their need?
Photo ‘not sleeping, praying’ Dawson.
A legal fiction
The only plausible explanation suggested is that it was made legal by the Emergency Declaration belatedly announced by the Prime Minister during his Lismore visit – allegedly to cut red tape. They constructed a legal fiction about ‘badly flooded’ Local Government Areas (Lismore and other LGAs in the federal seat of Page) and excluded what they call ‘lesser flooded’ LGAs, including Tweed, Byron and Ballina (in the federal seat of Richmond).
At first I naively assumed the whole policy was a terrible mistake and tried for a week to explain it wasn’t LGAs that flooded – it was river systems and rivers that flooded. So for example, the massive body of water that surged through Lismore did not vanish inside that LGA – no, it travelled to sea through river towns like Coraki, Woodburn and into Ballina Shire villages like Cabbage Tree Island, Wardell and Ballina. It was the same water – if anything, it was more water because, for the first time since official records began, the Richmond and Wilsons Rivers rivers were both in flood when they converged at Coraki.
A deal for Page
When it became apparent they would not give up on this ridiculous notion of ‘lesser flooded LGAs’ I reached the sickening realisation that it was not a mistake, it really was constructed to meet the political needs of the government, not the financial needs of victims. It was a special deal for Page voters because it’s a coalition government seat, without the unwanted expense of including victims in the Labor seat of Richmond.
The federal government was unresponsive during that week I spent frantically trying to work this out.
Fun fact; the Office of the Federal Minister for Emergency Services phone rang out maybe 50 times and she doesn’t have an answering service. The Nationals MP for Page, Kevin Hogan did not reply to my message. Incompetence? Or deliberate evasion? I raised the issue with the NSW premier and the Liberal Party head office. It was only when every button I tried to push proved floppy, that I accepted it really was as bad as it looked, and I gave up in complete disgust.
Appalling attitude
This appalling attitude towards thousands of our flood victims aggravated an already growing sense of anger that our community was being treated as second class. It really took hold during the lockdown phases of the pandemic when we were pretty much abandoned to endure Queensland’s border closures. The chaotic vaccination rollout saw us deprived of fair access – so that when Sydney came out of lockdown, our vax rate was too low, resulting in our young people who were last in line for the jab, and had followed all the advice, finding themselves barred from cafes, swimming pools and libraries. We were branded an anti-vax community and instead of being given understanding or an apology we were told it was our own fault.
Both major parties have mistreated us, and our federal Labor MP who was useless during the border closures has capitalised politically on the floods but achieved nothing by way of pledges to rectify any of these injustices. Where is the hope?
I have turned away from Party considerations hoping we can send a rocket to Canberra by electing Mandy Nolan. Ugh, she is a Green – but the times and the situation is such that in spite of my economic conservatism, I can cope with that.
We need to put her personal integrity first. She has been a friend, lightening our lives with humour for years – and I deeply admire her authenticity and passion for our community and her environmental values.
Truly, it’s time for Richmond to put ourselves forward into the Canberra limelight and have an authentic voice articulating who we are, what’s really happened here, and insist on justice for our flood victims.
This election for me is a no brainer.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
