Premier Chris Minns has chosen to punch down on my community, on the front line of the climate crisis, spreading lies and stoking division rather than addressing the real issues we are facing. It is deeply offensive that the leader of this state would run back to the safety of his own home in Sydney, only to turn around and attack our flood-impacted community that he clearly knows nothing about. Instead of working with us to find real solutions, he is using his platform to push a narrative designed to inflame and divide.
Up until this week, everyone involved in this conversation - whether they agreed or not - was focused on making sure people had access to safe and secure housing. Premier Minns has shattered that by unilaterally declaring on talkback radio that he will knock down and demolish beautiful timber homes in North Lismore - not because they pose a risk, but because he feels insecure about a community making use of empty homes in the middle of a housing crisis. It’s an ugly attempt at political point-scoring, and it comes at the direct expense of a community still recovering from disaster.
The facts are simple. The people in Pine Street evacuated themselves on Thursday, well before ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred was ever expected to make landfall. There was no emergency. No one was at risk. I was there. I saw it with my own eyes. The claims made by the Premier on 2GB - insinuating that these residents endangered themselves or the emergency services - are outright false. These people are not the problem, the failure of government planning, relocation, and recovery is.
The people living in these homes have made it clear that when there is a plan in place for their relocation, they will leave peacefully and willingly. In the meantime, they have been caring for and maintaining homes that would otherwise have been left to rot by this government. The reality is that these are homes that were supposed to be relocated two years ago, yet Minns’ government has no plan - only a bulldozer.
This is the same government that has left flood survivors stranded for years. The Reconstruction Authority’s retrofitting and raising program - meant to protect homes from future flooding - has approved just 16 houses in over three years. In that time, they have hired more senior executives than they have fixed houses. Instead of taking responsibility for this failure, Premier Minns would rather attack a handful of people who have simply made use of empty homes while waiting for the government to catch up.
Chris Minns has declared war on a small part of my community, and it is telling of the kind of leader he is. He has gone to the comfort of his own home and then turned around to try and divide us. At a time when real leadership means bringing people together, he is inflaming tensions and misleading the public.
In times of crisis, a leader should not be swanning around disaster zones, picking and choosing who he elevates and who he crushes. Lismore and all of NSW deserves better than this. The Premier should be focused on the long-overdue work of recovery - not punching down on people who are already doing it.
The people of Lismore are not just recovering from one flood - we are living on the frontlines of climate change. This crisis is not isolated, and it is getting worse. Yet while our community is still trying to rebuild, the NSW Government remains open to new and expanded coal and gas projects - the very industries fuelling more extreme weather disasters like the one that devastated us in 2022. If the government cannot manage a single street in Lismore, how can we trust them to protect the rest of NSW when the next climate disaster hits?