Stop the Demolitions: Save our Heritage Homes. Deliver a Just Flood Recovery for the Northern Rivers

The Auditor-General for New South Wales has confirmed what our community has known for years: the promises made by the NSW Reconstruction Authority to flood-affected residents have been broken. The Auditor-General's performance audit of the $880 million Resilient Homes program and the $100 million Resilient Lands program found that neither had been effectively planned or administered by the NSW Reconstruction Authority, while Australia's most expensive disaster recovery program has failed to deliver a single home or housing lot.

Houses are being demolished while people remain without stable housing. Heritage homes built from irreplaceable Big Scrub hardwood are being crushed into landfill. This has to stop.

What is being destroyed: Historic hardwood homes, 100-year-old stained glass windows, solar systems, heritage timber: all crushed by excavators and sent to landfill. The RA claims over 70% of materials are recycled. In reality this figure largely reflects crushed concrete and green waste, not the careful salvage of valuable and irreplaceable materials. Meanwhile, the NSW Government is spending over $110,000 per home to demolish houses that could have been relocated, repurposed, or used to house our community.

What has been promised and not delivered: Many homeowners accepted buybacks after being assured their homes would be reused and relocated; that demolition would be a last resort. Those promises have been broken. Homes have been demolished without genuine relocation attempts, without transparency, and without community consultation.

We demand the NSW RA:

• Stop the demolitions: all buyback home demolitions must cease immediately and the decision-making criteria must be fully transparent.
  Repurpose existing homes: assess every buyback home for relocation, public housing, or community use before any demolition proceeds. Publish the results.
• Make Resilient Lands affordable and accessible: land releases mean nothing if flood-impacted people cannot afford them. Remove barriers to relocation and make pricing transparent.
• Extend deadlines for every home: the hard-won 2028 deadline extension must apply to every flood-impacted home, including relocation contracts. The RA must do more than "consider" extensions; every home requiring resilient support must have a workable timeline.
• Stop the greenwashing: publish true salvage and recycling rates. Recover solar systems, heritage timber, and hardwood before demolition. Offer salvaged materials to flood-affected residents.
• Establish genuine community oversight: a Citizens' Assembly or equivalent community-led body must have a real role in flood recovery decisions. Top-down bureaucratic recovery has failed. It is time for community-led solutions.
  Once our heritage homes are gone, they're gone.

Sign now and share. Tag [@JanelleSaffin] and [@ChrisMinnsMP]: demand real solutions, not destruction.

Email our local leaders directly:

Janelle Saffin: lismore@parliament.nsw.gov.au
Mayor Steve Krieg: mayor@lismore.nsw.gov.au
NSW Reconstruction Authority: info@reconstruction.nsw.gov.au