A largely undistinguished, former politician who briefly led an extremely minor (territorial) jurisdiction in the outback of Australia a long time ago wants the city of Lismore moved. To higher ground. Where it will cost taxpayers less.
You should be careful who you appoint to positions such as Coordinator General of the National Recovery and Resilience Agency. And occupants of these kinds of positions should be especially careful what they say immediately following disasters.
Shane Stone has been lambasted for his gross insensitivity after his awful contribution last week:
On Friday Stone, the coordinator general of the National Recovery and Resilience Agency, told the Sydney Morning Herald that “the taxpayer and the ratepayer cannot continue to pick up the bill for these huge, catastrophic damage events”.
“You’ve got people who want to live among the gum trees – what do you think is going to happen? Their house falls in the river and they say it’s the government’s fault,” Stone reportedly said.
Stone is paid half a million dollars a year to come up with his peculiar brand of genius.
Clearly Stone’s list of deficits includes memory loss. Wasn’t he Chief Minister of a territory whose major city, when pretty much the size of Lismore, was wiped out by a cyclone (in 1974)? Just imagine if Major General Alan Stretton, appointed wisely by Gough Whitlam to coordinate Darwin’s recovery, had advised the then Government to relocate Darwin to somewhere else. Whether or not he ever thought that might be a good idea, he would be far too much a person of old fashioned class to say it, let alone to say it when the poor souls whose lives had just been wrecked were still cleaning up and assessing the damage.
There are other examples of Stone’s lack of memory. As Niki Savva notes:
Stone, appointed to the job by Scott Morrison to help people in the regions cope with floods and fires, apparently didn’t get his own memo, the infamous “mean and tricky” letter he sent to John Howard in 2001 warning the then-prime minister to be more responsive to suffering Australians, saying voters thought his government was dysfunctional and out of touch.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation was quickly able to round up some Lismore locals and give them a megaphone to express views on whether to move the city’s CBD. Whether those speaking out in favour of the suggestion represent the majority of Lismore residents, and, indeed, whether they will maintain this view on reflection when the mess is cleared, is another matter. I suspect this view is convenient to the national broadcaster, to the extent that suggesting Lismore should be relocated can only underscore the impact of the “climate crisis” we are all said to be experiencing. So far, there hasn’t been too much climate refugeeism. Not nearly enough. Perhaps governments should manufacture some, so that we can then say, look at all the climate refugees!
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-05/its-gone:-lismore-locals-call-for-town-to-be-moved/13783774
Of course, the plight of Lismore CBD retail is simply the latest blow after two years of debilitating Covid policy that has all but pulverised the city’s downtown, like so many other retail ghost towns across the nation. The crushing of small business by a government-corporate cartel has been one of the under-examined aspects of the whole Covid fiasco. Whether it was deliberate – a conspiracy, no less – hardly matters. We now face what Sean Burke accurately terms the “hollowing out” of small business everywhere. So it is little wonder that business ratepayers and victims of hefty insurance premiums (the lucky ones) are now at the point of, perhaps, no return. Literally. And who could blame them? I know of business people in Lismore who have simply felt unable to return to their shops to witness the destruction that has occurred. Many of these people – the Mayor of Lismore is but one – have lost home AND business. But a lot of small business owners across this Covid-policy ravaged land NOT impacted by floods will be asking the very same question in relation to continuing with their businesses (I wonder, by the way, what the economically rational Stone thinks of all Morrison’s taxpayer funded rewards to businesses large and small – billions hosed up against the wall – to compensate them for the Government’s own policies that forced them to the point of bankruptcy over the virus. Jobkeeper and the like. Perhaps someone should ask him).
I have mentioned Darwin and Cyclone Tracy. I never heard the suggestion (while living in New Zealand) that Christchurch should be moved after the earthquake. Of course, you would have to move the whole of New Zealand to assuage the fears of citizens there about earthquakes. Make them all leave! Newcastle had an earthquake once. Brisbane floods regularly (often as the result of both ideology and incompetence). Should we move Brisbane up the hill? Make a much larger (obviously) Toowoomba the new capital? Much cooler and nicer up there. Large, crowded cities are hotbeds of crime (and so much else that is awful). Should we have a policy of forced decentralisation in order to reduce crime and all the other pathologies suffered by cities? And speaking of cyclones, should everyone be forced to move from Cairns, Ingham, Townsville, Cooktown, Mission Beach, Proserpine and similar places to locations where those nasty winds don’t blow? Cyclone Yasi’s damage bill in 2011 was $6.8 billion.
Shane Stone should be told that his ideas are fantasy and ridiculous.
He isn’t just insensitive. There is also a whiff of the othering of the deplorables about the arrogant style and dismissive content of Stone’s remarks. We know best. You’ve copped a shellacking from the weather gods. Lost everything. Now we will decide where you live. After all, we have been bossing you around for two years now. You should just cop it, whatever it is that we determine to be your future. And, as so often these creatures do, Stone hides behind cost effectiveness memes. And how many floods should occur before we decide we will move you? Three strikes and you’re out?
Now we have the plan of the NSW Government to offer goodies like stamp duty cuts to move away from “flood plains”. I am not sure which geniuses came up with this one. Perhaps the same nudge-bandits who offered free hamburgers for vaccinations. Remember them? Incentives to get vaccinations that were, and are, unnecessary, ineffective, dangerous, experimental and protected from legal relief. Vaccines that now even Bill Gates and the CEO of Pfizer admit do not work. Or maybe the stamp duty idea was the brainchild of the boffins who allocated Lismore no more flood relief than 45 other flood affected council areas across the State. At least the NSW Deputy Liberal leader realised that another loopy suggestion, that of buying out flood area properties, was “farcical”. He is from Penrith. He knows a little about floods.
The lingering suspicion that we are currently served by the most second-rate political representatives any of us have ever witnessed has been confirmed these past weeks.
Perhaps Stone’s effort was a ploy, a feint, to distract attention away from the bungling incompetence of the Government he serves, and from that of the other governments involved. An attempt at “look over here”. If so, mate, alas, it failed. It simply added to our grief, shock and dazed anger. But we are used to governments doing awful things to us. We do vote, though.
Writing about Kevin Hogan, the Member for Page (which includes Lismore), Niki Savva, quoting the Member for the adjacent seat of Richmond, Labor’s Justine Elliot, (correctly) lambasted Stone and forecast an electoral backlash as a result of the generally plodding efforts of governments in response to the Lismore disaster.
“Never forget, never forgive”, was the arresting headline.
Savva, being a Canberran journalist and an “insider”, naturally dispensed with the plight of Lismorians and moved very quickly to the electoral plight of politicians like Hogan, and his boss, Scotty from Disaster Relief. To be blunt, people who live in the real world and not in Covid-induced bubbles could not give a monkey’s toss about the fate of ANY politician at the minute. After what the political class has done to Australians these past two years, we pretty much loathe all of them, do not want to see them and do not care what happens to their jobs. Baseball bats don’t even come close to what the locked-down, forcibly masked, abused-unvaccinated jobless have in store for our politicians come May or whenever Morrison mans up to face the people. But Niki still believes in old politics and hasn’t noticed that we now live in a post-major-party-duumvirate world. Where “left” and “right” have very little meaning. Where the divide is now between ruling class elites (that include Niki) and the struggling rest of us.
Niki, as well, confined her focus to Shane Stone. But Shane is not the only heartless, thoughtless bozo in the house in the aftermath of the floods. And the appeal to neo-liberalism is not the only form of irrelevant punditry in relation to the flood recovery process.
While on the subject of insensitive and irrelevant commentary on flood disasters, we should also pause to reflect on the inevitable interventions by climate botherers. Whether it is graffiti on an overhead bridge on the Pacific Motorway – “fossil fuel floods” – or protesters’ placards confronting Scott Morrison, or statements by ABC/Guardian types, or even statements by ministers (yes, the inevitable Bridget McKenzie is worried about climate change, post-flood), the last thing the people of Lismore and other inundated regions need to hear is that you were only flooded because governments persist in allowing fossil fuels to be mined and used. Such interventions are smug, self-serving, insulting, and more than anything else, complete rubbish. Not only is there no evidence that flood events and other disasters (like bushfires) are becoming more frequent, but equally, there is not the remotest real evidence that global warming is the cause of these non-increasing disasters.
Many anthems of defiance have been penned to bolster the prospects of those under siege. I Won’t Back Down by Tom Petty is one. Perhaps, in the face of Shane Stone’s attack, We Shall Not Be Moved might be adopted by the people of Lismore and other towns similarly aggrieved by his appalling comments. We will choose where we live. As for the climate warriors who, cynically, tastelessly and ignorantly, use every single natural disaster as an opportunity for political grandstanding on the graves, destroyed possessions and empty bank balances of those crushed by such events, they are beneath contempt and incapable of either rational debate or evidence-based thought.
My colleague at The Spectator Australia, Terry Barnes, has offered the suggestion that Tony Abbott would be an ideal choice as disaster recovery “supremo”. No argument from me.
Paul Collits
11 March 2022
How about and article on the number of Leftists and anti-conservatives Morrison and the Liberals in general have appointed to positions of power and influence. Great article again Paul.