JUNGLE DRUM: Who will Step Up?

LAWRENCE MASON COLUMN

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Noah Bridge washed out in the floods of December. Picture: Lawrence Mason

Whatever you do as a group, a unified approach (holistic planning) always wins and gets the job done quicker and better. Let's imagine a husband and wife team who plan a small shop that sells pre-packaged cold drinks as part of its offerings. Worried about power prices they dig deep and buy a new eco commercial fridge.

Hubby likes Coke, and Wifey loves Pepsi so without talking they both ring respective suppliers and order up, only to discover that the fridge won't fit it all. Luckily the Coke rep rings to follow up and offers a free fridge, and since that is happening Wifey gets Pepsi to match it. No room for three fridges so they sell their own at a loss

The loan fridges chew power and they discover that to keep the fridges they have to have 'facings' of new product that does not sell and there is no ullage offered. There is a fair bit of waste. What should have been a key profit centre for their new business is now a liability and will be a factor in their success or otherwise. The sad truth of private enterprise. This poor couple worked really hard for no result.

Unfortunately, in the response to our cyclone and flood disaster I see many parallels. Parallel one is that everyone involved is working really hard toward a good outcome. Much paperwork is occurring and permits and funding are being applied for. But there is no means to speed any of this up.

The Cook Highway isn't fixed, won't be by the onset of the wet, and may fail again as a result. The Mossman River is full of silt and may rise again and flood the town and the current insurance issues have not yet been resolved. Further north in the Jungle there are numerous locations with significant damage where not a finger has been lifted on site. The actual process is so slow 10 months have now passed and I am wishing I had shares in a traffic control company.

The various government departments perhaps don't have enough staff to process the sheer volume of applications. There are seemingly not enough contractors with the skills and ability to get insurance to do the jobs or carry out the planning for the jobs. Sites for permanent spoil disposal are few and far between. The excess of regulation means that some jobs have as many as six referral agencies.

I would like to acknowledge the many people I have met that are head down, tail up trying their best to get the job done. But like Hubby and Wifey it does not matter how hard you work if the holistic planning and a unified approach isn't there.

When you have a government that is more interested in pork barrelling city folk with fifty cent fares and cheap power, the chance of regions getting anything is low. The chances of resources to help move repairs along or deal with insurance companies is nil. Resourcing and lighting a fire under referral agencies? That's a laugh.

There have been so many reports and referrals on Noah Bridge since 2017 that I reckon you would need a light truck to move them from one place to another. Despite having a new bridge stored since about 2019, and SO many reports and applications, we still have a broken old clunker and a dodgy heavy vehicle crossing.

The fact that no elected individual can or will speak out about this outrage is symptomatic about what is wrong at the bureaucratic level. Some of these referral agencies clearly need better resources and a rocket under them.

Would KAP or the LNP do anything about this? To be honest I am not sure. Nobody seems prepared to have a close look at disaster response and planning and the slowness of carrying out repairs. Happy to be proven wrong but that's how I see it.

Who is going to step up? Because if the predicted big wet comes again in 24/25, someone will need to.

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