Scott Hinks’s back yard is underwater. Again.
Since March 2021, it’s happened four times. Windsor, on Sydney’s north-west fringe, has become a byword for the flood emergencies which have ravaged Australia’s east coast with unnerving regularity these past months and years.
“It’s different this time,” he said on Wednesday as he showed journalists photos of the debris littering his property.
“People say, what’s happening with the locals? Well, they’re not talking any more. ‘Are you OK?’ ‘Yeah, sure.’ But they’re not talking, because they’re fed up with it. It’s like a prizefighter who’s run of steam.”
On Wednesday, Hinks showed up at the volunteer relief centre, Helping Hands, to see the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, on his first visit to this part of Sydney’s north-west in the wake of the latest flood emergency.
For Albanese, who has kept up a frantic schedule of overseas visits since being sworn in as prime minister less than two months ago, this is perhaps his first real test. After replacing Scott Morrison, who faced repeated criticism of his handling of the natural emergencies which dotted his leadership, can he convince voters such as Hinks that he is a different beast?
As a scrum of media and minders enveloped Albanese – who was joined by the New South Wales premier, Dominic Perrottet – Hinks pushed to the front. It was good to see them both together, he said, “but we actually need action now”.
“You and me are both Souths supporters,” Hinks told Albanese. “Let’s get into the front row and start working.”
What that work actually looks like is a more complex, politically fraught question. At a press conference earlier in the day, Albanese had been noncommittal when asked if he supported the NSW government’s contentious plan to raise the Warragamba Dam wall.
He also shrugged off questions on whether the increased frequency of these types of emergencies – and the reliance on the Australian Defence Force – means the country needs a standing professional agency to deal with them.
Fresh from an address to Nato and a high-profile meeting with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Albanese was quick to point out the funding relief announced on Wednesday had come faster than in the past. He has benefited too from Perrottet, a Coalition leader who nonetheless has made a point of complimenting the speed of the support from the commonwealth compared to previous disasters.
But these picfacs – as they are known in the media – are largely about images. Though they can – and do – go wrong, they are tightly scripted to show leaders shaking hands, putting on their most concerned faces and projecting empathy.
Hinks, for his part, has gotten used to them. Morrison was here only months ago, he said, and so too was the former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian. He recognised that the visit was largely a “photo opportunity” but still took the chance to tell Albanese about the stench from the flood water that lingers for months, the slow cleanup, and the difficulty accessing government relief grants of the sort announced earlier on Wednesday.
Though he has only been premier since October, Perrottet is already more practised in the kind of disaster leadership now so relentlessly common in this country. He asked questions about council cleanups, the roadblocks to the type of relief residents need, and how this flood compared with the last one.
“It’s just crazy,” Hinks told them both. “It’s just an ongoing circle, but hopefully you guys together can really do something.”
“Well it’s why we’re here,” Albanese responded.
Linda Strickland, who runs the centre where Albanese visited on Wednesday, wasn’t sure whether the prime minister’s visit would be helpful.
“I guess we’ll find out later,” she said.
Strickland herself has been sleeping at the centre since she was evacuated from her home two nights ago. The centre has been operating nonstop since the most recent floods earlier this year, and they’ve outgrown the warehouse they operate out of in the backstreets of South Windsor.
“We’re exhausted, everything’s a mile a minute. We were just about to close up for a week for the first time in months when this happened. Don’t ask me about things like the dam wall or anything, I’ve got no comment about that, but we need help,” she said.
As Albanese arrived, she was rushed outside to greet him. The Guardian overheard her raising the need for a larger warehouse as she showed him through the stacks of donated food.
Outside, the Windsor resident Ron King shook Albanese’s hand as he left the centre.
Asked what he said to the prime minister, King said he had thanked him.
“It’s good that he’s here, it’s important,” he said. “These are just normal people. We’re not special or rich or whatever. He’s got to see what it’s like.”
