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How the long-term recovery from the bushfires could determine the Australian election


COBARGO, Australia On a recent sunny day in the hills behind Cobargo, a village in southeastern Australia, local volunteers worked hard to install a bathroom for Jee’s family who waited more than two years to have a proper bathroom.

Tammie and Brett Jee and their five sons lost their home on New Year’s Eve 2019 when a raging fire swept through the area. It was one of the most damaging bushfires of the “black summer” in Australia, killing 34 people, destroying 3,500 homes and burning more than 60 million acres in two months.

For Jees and many others, recovery from their devastating loss has been slow. Local government data shows that only 1 in 10 families in the affected area have completed the rebuilding. Most haven’t even started yet. Planning delays, shortages of skilled workers, supply chain problems caused by the pandemic and lack of government support were among the causes of the delays.

Suffering has left its mark not only on families who live in camps or battle bureaucracy. It has also shifted political views: If the opposition Labor Party wins Australia’s election on Saturday, it could partly be because these once-conservative rural towns south of Sydney have failed. change their allegiance out of frustration and anger.

“It was a perfect storm of elements,” said Kristy McBain, Member of Parliament for the region. Among them is a recovery effort complicated by the overlapping involvement of national, state, and local governments.

Ms McBain, the mayor of the local council on the fire, said: “It seems like every time we have a disaster we have a government that wants to try to reinvent the wheel so that recovery works like that. any”. “And we’ve never decided on a model, which is pretty crazy.”

Other communities were ravaged by the fiery summer as well. Other towns have also struggled to rebuild and recover, hampered by the pandemic; by floods and storms; and by a frost approval process from government agencies.

But Cobargo, where Prime Minister Scott Morrison whistled loudly while visiting the town shortly after the fire, has become a symbol of the devastation and politically divisive consequences.

Located inland from Australia’s southeast coast, 240 miles from Sydney, Cobargo is in the Eden-Monaro constituency, an adjacent seat that, until 2016, was won by the party that formed the government in Australia’s parliamentary system for four decades. It is currently held by Ms McBain, of the opposition Labor Party, who won the July 2020 by-election by less than 1 percentage point.

The northern constituency, Gilmore, was also hit hard by the fires, held by another Labor representative, Fiona Phillips. It had previously been in conservative hands for two decades.

With the ruling conservative Liberal-National coalition expected to lose its urban seats in other states, it is conventional wisdom that the current government’s re-election route would traverse the country – in This case is the country ravaged by the bush.

Mr Morrison is currently in power with a one-seat majority in Parliament. Failure to regain those seats could prompt his coalition to run for re-election.

The Jee family has more immediate concerns. They initially lived in a rental house before returning to the fire-stricken countryside of Wandella, near Cobargo, where they built a small barn and supplemented it with a disaster shelter “pod” – a standalone shipping container 23 feet long and eight feet wide – provided by an Australian charity.

Life in their tiny makeshift home was tough, even before an absurdly wet year in which they now battle mold. Because Jees’ third son, 16-year-old Mason, has muscular dystrophy, he can’t use the cramped camp-style bathroom in the cabin. Before the new bathroom was installed in the newly built barn, every time he wanted to shower, he had to go to his grandmother’s house a few miles away.

As the Jees began rebuilding, they hit a wall of planning paperwork. Heritage planning issues with their former home and changes to the development law mean that at one stage it looked like it was never allowed to be rebuilt.

While those hurdles have been largely overcome, Jees is still awaiting final approval to begin construction. They are unlikely to have a new home built on the 4th anniversary of the bushfires. “It was a nightmare,” Miss Jee said.

Nearby in Cobargo, Vic Grantham is trying to find answers about the latest delay in his own planning. When Mr. Grantham and his partner, Janice Holdsworth, moved to a 26-acre property in the area in 2005, they found community and satisfaction.

Early in the morning on New Year’s Day 2020, their house was destroyed by fire.

They sold their property and purchased a property in the town of Cobargo, intending to live in an existing warehouse on the site while they build their new dream home.

But because they had moved, they later learned that they no longer qualified as wildfire survivors to be prioritized by the local government for planning.

“We weren’t prioritized,” said Mr Grantham, “because we didn’t have a ‘wildfire’. That’s George Orwell said. Tell me again that I am not affected by the dust fire. ”

There are indications that such anger over the disaster response could hurt the Liberal-National government’s chances of regaining Gilmore and Eden-Monaro. Recently, a poster depicting Mr Morrison in a Hawaiian shirt and floral headdress featured on Cobargo’s main street, reminding voters that the prime minister was on vacation in Hawaii while the fires were burning. rife.

In February, there was an additional constituency government for Bega’s seat, which takes over parts of two federal constituencies and is home to many of the communities affected by the fires. For the first time, a Labor candidate won the seat.

Election winner Dr Michael Holland said: “I think there was anger about the bushfires.

During an interview at his clinic in the seaside town of Moruya, Dr. Holland, an obstetrician, recalls taking shelter from the fire in his office. “I slept five nights on the floor here,” he said.

His home was spared, but many of his constituents were not so fortunate. “People haven’t rebuilt yet,” he said. “There are actually a lot of people out there struggling, and they have a lot of time fighting in silence.”

With Australia vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, effective disaster recovery will only become more important in the years to come.

Ms. McBain, member of Congress, said: “Climate change makes a difference. “These events are happening more frequently; they are more intense. They are having an impact on the lives and livelihoods of so many people today. Governments have a responsibility to follow due process.”

Whatever happens in the Australian election, the people of Cobargo will continue their slow path of recovery.

Philippe Ravenel, a Swiss-Australian blacksmith who, with his wife, Marie, lost their home in Wandella in the fire, said: “You will heal with earth.

“We can’t complain,” he said, noting that some have lost their lives. The fire in the area burned so fiercely that Mr. Ravenel’s cast iron pots melted.

For the past two years, the Ravenel family has lived in a warehouse attached to the smithy, which survived the fires. They will soon start rebuilding.

In the meantime, Mr. Ravenel has joined a project to help the community heal. Together with another local blacksmith, Iain Hamilton, he opened his workshop for the residents of the area to forge a leaf with their name on it. After forging about 3,000 leaves, the blacksmiths intend to use them to create a memorial.

“The idea is that you have a tree that you can sit under and meditate,” he said.

The memorial, on Cobargo’s main street, will be a lasting reminder of the wildfires that devastated this village, the chaotic rebuilding process that followed, and Cobargo’s central role in a conflict. broader national discourse in Australia.

“We used fire to create something,” Mr. Ravenel said of the project, “instead of all the devastation that fire leaves behind.”



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