Only over one in 10 homeowners who applied for help after catastrophic flooding in northern New South Wales (NSW) have received a guarantee their house will be bought by the government.
Data to the end of September shows 11 percent of the 5001 buyback applications made across the Tweed, Byron and Lismore council areas have been approved as the two-year anniversary of the disaster nears.
In addition, no homes in the regions had been retrofitted or raised under a $700 million (US$441 million) joint federal-state scheme.
The figures was obtained by the Greens through questions on notice in NSW parliament last month.
The beleaguered Resilient Homes Program was announced by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and then-premier Dominic Perrottet in October 2022 following record-breaking floods in February that year.
It offered home buybacks, raising or retrofits through the NSW Reconstruction Authority.
Of the 2685 applications made in the Lismore council area for assistance under the program, 440—or 16 percent—had resulted in a buyback by the end of September.
About nine percent of the 1339 applications made in the Tweed shire were approved, totalling 117 buybacks.
Four buybacks were approved in the Byron shire, less than one percent of the 977 applications made.
In its answers to the Greens’ questions, the state government said participants in the program were “prioritised based on whether they are in a location that has significant risk to life, to warrant a voluntary buyback.”
Across the six local government areas impacted by the floods, 6700 homeowners expressed interest in buybacks, but only 1100 were offered.
A NSW government spokesman told AAP those 1100 homes were being prioritised for buyback under the scheme.
“To date 632 home buyback offers have been approved and 359 offers have been accepted across the northern rivers, which is more than half of the homes eligible for a buyback,” the spokesman said.
The spokesman added communication with communities had “not been good enough”, adding a staged approach was needed because of the size and scale of the program.
But Ballina Greens MP Tamara Smith accused the government of being “asleep at the wheel” and urged Premier Chris Minns to honour his commitment and ask the Commonwealth for a second tranche of funding.
Ms. Smith said hundreds of people remained in temporary housing with hundreds more at risk ahead of an escalating bushfire crisis.
“Flood survivors do not have another 20 months to wait for the state and federal governments to coordinate,” Ms. Smith told AAP.
Mr. Minns also conceded last month that communication about funding and eligibility had not been clear but added there were no simple fixes.
