NORTHERN NSW PAIN TOO RAW TO FORGET

PROMISES and paper money are flying everywhere as the whirlwind of the federal election reaches a crescendo. Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese are shaking hands and smiling for cameras as they lobby voters in marginal areas in last-ditch efforts to be endorsed as house-sitter at The Lodge in Canberra.

Nine weeks ago, the leaders’ attention focused briefly on communities in northern NSW again ravaged by harrowing flooding and landslides. Talk centred on how to prevent it happening again and rehoming the hundreds of innocent people who had lost a roof over their heads.

And then the federal circus was gone. The big top tent pulled down and shipped to towns pivotal to determining the ringmaster for the next three years.

At the Tumbulgum Town Hall on Wednesday night, some of those people turfed out of their homes by Mother Nature spoke openly about their plight, and life over the past two months. They were articulate and conveyed their frustration, anger and empathy without emotion in an effort to get their message across powerfully.

Roads remain closed, insurance companies won’t get back to them, builders are in short supply and governments are criticised for being too reactive.

“There is no coordination from the government, they don’t have plans in place,” one said. Or: “That’s what’s crippling people – they either cannot get insurance and it’s destroyed their lives.”

In short, those people feel they have been forgotten just weeks after being national news.

It is quite ironic that as Messrs Morrison and Albanese campaign on taxpayer tickets for free rent in one of the most recognisable houses in Australia, hundreds of mums and dads do not know where to find their front door.

The war in Ukraine and now the federal election have taken the national spotlight off the ground in northern NSW. Who knows where the news agenda will roll next.

Regardless, those people across the border struggling for everyday necessities cannot be forgotten. Their ordeal is too raw and real.