In the week of the third anniversary of the devastating 2022 floods this week, the government-run corporation, The NSW Reconstruction Authority (RA), tabled its 2023-24 annual report.
Federal Greens candidate Mandy Nolan has raised concerns around the lack of progress around house raising and retrofit programs tabled within the report, and also pointed to the doubling of senior executive staff members, who earn on average $350,000 a year from the taxpayer.
Comment was sought from Lismore NSW MP, Janelle Saffin (Labor), yet she was unable to provide any reply by deadline.
Her staff said she was recovering from illness and was focused on cyclone preparations.
The NSW government’s Resilient Homes Program is jointly funded by the federal and state governments, and was established to make homes in the Northern Rivers better prepared for increasingly extreme flood events under climate change.
Within its ‘timeline of key announcements’, on page 12, there is no mention of the previous agencies that were abolished after being found to be ineffective and too bureaucratic – they were Resilience NSW (dissolved 2022) and the Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation (dissolved 2023).
Both agencies did not operate with any public accountability, and only after pressure did the NSW Labor government adopt accountability measures for RA.
$54 million in wages
Ms Nolan says, ‘The report shows a staggering $54 million spent on wages and salaries in the last financial year, which is 33 times the estimated $1.6 million in grants which has been spent on the tiny number of house-raises and retrofits – assuming the maximum grant is $100,000’.
‘The annual report also shows the Reconstruction Authority has doubled the number of senior executives to 50 – including ten executive directors on an average of $350,000 a year.
‘While up to 10,000 people may have been impacted in the Northern Rivers floods in 2022, the report notes that just 780 home buy backs have been offered.
‘While the ABC reported in December that only 16 grants had been made in NSW for house retrofitting or raising, in Queensland there’s been almost 690 grants for resilience works and 340 grants for home-raising.
‘While thousands of residents in this region are still waiting for help, the Reconstruction Authority is swollen with senior executives,’ says Ms Nolan.
‘State and federal Labor governments have failed to deliver on their commitment to fully support flood-impacted residents in the Northern Rivers.
‘It’s not good enough that now three years on, governments still can’t give certainty to the thousands of residents they promised to support.
‘In the three years since the flood, instead of fully funding the recovery, we’ve seen Labor approve over 30 coal and gas projects, fuelling the climate crisis which will continue to increase the risks of extreme weather events,’ says Ms Nolan.
‘If I’m elected, I will work with the Independents to push Labor to stop these approvals, and seek justice for those impacted by climate fuelled unnatural disasters.’
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