E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC MORNINGS SYDNEY
MONDAY 8 APRIL 2024
SUBJECTS: Megalong Valley, floods across the Hawkesbury, flood mitigation, North Richmond Bridge.
SARAH MACDONALD, HOST: Susan Templeman is the federal member for Macquarie. It covers the area of the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury of that electorate, two areas that have been heavily affected. And she's been out and about all weekend talking about her community and with us now on ABC radio Sydney. Good morning.
FEDERAL MEMBER FOR MACQUARIE, SUSAN TEMPLEMAN: Morning Sarah.
HOST: So how did your place and area hold up on the weekend?
TEMPLEMAN: Well, we obviously had two really different impacts. The Megalong Valley at the top of the Blue Mountains is completely cut off and there's been incredible work to get some people out. I'm told overnight and there's work being done to try and get the road reopened in some way as quickly as possible. But then of course in the Hawkesbury there's still a lot of areas still underwater. What has been different this flood is that it hasn't come into the suburban areas in quite the same way. We've got huge impacts on turf and veggie and prime rural lands, but less direct impact on houses. I've even had people sending me photos saying, look for the first flood in 4 years the house hasn't had water in it. So there's bits of good news, but still, you know the real damage is yet to be revealed.
HOST: So when you say that what do you mean? Where do you suspect there could be more damage that we don't know about yet.
TEMPLEMAN: Well, what we don't know is just what is under the water, where the turf farmers and veggie farmers are, where their sheds and some of their homes are, until the water completely recedes to see what's left. So sometimes floods leave sand on the land. Sometimes they're leaving other stuff, it really is hard to tell the condition of the sporting fields for instance down on Benson's Lane at Richmond that area is called the lowlands, Cornwallis on the lowlands. And that area is you know, it doesn't look like Hawkesbury River there, It looks like Hawkesbury Lake because there is still and will continue to be a lot of water until it all drains off.
HOST: Yes, so that's when we'll know down the track. I mean you mentioned areas that provide food and grow veggies and so I wonder if that's going to have an impact on our fruit and veggie prices down the track?
TEMPLEMAN: I know some farmers have already told me about whole crops of cucumbers that are flooded so there is inevitably going to be a flow through. A lot depends on how quickly the water drains off someone's site, and that affects turf and that affects vegetables. You've also got those who have horses. There's a big equine industry in the Hawkesbury and a lot of those lands are home to horses and also cattle. It's really strange, yesterday in Windsor a block off from the water, the Windsor Mall was a hive of activity, but only a block away you could see the flooding impacting people. So it's really easy to move on fast and think, oh, okay because it's not raining the water's gone. But it's going to take a while before we really understand. What the rural sector in particular is going to need to help it get back on its feet after this.
HOST: So could there be stock losses?
TEMPLEMAN: Less so stock losses but more rejuvenating and cleaning up those turf and vegetable farms. It's just hard to explain, it takes a long time to recover from this. They've only just got through - we've had by some accounts, this is our seventh in 18 months. Seven floods in 18 months. And so there's just not a lot of buffer or wiggle room for these businesses who are now looking at having to go back to square one. And what's also interesting is it's uneven, some properties are unaffected and others are profoundly affected.
HOST: Susan Templeman is with me the federal member for Macquarie, it covers the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury. Two areas have been heavily affected with the Megalong Valley still cut off of course. And I want to come to that in just a moment as you said, the seventh flood in 18 months. Are we getting better at managing them or do we just get lucky this time that after the deluge there was a couple of really great sunny warm days to lead some kind of reprieve and evaporation.
TEMPLEMAN: Some things were better this time and the community is extraordinary. Our SES is extraordinary and the information that's coming out from the Bureau of Meteorology was also timely and look, the problem is things change fast, but what we saw generally was that information was updated. There are definitely some areas to learn from and I was with the New South Wales Minister Jihad Dib yesterday, who made the point that we learned from these and we make the systems better and stronger. For instance some of the water gauges seem to switch off overnight on Saturday night and on Sunday morning that came back on. Just questions about ensuring accurate information is available for those who are really looking at it to assess should they move animals or horses or themselves? So there's a lot of things we can do around that to improve it. Every flood is different and I think we learn things, we have lots of work to do to get evacuation routes sorted and made safer. There are things that we might not have needed this flood, but we could need the next one. Remember, it's a floodplain. So it is inevitable that there will be more floods.
HOST: We just heard on AM, the Premier has said this is why we've stopped development in certain areas around this floodplain, and we're not going to do anymore. But there was talk under the previous state government of raising the dam wall. Where do you stand on that?
TEMPLEMAN: That's obviously a decision at a state level and the Premier has made it very clear that it's not something that this government will be doing. What I have advocated for strongly for several years now, is to use the existing dam to see whether it's effective as some sort of flood mitigation. That obviously requires security of Sydney's water supply before you do it. It requires changes of legislation and they are all state things. But I have in the past advocated for that and we'll continue to urge that that be seriously looked at.
HOST: It's not a flood mitigation dam though is it? Sydney water was speaking to Ellen on this show last week. That's not the job of it. It did spill over as suspected but a lot of the rain and the flooding came just because of rain, so do we know what role the dam had in it?
TEMPLEMAN: We don't have the exact numbers but exactly, the start of the flooding happened long before the dam was spilling. But you've got a piece of infrastructure there and I think it's incumbent on us to look at how it can be best used for the 21st century conditions that we're facing. There are certainly other dams that have either been changed to be used for mitigation or were built with that purpose in mind and that's the work that needs to be done. I'm not the expert on it, but it seems logical to me that you investigate it and determine what role it could play and have that as part of a holistic disaster mitigation plan. I've been very pleased to see that this New South Wales government chose the Hawkesbury as the first place for its disaster adaptation plan that's underway now. Because there's not been any holistic work done to look at the whole valley. Look at the range of things that can be done. So that we can be better prepared, have mitigation, and then be better able to recover from these sorts of disasters and certainly the federal and state government both have that objective in mind.
HOST: Water New South Wales I should have said, not Sydney Water in terms of that. Just a question for you Susan Templeman from a listener. "Why the rails on North Richmond Bridge were once again left on despite plenty of warning the bridge would flood. The cost to the tax payer to replace these should be made transparent." that ones from Renee.
TEMPLEMAN: I am asking exactly the same question. All of us who are local to the area know that the railings on the side of the North Richmond Bridge, that there's a protocol, that they be taken down prior to the bridge being closed because it's about to be flooded. It appears - I've actually sent photos of the conditions this morning to the office of the Minister responsible to alert them to the fact that it appears the railings were not taken down. What that means is that there's a lot more debris and potentially damage to the bridge which is delaying, or appears to be delaying its opening. So I listened to the reports from those who are actually on the ground at North Richmond and shared that information. It's really distressing. You reported there's an accident for people heading towards the Windsor Bridge, you know, it would have been an objective to have this North Richmond Bridge cleared and open for this morning traffic and that obviously hasn't happened and is just yet another consequence of the flood waters. And this is one of those that you think may have been an avoidable consequence. But we really need to see, I'm sharing the reports, I'm not an engineer, so I'm not going to assess it myself. But let's see what the information is, and if there has been an error there then we need to make sure that does not happen again.
HOST: Thanks for your time this morning.
TEMPLEMAN: Thank you.
ENDS
