YEARS ago there was a documentary that took a humorous look at attitudes to wearing seatbelts. In one scene the presenter is in a car being driven by a young woman. “Do you feel safe,” he asks, “not wearing a seatbelt?” “Oh, I’m okay,” she said, “I’m on the pill.” Incredulous, he replies, “But shouldn’t you be wearing a seatbelt?”
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
“No,” she insists, in the process of taking a few dangerous curves, “I’m safe. I’m on the pill.”
This cameo became a running gag symbolising nonsensical non-solutions to serious problems. We have our own instance of it with Eurobodalla Shire Council’s approach to sea-level rise. We need a seatbelt, but council remains a firm believer in the pill, in the form of its interim sea-level rise policy.
It claims that the policy will keep us safe, or at least will keep council safe from legal action that could arise should it fail to deal with the effects of sea-level rise.
But Batemans Bay CBD and Narooma flats are exempt. There is no policy for these areas. Even if the policy were any good, it would be like having a seatbelt and then taking it off to come down the Clyde Mountain.
But the policy isn’t any good. It is simplistic and punitive. For example, it brands properties as potentially affected by sea- level rise if only a corner is below four metres above sea level. It insists that each house along the same street pay for its own independent assessment of the potential effects of sea-level rise, rather than providing for a sensible single assessment of the area.
These problems with the policy, and many more, are the things that need to be discussed at council’s sea-level rise workshop.
Instead, there is a heavy emphasis on scientific experts. However, most of us understand where the science is at and don’t need to rehearse it over and over again.
You could almost believe that the science is being used as a distraction, to avoid any close scrutiny of the policy and its deficiencies.
The experts are bound to disappoint. They will affirm, yet again, that global mean sea-level rise is twice what we think it was last century, but that rates of sea-level rise around our coastlines vary hugely from this, both above and below.
Along the NSW coast it is considerably below. As John Church, a leading expert, said in his Bay Post headline recently, there are no simple answers.
The big question for any of the experts is “When will we start to see sea-level rises along the NSW coast reach levels approaching 3mm per year, or 10mm per year?” It seems a long way off at the moment. Will it be in 10 years, 30 years, 50 years? If they can’t answer that, then we’re wasting their time and ours. We have to work out what to do using the information that we’ve got. We need to get into thoughtful planning rather than inappropriate over-reaction.
You would imagine then, that the NSW Department of Planning and Infra-structure could provide significant input into a policy on sea-level rise.
It has just finalised a circular on sea-level rise planning issues. It’s doing this because various councils started to go off the rails in the kinds of responses that they were making to sea-level rise.
Eurobodalla Shire is a stand out among these councils.
Has anyone from the Department of Planning been invited to the sea- level rise workshop? No they haven’t. This seems an extraordinary omission.
But then council doesn’t need a seatbelt. They’ve got the pill.
John Rice
Long Beach
