The need to rapidly provide appropriate accommodation for members of the community displaced by natural disasters is the most immediate and important concern of response and recovery agencies. In the Northern Rivers, as with many regional areas in Australia, the availability – and affordability of housing and accommodation is at a crisis point meaning that identifying suitable accommodation at short notice for thousands of displaced people is impossible. In this instance the NSW government established Recovery Centres around the region as the most appropriate response during and immediately following the flood but is now establishing locations around the region with short term solutions such as “pod villages”.

Housing affordability (relative to average incomes) is already a challenge throughout much of the region and there is a lack of housing for some members of the community, e.g., 1-2 bedroom units for younger people and students, affordable housing for low income families, and so on. The lack of available housing for key workers was already a major concern for businesses, now greatly exacerbated by the flood.

In the medium term, the region will look to either building new, refurbishing or allocating housing and accommodation as a transition to longer term accommodation as the pod precincts become less appropriate for those with longer term needs. Given the thousands of people whose homes were completely destroyed, severely damaged or otherwise made uninhabitable, the government must consider all options for permanent resettlement. This could be by voluntary relocation, buy back, voluntary house raising schemes or other programs with a goal of giving long term sustainable solutions for all residents. For those where it makes sense to resettle back in place, assistance must be made available to rebuild with flood mitigating planning, infrastructure and materials.

The Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation (NRRC) has been established as the lead agency for much of this work and RDANR will be working closely with this agency to assist the communities to get back on the road to recovery. The NRRC has already signalled its intention to garner best practice from around Australia including programs used by Queensland Reconstruction Authority which had success relocating the Grantham community following the 2011 flood.

Long term, appropriate social and affordable housing resettlement, either in place or via relocation, will require high levels of consultation with communities. Success will lie in the ability of the leaders to implement place-based solutions using a combination of innovative and traditional models.

RDA Northern Rivers and Northern Rivers Joint Organisation have partnered with the seven councils to engage a consultancy to audit industrial and employment land across the Northern Rivers. This body of work was identified as a priority prior to the 2022 floods and, due to the effect on supply of industrial land and buildings, the urgency and importance of such an audit has grown in significance.

Specifically, the report will assess demand and supply of lands looking forward 20 years and beyond, identify the likely demands for various employment and industrial land uses, considering global, domestic and local trends and provide commentary of the economic, social and environmental values and issues related to various land uses.

At time of writing the consultancy HillPDA has been appointed to undertake the work and the final report is due to be presented for the steering committee’s consideration in January 2023.

A profitable and innovative SME business and industry sector is a principal driver of regional economic development. The growth of the Northern Rivers economy in the longer term will be realised through a mix of reinvestment into existing industries, strategic attraction of new or complementary businesses and the nurturing of emerging industries. A healthy economy is one which offers meaningful full-time employment across a diversity of skill sets. These industries will capitalise on the region’s lifestyle attributes and its natural comparative advantages to enhance our appeal as an investment location and a place in which to live, work and do business.

Employment opportunities across the three “functional economic regions” as designated by NSW government rely heavily on retail, health care and social assistance, and the hospitality sector. Over the past six years, compared to the NSW average, the region’s unemployment rate has been lower than state averages but also has low labour force participation. Underemployment and casualisation of the workforce have also been a sustained characteristic.

According to the ABS Business Counts data, in June 2020, 64.4% of the total number of businesses in the Northern Rivers were non-employing (micro- businesses/sole traders). Another 33.7% employed fewer than 20 people; 1.9% employed between 20 and 199 workers and larger businesses employing greater than 199 people numbered just .03%. Image: Lismore City Council REGIONAL ECONOMIC RECOVERY PLAN 2025 27 The region’s business profile differs to the employment profile, with construction accounting for 17%, agriculture, forestry and fishing accounting for 16.5% of regional businesses and construction for 17%. There are also high levels of businesses involved in professional, scientific and technical services (11%), rental hiring and real estate services (10%), and 8% retail trade. (REMPLAN, 2022).

Industry specialisations in the region range across manufacturing (particularly food and wood products, textiles, clothing and footwear), retail trade and personal and community services (particularly health- related and residential care services). The region’s creative industries are also well-represented by the publishing, screen and performing arts sectors.

Diversifying the region’s industry base is necessary to grow local business and provide a variety of meaningful and sustainable employment opportunities for all members of the Northern Rivers community. There is a desire to leverage the region’s existing attributes and capacities to grow regional competitive advantage, particularly in the fields of education, health care including mental health, sustainable and high quality ‘food and fibre’ production and the visitor economy.

As the world moves past the Third Industrial Revolution of digitisation, which begun last century, into an emerging Fourth Industrial Revolution, the region must ready itself to embrace a world in which the traditional boundaries between the physical, digital, and biological worlds become blurred. Already we have witnessed massive disruptions on the supply side with agile new companies rethinking how value can be created from ideation stage to additive manufacturing through to autonomous delivery using price, speed and quality to eliminate traditional business models. On the demand side consumer patterns of behaviour are shifting to drive even greater changes in design, logistics and marketing of goods and services.

There are also opportunities to support business innovation and the development of emerging industries including the renewable energy sector, creating value from waste resource, designing out waste altogether and embracing ‘circular economy’ principles.

The region’s economic output is $34 Bn or 2.6% of New South Wales total output. The industry mix is relatively diverse but has few higher tier companies with the majority of construction and project-based companies falling into middle tier operators. As the reconstruction effort ramps up, these locally based businesses have a value proposition which should be meaningful for larger prime contractors that will be managing major project rebuild packages. Local companies know and understand local conditions, have trained staff who don’t need accommodation, have developed their own extensive networks and are led by a local decision maker, which can result in savings in cost and time for the project leads. This Recovery Plan acknowledges that some level of investment in programs to build capacity and capability in these locally based firms will need to be made. Not only because this investment should lead to successful tendering for respective work packages, but also to create a legacy of increasing in capability for the future. Recent history has shown us that during mining booms in regional areas, the successful regions were those where businesses learnt to tender cooperatively, invest in new technology and equipment, and commit to world best practice underpinned by quality training. Not only did these steps provide a pathway to work directly relating to the mining sector, but to other sectors as the mining tapered off, providing a resilience and focus on innovation that was largely absent beforehand. The reconstruction investment will provide a once in a generation level of investment and RDANR will support the state and local governments’ local procurement programs in addition to working closely with the relevant organisations such as ICN, and the prime contractors. The Northern Rivers NSW brand will be a useful tool to promote the capabilities of local suppliers.

The terminology of ‘build back better’ has been a catch cry which may be losing its currency, however, the intent behind it is in close alignment with this Recovery Plan. That is, to build in risk reduction and mitigation in the first place and ensure that building materials and equipment installed during the rebuilding phase are appropriate to withstand future flood events.

A resilient infrastructure plan will include embedding this methodology into reconstructed road networks, transport, energy, water and telecommunications infrastructure. The projected effects of climate change on our built environment will only exacerbate the need to seek new, and more resilient solutions to our future infrastructure needs.

Public infrastructure rebuilding will be managed through NRRC and Public Works who will liaise with councils and NSW agencies via specific funding such as Infrastructure Betterment Fund etc. Funding will often come through government allocations and grants and RDANR will support councils to access this funding on an ongoing basis. In addition, RDANR will continue to work with Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation and can provide connections to commonwealth funding, programs and lead agencies such as the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, and Communications and the Arts.

The impact of COVID-19 on the flows of critical domestic and international labour meant that a tightening labour market was made even more difficult immediately following the flood events. RDANR identified that there would be short term workforce issues with thousands of workers immediately displaced and then ongoing shortages facing businesses as they recovered to normal operational levels.

The existing industry structure lends itself to high level of casualised, part-time and seasonal roles across the major employing industries such as hospitality, retail, health, agriculture, and other sectors. Against this backdrop of a workforce shortfall, there is a need to resource the mammoth reconstruction effort, requiring thousands more workers and putting even more pressure on the available labour and business owners’ workforce development planning.

In response to this short and medium-term environment, RDANR established a steering committee of relevant training and employment agencies to lead a strategy for the region. The key activities under the ‘Displaced Workforce Steering Committee” are outlined below.

Key actions agreed by the Steering Committee to assist the regional effort to attract, retrain and retain staff:

• Quantify the size and scope of the displaced workforce
• Scope the economic damage to businesses
• Identify employment Infrastructure and support required for both business owners and workers
• Develop effective online tools to assist businesses re-employ workers
• Develop effective options for Employers to re- employ or redeploy staff Northern Rivers, NSW Regional Economic Recovery Plan 2025
• Promote reskilling and upskilling programs to all workers using all channels including MFWP
• Identify large employment driving projects and opportunities

The Steering Committee recognises that the workforce shortage issues will remain for the next few years as the economy moves to a recovery phase, and a longer-term strategy will be developed to guide the region into the future.

Despite being classified as NSW’s highest rainfall region, the most urgent challenges facing the Northern Rivers are related to water: flood mitigation and the provision of good quality and safe potable water delivered by reliable water infrastructure. This type of infrastructure is critical to the health and cleanliness of communities as well as being a critical input to many industries. Alongside transport, energy, and telecommunications infrastructure, the region’s future growth is dependent on continuous improvement and upgrade of water infrastructure assets.

Alongside these challenges, sits the urgent need for regional solutions for flood mitigation. CSIRO has been engaged to lead the research into viable options and make recommendations and RDANR supports this critical work. Flood mitigation options may include large infrastructure such as a dam or improve current smaller infrastructure such as canals and floodgates and natural resource management activities.

As the region grapples with developing effective flood mitigation measures, the longer-term vision of securing a reliable supply of water must be maintained. Added to this, the poor quality of the river system, in particular the Richmond River⁵ is placing strains on the environment and agricultural requirements. The projected impacts of climate change on our environment will only exacerbate the need to seek new solutions to our future infrastructure needs. For example, it is often quoted that the Dutch spend 90% of their natural disaster budgets on planning for occurrences and 10% on remediation whereas Australia has traditionally taken an approach that focusses heavily on reconstruction, and much less on planning. An effective recovery plan requires much more investment into planning and reducing the potential impacts of flood.

The region has three main water supply authorities: Tweed Shire Council, Clarence Valley Council and Rous County Council, a constituent council responsible for the local government areas of Ballina, Byron, Lismore, and Richmond Valley. Rous County Council estimates that water demand could exceed the reliable supply from existing sources by 2024, which is within the timeframe of this strategy and reflects the urgency of this situation. At the time of writing, Rous County Council has adopted an approach which will seek to increase supplies which could meet demand through until around 2040 by utilising a range of measures.

The centre of community life is the main street or the central business districts in larger centres. Often these centres are the showpiece of the communities which represent the inherent culture and uniqueness of each community. Somehow the outlook of the community following disasters is tied to these centres’ ability to revitalise. As community members see their town centres revitalise and businesses reopening, confidence and a new vibrancy often emerge. It is for these reasons that much effort is invested into quickly rebuilding.

The region’s community infrastructure extends to presenting world class festivals and events from international music events to international film festivals, writers festivals, food events and more. These events promote the region to a national and international visitor market and are economic drivers of themselves. Encouraging arts and cultural events, appropriate to the phase of recovery of each community is also a key factor in building confidence and provides a focal point for community members to come together for mutual support.

A broad cross-section of stakeholders was consulted during the formation of this plan. The consultations helped to establish some common understanding of the region’s strengths, challenges, and opportunities for long-term growth. The findings reflect a whole- of-region view that is supported by statistical information, regional strategies and policies which collectively inform the priorities presented in this plan.

The Draft Plan was circulated for comment with submissions received from key agencies, businesses and individuals who provided crucial feedback and insights.

Australian Disaster Resilience Handbook Collection: Community Recovery Handbook 2, Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience (AIDR), on behalf of the Australian Government Department of Home Affairs, 2018