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Flood planning is lacking Digital detox through strategic disengagement As the shock wears off, and the clean up begins, attention may turn to how to improve against flooding for the Shire in the future. Some obvious questions include: How can town drainage in the Shire be improved (it’s known to be in disrepair); Do roads and bridges need to be built to higher engineering standards; Can Council’s water pumps, that supply town water, be more resilient in floods so they don’t fail? Where will this money come from? Was the evacuation and BoM advice adequate, and how can it be improved? Is the local mobile network really up to scratch? Is it in the best interests of any community to be so heavily reliant on an ageing electricity network that takes days/weeks to be fixed? The last large scale flooding event, which caused massive damage, was in 2017. Residents shouldn’t be expected to accept this as the new normal, though it certainly smells that way. Compromised and smelly political actors who have abandoned community for corporate donations is one of the reasons we are at this point. Those funded by fossil fuel corporations – and thus making climate change worse – are the same political actors throwing our tax money back at us in the form of ‘grants’. Aren’t we lucky! They clearly think it’s a vote winner – see page 4. Anyway, on a more practical note, understanding the nuances of the problem is key to improving flood mitigation. Luckily, Council has a North Byron Catchment Flood Risk Management Study and Plan, which aims to help the community better prepare for future events. The public had its say in January 2021, and the focus was on the Brunswick River, Simpsons Creek and Marshalls Creek catchments. These catchments were the main cause for the the last disaster in 2017 and the one that just happened. So what does the plan say? Mullumbimby was identified as the most flood affected town in the catchment, as ‘41 per cent of all flood affected residential properties are located in Mullumbimby’. One recommended measure was to ‘Undertake an Evacuation Assessment for Mullumbimby’. The development of a Flood Warning Network for North Byron was also proposed. Other recommendations were to ‘Implement debris control measures for Federation Bridge and Billinudgel Railway Bridge’, and the ‘Development of a whole of catchment drainage model and an overland flow path investigation’. The report also identified 15 possible houses (nine of which are in Mullumbimby) that could be voluntary acquired by the government. It was suggested that the land is then ‘given over to public space and should be rezoned as an appropriate use such as E2 Environmental Conservation or similar in the LEP, so that no future development can take place [on those blocks of land].’ A potential levee for Billinudgel was proposed, as well as infrastructure improvements for Billinudgel. However, dredging of the Brunswick River, its tributaries or the Marshalls Creek was not recommended as a flood management option. Similarly, no further changes to the rock walls at Brunswick Heads were recommended. While the walls may slow down flood water exiting, they also slow down the impacts of ocean inundation, according to the study. While it’s not clear what, if any, of the above recommendations were explored or enacted by Council, we do have a fancy looking Emergency Dashboard on Council’s website. It clearly wasn’t enough on the night of February 28, 2022. Hans Lovejoy, editor News tips are welcome: editor@echo.net.au

ometime in 2012 I think it was, a valued friend and colleague and I were driving back from a community located in the western parts of NSW, and we began to discuss matters that each of us was grappling with. I shared something that had been on my mind for many years involving the question of whether or not, as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, we were happier, healthier and generally better off when we were forcibly segregated from white society. Forced segregation and other inequalities and factors devastatingly impacted the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in ways that one must experience to fully appreciate its dehumanising toxicity. Forced segregation and its attendant powers operated, and was rigidly enforced, across Australia up until the 1970s, and circumstances only began to gradually change following the election of the Whitlam government in 1972. This was only five years after white Australians voted overwhelmingly to support and approve amendments to the Australian Constitution so that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders could be counted in the Australian Census, and to grant powers to the Commonwealth to make special laws to address Indigenous socioeconomic need and aspiration. I know what it feels like to grow up under the ubiquitous powers of the Aboriginal Welfare Board, and have witnessed the pain and humiliation of forced segregation, racism and the poverty associated with the denial of fundamental human rights and freedoms. I also remember our shanties were also often filled with days and nights of shared happiness and abundant joy. Over the years, I have pondered this binary experience, and developed what I have termed the concept of ‘strategic disengagement’ (SD). It’s core defining characteristic is that in the spaces where we are required to explain and/or defend

The Byron Shire Echo Volume 36 #38 March 2, 2022 Established 1986 • 24,500 copies every week The Echo acknowledges the people of the Bundjalung nation as the traditional custodians of this land and extends respect to elders past, present and future. Disclaimer: The Echo is committed to providing a voice for our whole community. The views of advertisers, letter writers, and opinion writers are not necessarily those of the owners or staff of this publication.

www.echo.net.au Phone: 02 6684 1777 Editorial/news: editor@echo.net.au Advertising: adcopy@echo.net.au Office: Village Way, Stuart Street, Mullumbimby NSW 2482 General Manager Simon Haslam Editor Hans Lovejoy Deputy Editor Aslan Shand Photographer Jeff Dawson Advertising Manager Angela Harris Production Manager Ziggi Browning

Nicholas Shand 1948–1996 Founding Editor

Professor Bob Morgan our rights and freedoms as First Australians, perhaps we are better off to simply disengage with the toxic forces of our social and political marginalisation and oppression. Using SD as a focus, my friend and I considered how else it might be applied to respond to the challenges of modernity. My friend and I are both septuagenarian, so we believe that we are ideally positioned to reflect on a world before the internet, and the piece of metal and plastic that seems to have taken over our lives and to which most of humanity seems permanently attached. We mused whether we should write a joint piece about the omnipotent presence of the smart phone and the internet and their impact on our lives and the sanity of humanity. However, we also agreed that, as with most technological advancements, there are often positive as well as negative aspects to these developments. Perhaps balance is what we were concerned with rather than abandonment. Building on the notion of Strategic Disengagement, we agreed that we could call our piece Digital Strategic Disengagement (DSD). So, it was with profound delight that I stumbled across a podcast of an interview between the ABC’s Phillip Adams and Johann Hari, the author of a new book titled Stolen Focus – Why You Can’t Pay Attention. I was fascinated with what Hari was sharing with Adams; it was as if he had been sitting in the backseat of the car during our drive across the western plains of NSW. Hari’s book details the research and outcomes he conducted during which he interviewed 250 leading experts from around the globe to

– Finley Peter Dunne 1867–1936

help him better understand what is happening to our ‘stolen focus’ and the role that digital technology plays in this loss. An alarming statistic shared by Hari is that in the USA, people are so attached to their digital device that they touch it more than 2,600 times a day. On average, Americans spend three hours and fifteen minutes a day on the phone. It would be interesting to know what the Australian stats are, although I suspect that we would have similar stats on a per capita basis. To help deal with his own level of digital addiction, Hari decided that he had to cut himself off, strategically, from the digital world. So he decided to spend three months on an island, just off the coast of Boston, to engage in what Hari calls his ‘extreme digital detox’. The book, Stolen Focus, is one of the outcomes of Hari’s digital detox regime and he accepts that it ‘couldn’t be a long-term’ solution. He explained that he ‘wasn’t going to join the Amish and abandon technology forever.’ Hari’s act of digital detox was an act of desperation because, as he explains, he feared that he ‘might lose some crucial aspects of my ability to think deeply.’ The ability to think deeply and to find answers to life’s challenges is crucial to the survival of our species, a skill that I often find missing in our leaders, especially modern politicians. ‘In his unique voice, Johann Hari tackles the profound dangers facing humanity from information technology and rings the alarms bells for what all of us must do to protect ourselves, our children and our democracies’ – Hillary Clinton.

Lauren Archer + Caring for your pets + Keeping your livestock healthy and productive + State-of-the-art humangrade CT machine + Laser therapy machine + Mobile service

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