Thousands of people in Sydney’s south and south-west have been told to leave as flood warnings are in place for vast swathes of NSW, as Dominic Perrottet admits ‘better planning’ is required for future flood mitigation. Follow all the day’s news
Federal opposition frontbencher Tanya Plibersek has jumped on the radio right after the premier to talk about Labor’s proposed $77m package to improve consent education at school. (Hopefully with something better than that bizarre milkshake video from last year.)
Well, the national curriculum has just been strengthened in this area to say that all students should learn about respectful relationships while they’re at school ... This is making sure that we change the objective in the curriculum into real change in every classroom in Australia.
... If we can change that when they are young, we can change these shocking statistics across Australia where we see one in five Australian women experiencing sexual assault in her lifetime, one in three experiencing domestic violence.
Premier, can you guarantee people who lost their homes to these floods, that they will be able to rebuild where they are, or will some be forced to move to less flood-prone areas?
Well, Patricia, I’ll work through that because I mean, obviously this was an unpredicted, freak catastrophe. I mean, there’s a 14 and a half metre flood in Lismore!
But ultimately, in these times, we need to have frank assessments of the circumstances.
Again, I don’t mean to be rude, but you say “freak” – is it really a “freak” if we’re being told we’re going to have more of these events more frequently?
Should we be really describing it that way when we know that these events are going to be with us more often?
We’ve never seen a 14 and a half metre flood in Lismore, I’m sure you have that. There’s no doubt that we are seeing more of these events and we need to make sure that as we rebuild, we do so in such a way that ensures that we protect people’s lives and we have communities built in a way where we mitigate flood risk or fire risk.
... So as we get to that rebuilding phase, we’ll certainly look at better planning and more flood mitigation and fire mitigation as we move through.
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