Queensland flood recovery: A flood victim has pushed back at major parties for lack of climate action

Political leaders are keeping the flood recovery cash flowing but one Queensland flooding victim has called out those on both sides of the fence for climate policies that are only adding to the chaos. Verity Morgan-Schmidt and her family – who live near Gympie in southeast Queensland – has had a front-row seat to the raging floods that have ravaged parts of the state three times in just four months. “We’ve been isolated, cut off from town, the kids have repeatedly been sent home from school,” she said. The principle of Gheerulla Creek Consulting and former CEO of Farmers for Climate Action says while she and her kids had not been as affected as others during the crisis, it was frustrating to see ongoing climate policy inaction after such devastation. The activist – who is heavily involved in agriculture sustainability told NCA NewsWire “either major party has a policy on climate that is consistent with the kind of emissions cuts that we need to see to limit our planet warming”. “At the moment, we have policies and a lot of shouting but we have policies that are utterly inadequate to address the deeper emissions cuts that are required this decade,” she said. “I’m concerned about what we’re doing over the long term by failing to have a selective, honest conversation about what climate change, and what that actually means for our regions.” Ms Verity-Schmidt’s comments come after the state and federal governments announced this week they would each invest $360 million to support a new Phase 3 Floods Recovery Package, which will include mental health, environmental measures and economic measures. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk welcomed the funding she requested from the Morrison government, saying “I’ve always said we work best when we work together”. Recent data revealed that climate change is intensifying rainfall, with extreme weather patterns set to almost double per degree increase. Ms Verity-Schmidt is well aware. She said on Thursday that the “real challenge for all of us is that we are staring down the barrel of another weekend of rain”. “We’ve got the Mary River a kilometre down the road,” she said. “You know, it‘s just more heartache and more stress and more turmoil on top of what Queenslanders have already had to go through three times this year.” The record-breaking and relentless deluge that flooded towns and cities in Queensland was one of the most extreme disasters in Australian history, with around 60 per cent of the southeast region average annual rainfall occurring within three days. In comparison, Brisbane received almost the same amount of rain in three days than London in the UK typically does over an entire year. The supercharged climate fuelled the destruction of tens of thousands of homes and businesses, which were entirely submerged, and claimed the lives of at least 22 people. “You know, we throw out the word resilient every time a disaster hits, they’d [politicians] say our fellow Australians are resilient, they‘ll get back on their feet. But I speak to communities around Australia, and that resilience is starting to wear a bit a little bit thin.” Ms Morgan-Schmidt said.