Floods: now the blame game begins

Trevor McKenzie and Brent Install watch water from the Wimmera River flow past their Horsham frontyard. Photo / Getty Images

CANBERRA - Even as floodwaters continue to isolate large areas of Queensland and Victoria, the ground is being laid for recriminations and blame.

Although Queensland Premier Anna Bligh's stature has grown - possibly enough to avoid defeat at this year's elections - the commission of inquiry she has announced will provide a platform for an increasing number of critics.

Anger is already emerging at allegations of failures in flood warnings ahead of last week's deluge, in the management of the big flood-mitigation Wivenhoe dam west of Brisbane, and in emergency response.

Decisions allowing development in flood-prone areas have also come under fire.

Announcing the inquiry, Bligh said these were legitimate questions and she would not shy away from them: "I want to know the answers just as much as anybody else."

But Australian National University hydrology and stormwater runoff expert Tony Weber said the sheer volume of water dumped on the flood plain was so great nothing could have prevented widespread inundation.

"I think the call that we should have had engineering to solve this flood and make it go away is completely unrealistic," he said.

Yesterday many areas of southeastern Queensland remained under water, although Rockhampton began to emerge from crisis as the Fitzroy River fell to normal levels, and residents of the Locker Valley town of Grantham - described as the floods' "ground zero" - returned for the first time. The floods death toll remains at 20, with at least 12 still missing.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced a business taskforce to boost corporate donations to flood recovery, led by Treasurer Wayne Swan and including trucking billionaire Lindsay Fox and the chief executives of Leighton Holdings, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and White Energy.

Gillard is also looking at ways of providing further federal aid, including the possibility of a special tax levy.

Wesfarmers yesterday said it would increase its donation to A$7.5 million ($8.6 million) and Flight Centre pledged a minimum A$2 million. So far the relief appeal has raised more than A$85 million.

In Victoria, floodwaters continued to rise in the Wimmera town of Horsham, cutting it in two and leaving up to 500 homes isolated.

The floods have affected 51 towns and were yesterday descending on communities downstream of Horsham.

Police also said they had found the body of 8-year-old Lachlyn Collins, who disappeared on Monday while swimming at a swollen billabong near Shepparton.

Bligh's inquiry, which will have the powers of a royal commission and will present an interim report in August - in time for the next wet season - will embrace the key issues now emerging.

It will include planning and preparation for the floods, the performance of private insurers, all aspects of the emergency response, the adequacy of forecasts and early warning systems, the management of Wivenhoe and other dams, and land use planning.

The state government and local councils have come under increasing fire for allowing development in flood-prone areas - including a rush of luxury city apartments along the Brisbane River - and claims of inadequate planning.

Forecasters have also been accused of failing to act quickly enough on warnings that devastating rains were about to hit Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley last week.

And a growing chorus of critics has slammed the management of Wivenhoe, with some alleging in the Australian newspaper that 80 per cent of the flood in the Brisbane River at its peak last Thursday was a direct result of the decision to release up to one-third of the dam's capacity.

But claims by the dam's government manager, SeqWater, that releases from Wivenhoe markedly reduced floodwaters surging through Brisbane have been supported by Weber, a visiting fellow at the ANU's Fenner School of Environment and Society.

He said that during the three-day deluge between 6500 and 7500 gigalitres of rain ran off the catchment west of Brisbane - three or four times Wivenhoe's capacity.

"They had to actively manage that water to prevent a failure of thedam."

Weber said Queensland had to examine its planning policies and determine whether the risk of flooding outweighed the benefits of building.

This should include a re-examination of the modelling used in planning decisions, to determine a suitable flood level for future policy decisions, a proposal given force by images taken during the peak of the Brisbane floods.

"It was quite apparent that in all the older areas we were seeing excessive flooding, but a couple of new developments were remaining flood-free," Weber said.

This showed that proper planning could minimise the impact of flooding.