The Lismore council has been gripped by in-fighting over whether it should make references to “climate change” following the flood disaster and a decision to pause its work on flood mitigation despite warnings the “optics” of doing so were “not good”.
The disaster-ravaged town is still in the early stages of recovering from an unprecedented 14.4-metre flood, which wiped out thousands of homes and businesses and brought Lismore to its knees.
On Tuesday, in a late-night sitting, Lismore council proposed a message of thanks to volunteers and the community for their efforts in the immediate response and clean-up effort.
It included a line saying the council “acknowledges we are likely to experience further disasters of this nature as climate change continues to escalate”.
The words “climate change” prompted a reaction from four councillors, led by independent councillor Big Rob, who attempted to have the reference removed and replaced with a line saying “we are definitely going to experience further disasters of this nature”.
Rob – who says he does not deny climate change but likes to “stir up lefties” – said he did not think a message of community support was the right place to make “political” statements about climate change.
“That motion was about thanking people, not being political about climate change,” he said.
Rob was supported by three other councillors, including Andrew Gordon, who told the Guardian it was “piss poor” to add a climate change reference to a statement thanking the community.
The effort to delete the reference to climate change failed. But it rankled other councillors, including Greens councillor Adam Guise, who first proposed the climate change reference be added.
“They tried to couch it as not politicising it,” Guise said . “But this is the whole thing about climate change, it’s not political, it’s science.”
The dispute came amid further divisions within council over a decision to halt the work of a key committee working to improve flood mitigation measures in Lismore.
That occurred despite councillors acknowledging the “optics” of pausing the flood mitigation committee so soon after a disaster were “not good”.
The council has also sacked members of the Lismore community who were on a community reference group advising council on flood mitigation.
On Tuesday, at 11pm, the council decided to pause the work of the floodplain committee to wait for more information from CSIRO, which has been given $10m to explore flood mitigation measures in the region.
Lismore council decided it should hold off doing any further work on flood mitigation of its own until it understood what CSIRO was doing.
But councillor Vanessa Ekins, who chairs the committee, warned that could take months. She said pausing the committee was “very dangerous ground” and would not look good to Lismore residents.
“We have just been through a big flood, we are still experiencing that and for us to send a message out there that we are pausing work that we have been working really hard on for years until we hear what the CSIRO are doing … they might take six months to tell us what they’re doing,” she said.
“This could take a really, really long time and meanwhile our community has no guidance from us, we’re not doing anything, we’ve paused the consultation we’re currently engaged in until someone else tells us what they’re doing.”
She said the decision was “absolutely outrageous”.
“It’s really important that our flood plain committee continues the work that it’s been doing for the last five years on mitigating the impacts of flooding on the CBD and residences,” she said. “We were in the middle of a consultation process with members of the community about various options.”
Others were furious that community members had been sacked from the committee so soon after the floods.
“We had community members on that committee with five years’ experience and expertise in understanding the mitigation options that were before us,” councillor Elly Bird said. “To throw all of that experience away, I don’t support it.”
