Flood Plains Flood – Who Knew?

How deep should the taxpayer go to bail people out of the consequences of their own foolish decisions? All the way, it seems.

The Bible warns against foolish people who build their houses on foundations of sand. Then there are the people who build their houses on floodplains – and are surprised when the rain fell, and the floods came.

Then they sayeth, Lo, the gummint should do sumfin.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet says his government has accepted every recommendation as part of the independent inquiry into the catastrophic Northern Rivers floodings, with a land buyback scheme to be implemented […]

Mr Perrottet said a buyback and land swap scheme for people in “dire circumstances” and “targeted” areas will be implemented, with expressions of interest to open by the end of August.

Like people who build their dinky little “treechange” retreats (“Where the bush comes right up to our door!” as I’ve often heard the boast), some people are apparently unaware that, well, the Australian bush tends to burn. A lot.

And river plains flood. In the Northern Rivers region, an awful lot.

But some people seem to be slow learners – and now taxpayers are going to be picking up the tab.

Mr Perrottet said a buyback scheme for flood-threatened homeowners will be “very costly”, revealing he has reached out to Anthony Albanese seeking a joint-funding agreement to underwrite the billions of dollars recovery bill in the Northern Rivers region.

With the recovery bill for the catastrophic floods already at $6.5bn, Mr Perrottet asserted the federal government had set a precedent for funding agreements with states following the Grantham Floods in Queensland […]

With an expensive buyback and land-swap scheme for vulnerable homeowners on the table, the bill for the NSW government is set to continue heading north, with Mr Perrottet not offering an estimated figure.

“In terms of dollar figure: it’s going to cost billions of dollars, billions of dollars, but it’s the right thing to do. And the buyback scheme will obviously be very costly,” he said.

The Australian

This isn’t like people who buy land which, unbeknownst to them because the developers and shady local councillors kept it secret, is contaminated with old industrial waste. Flooding records like the one above are publicly available.

If nothing else, insurance premiums might have been a bit of a hint.

“They [NRMA Insurance] quoted us a figure of $25,000. That was for flood cover. There is no way in the world, as pensioners, that we could afford that,” John, a retired health worker, says […]

One million households in Australia already face “extreme” levels of insurance stress and will bear the brunt of future premium hikes driven by climate change, new research has warned […]

On top of that, low-cost housing, including rental properties, tends to be in higher-risk areas, like flood or bushfire zones, and built to poorer standards.

ABC Australia

It’s almost like the insurers were able to look at weather records and figure something out…