Pancho Symes
Byron Shire Council (BSC) has submitted a motion to state government expressing disappointment at the lack of consultation regarding its $100 million reduction in funding for house ‘raises’ and/or ‘retrofits’ under the NSW Resilient Homes Program (RHP) as part of the funding originally promised following the 2022 floods.
The motion requested restoration of the original $1.5 billion commitment to deliver 6,000 house buybacks, raises, and retrofits across the Northern Rivers region, as originally promised in 2022.
The motion further requested immediate transparency from the NSW Reconstruction Authority (NSW RA) on: why certain Shire homes lost eligibility for assistance, clear timelines for program delivery, monthly statistical breakdowns of Byron Shire applications, approvals, and completions across all RHP streams made publicly available, and a case-by-case map for Byron Shire residents informing them of which priority stream (1, 2, 3, or 4) their home falls into and the anticipated timeframe for delivery.
The motion also called for equitable program delivery, so that raises and retrofits are accessible to all households without socio-economic discrimination. This is in response to the program’s requirement that homeowners make co-contributions of $100,000 and $50,000 respectively for house raises and retrofits.
Resilient Homes a ‘disaster’
In Public Access Statement at the BSC meeting, Dale Emerson of the Community Disaster Action Group (CDAG) said that NSW flood victims have not been looked after by their state government in the same way as their Qld neighbours.
‘When disaster funding was first promised, PM Albanese said “it would cost a lot, but it was the right thing to do,’’ Mr Emerson said.
‘And yet, four years on, Qld has completed its buy back and retrofit programs. But NSW is still in limbo, and is now facing a reduction in funding.
‘Flood-affected families have been dragged back and forth through the RHP, repeatedly encouraged and then confused,’ Mr Emerson said.
Noelle Maxwell, another representative of the CDAG, who was flooded in 2022 and is still not back in her house, has said ‘the job is not finished until it is finished.’
‘Only one percent of promised house raises and retrofits have been completed in NSW in four years.
‘This is damning information,’ Mr Emerson said.
$1.5 billion was promised, despite RA denial
In a 2023 Echo article, NSW RA CEO Simon Draper denied commitment to buying back, raising and retrofitting 6,000 homes, which would come in two ‘tranches’ and amount to a total cost of $1.5 billion.
In a media briefing, Draper claimed he had looked at the commitments made by the government at the time and it was only ‘2,000 buybacks, house raisings, and retrofits combined.’
However, internal NSW RA documents confirm that the original program was scoped to deliver roughly 2,000 home buybacks, 2,000 home raising and 2,000 home retrofits each and a budget of $1.5 billion was requested to deliver this.
‘More traumatising than the floods’
One council member described his attempts to secure a Brunswick Heads woman a DA and access funding for a house raise.
‘Her whole house had been destroyed. It was a six to eight-month process going though the DA process and getting through Resilient Homes to get the funding.’
‘And she said to me at the end, that the whole experience of accessing that funding was more traumatising than the flood.’
‘It shows how unnecessarily complex and difficult the process of raising your house is.’
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