Belconnen Community Council Chair’s Report March 2022

2022 continues to throw challenges at us; not just here in our district, but right across the world. The horrors of a war in the Ukraine, soaring fuel costs and the humanitarian wave that will follow are sure to touch us here in the weeks ahead. As always, we will do our bit to accommodate families who are fortunate enough to escape and find their way to our shores, but in the interim there are many different ways you can help.

Then there’s the devastation to our north from the floods. Our thanks go out to all the volunteers and recovery workers who are pulling some incredible hours to help with the clean up; a big shout out to our ACT SES team who are up in Lismore as part of our contribution to their recovery.

The ACT Legislative Assembly is holding an inquiry into the January 3 storm that devastated areas of our district and surrounding areas of the territory. I spoke to Anna Vidot from 666 ABC Canberra about the state of the recovery effort, what people have told us and where we think the service offering can be better tailored to meet community expectation. The constant theme from those affected has been the framing of the response and the settings for the recovery; many of us who were around in the 1990s and 2000s remember weather events that took a similar time to recover from. It would appear that we still have those calibrations in place in 2022, so there is scope for the agencies involved to shift the dial closer to community expectations. You can contribute to the inquiry through us (our Environment Sub Committee will develop a submission) or directly here:

https://www.parliament.act.gov.au/parliamentary-business/in-committees/committees/hcw/inquiry-into-the-west-belconnen-supercell-thunderstorm

It’s an interesting construct that so many politicians are referring to our current round of disasters as “one in xxxx year events”; but they are sadly missing the point. The model that they refer to is one based on risk and likelihood in predicting an event; it is not based on historical data or occurrence. No one in living or recorded memory has seen an inundation of rain, wind and hail with such destructive force as we have seen so far this century. Sure we’ve had more water or fire damage in years past, but it is the intensity with which they are happening that makes the science of prediction modelling look quite inept, so perhaps it’s time we all looked at a different way to cope. Planning for recovery should start with planning not to be in high risk areas and mitigating for life rather than profit. That starts with design for the interface between the natural and built environments and as a city state that has seen natural disasters on a huge scale, perhaps we can start to lead the way through this inquiry.

As always, we look to you for new ideas and thinking. Please reach out if you’d like to help our sub committees in the months ahead as we maintain our Belconnen district as “The Jewel in Canberra’s Crown”.

Glen Hyde

Chair

Belconnen Community Council

15 March 2022