Should be the final nail in the coffin.
‘They will never forget, never forgive’: Flood backlash tipped at polls
Kevin Hogan is very angry with Shane Stone. “Grossly insensitive” is how Hogan described last week’s intervention by the National Recovery and Resilience Agency Co-ordinator-General when he effectively blamed flood victims for their misfortune by telling Nine mastheads: “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, 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.
Hogan, a National, is the federal member for Page, which includes the devastated city of Lismore. He says the locals are traumatised. The last thing they needed was Stone’s cold-hearted observations. “We are absolutely wiped out,” Hogan told me. “We know floods. Everyone knows what to do. Everyone had prepared.”
But no matter how much they prepared, they could not spare themselves or their community the devastation. He says residents had been advised on the Sunday flood water levels would reach 11.5 metres. They reached 14.5 metres. They woke in the early hours of the next morning to find water invading their homes. Hogan’s electorate office was subsumed and there was some damage to his property, but he dismisses what happened to him as “insignificant” compared to what so many others suffered.
Hogan says he contacted the Defence Minister Peter Dutton at 6am on the day the water rose higher than had been predicted – more than 10 days ago – asking for urgent help.
As the disaster unfolded, with people who had lost everything decrying the failure of governments at every level to provide timely help, Hogan was reluctant to buy in, saying he is not even thinking about what retribution might follow at the election after the slow, inadequate response. Instead, he is focussing on what needs to be done. “We are now big time into the clean-up,” he said.
Hogan’s colleagues say he is heartbroken by the destruction. They also say he has done everything he possibly can to help during the crisis and because he is such a good local member he will withstand any blowback to hold on to the seat, which has a margin of 9.4 per cent.
His neighbour in the electorate of Richmond, Labor’s Justine Elliot, thinks otherwise. She believes people who waited anxiously to be rescued, who then had to wait days for food and water, who were left without any communications, not even able to dial triple zero or produce the necessary identification to access emergency payments because everything they owned was destroyed, will remain committed to punishing state and federal governments for what they have endured.
Elliott, every bit as distraught as Hogan is by the utter devastation, and as angry with Stone’s comments which she described as “sickening,” says people cannot understand why in Australia today, after so many disasters over so many years, it took so long for help to arrive.
“In the coming weeks, what we will see is people really heartened by the community response and how important it has been in the absence of government,” she said. “They will never forget and never forgive.”
She said the same sentiment which existed in her electorate, was also coming very strongly across from Page: “The government has abandoned us.”
Federal cabinet ministers are acutely aware of the dangers posed by the floods and the aftermath for the survival of the Morrison government. They know the pain will continue for a long time, for months, even years while people go through the agony of trying to rebuild their lives.
If a central issue of election campaigns is competence, or rather perceptions of incompetence, then clearly both the NSW and federal governments are in dire straits after the floods.
Unlike Morrison, at least the NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet didn’t play silly buggers with the media when he visited the shattered communities. He resolutely bore the brunt of the anger of those directly affected in public, on the street, in front of cameras, then admitted the response should have been better.
Arguing it was for privacy reasons despite the presence of his official photographer, but obviously fearing a repeat of Cobargo where he tried to force angry bushfire victims to shake his hand, Morrison excluded media from his first two meetings in Lismore on Wednesday.
He would have won more respect if he had done what Perrottet did. Everyone knows he couldn’t get there sooner because he was in iso’ with COVID-19. But as Labor’s Murray Watt said, that should not have stopped him declaring a national emergency sooner. Then having got there, he should not have acted like such a chicken. It detracted from the substantial aid package he announced while guaranteeing a rerun of the Cobargo footage.
Unfortunately for Morrison, partly because he will face voters first – by May 21 at the latest – he stands to be the one who will lose the most from this latest disaster.
One determinedly optimistic cabinet minister insisted earlier this week that despite what he frankly acknowledged as the “animosity” of voters towards Morrison, the government can still win because of its national security and economic management credentials.
However, if the maxim popularised by American politician Tip O’Neill, that all politics is local, remains true, then Morrison could struggle to make up enough ground to give the Coalition a fourth term.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, musings over where the fabled nuclear submarines will be housed, accompanied by warnings from Morrison that this is no time for amateurs, are unlikely to swing votes. Not when memories of his absence during the black summer bushfires remain, not when his bungles on COVID are catalogued, not when he talks about crises abroad yet appears incapable of dealing properly with the ones in his own backyard.
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However, if the maxim popularised by American politician Tip O’Neill, that all politics is local, remains true, then Morrison could struggle to make up enough ground to give the Coalition a fourth term.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, musings over where the fabled nuclear submarines will be housed, accompanied by warnings from Morrison that this is no time for amateurs, are unlikely to swing votes. Not when memories of his absence during the black summer bushfires remain, not when his bungles on COVID are catalogued, not when he talks about crises abroad yet appears incapable of dealing properly with the ones in his own backyard.
Flood-affected communities cannot understand why in Australia today it took so long for help to arrive.
www.watoday.com.au
