Ballina Greens MP Tamara Smith said she was angry so many people in her electorate would not qualify for support, based on detailed flood mapping that was published on Tuesday.
“It’s desperately needed but it doesn’t match the expectations and it doesn’t match the need,” she said.
“You’ve got about 7000 people who are waiting to hear [if they qualify for the program], and nearly 5000 of them are going to get a letter by 30 June saying ‘No, you’ve got nothing’.
“Thousands and thousands of people will be devastated … they’ve been waiting for 15 months.
“I have no way of explaining the data. As far as I’m concerned, it’s poppycock.”
But Tweed mayor Chris Cherry said it made sense to focus funding on high-priority buybacks.
“That’s the real place where you’re going to get wins – where you can get people out of the floodplains forever,” she said.
“It’s difficult for people who thought they would benefit from a retrofit or house-raising, but it makes sense to focus on buybacks because that’s where there is the risk to life.
“What it actually means is that people are being offered real money for their homes. They’re not being shortchanged from what I can see, and that’s a really important thing, to help people move out.”
Byron Shire mayor Michael Lyon said the maps raised more questions than answers.
“I thought it’s really confusing and I don’t understand the timing. Why you would realise this now before you’ve told everyone their indicative eligibility.
“It would be very difficult for people who had water in their house to understand why they are ineligible.”
NRRC chief executive David Witherdin said about 300 buyback offers had been made so far and 131 had accepted. Two households rejected them.
He said the mapping would help every household understand its level of risk when it came to floods.
“We’ve got confidence in the quality of the data there,” he said. “It helps the community understand the relative hazards right across the Northern Rivers.”
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Smith and Cherry both called for a second tranche of government funding to be made available, to extend the Resilient Homes program so it could support more households in the future.
“People can’t wait any longer,” Smith said. “Either it’s in this budget or kiss it goodbye.”
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