Opinion: Liberal MLC Neil Thomson says improvements needed before Gascoyne is hit with ‘Kimberley-style flood’

The extreme flooding across the Kimberley sends a very timely warning to both residents and the State Government right across the Mid West as water levels reached 1.5m more than the previous record, creating an unprecedented crisis which will likely see the main highway to Darwin closed for several months. The horticultural sector in the Ord River Valley at Kununurra is being impacted by the road closures and growers are mulling over their planting decisions for the upcoming season because of the massive transport challenge. This event also worries growers in other parts of our State. Some growers along the Gascoyne River worry about the impact future flooding might have on their properties. For some, their experience in the December 2020 floods saw significant soil loss and property damage despite that particular flood being well below previous records. Our climate is changing and rainfall events have intensified in the north over the past few decades, creating the need to harden our infrastructure and further improve the resilience of towns and growing regions against very large flooding events. In 2022 — with the support of the Federal Government — the State undertook to update the hydraulic modelling across the Gascoyne flood plain using different scenarios. This involves leveraging serious computing grunt to assess what how future floods would behave on the flood plain. Despite the funding being available, the former minister for regional development Alannah MacTiernan indicated the work wouldn’t be completed for nearly four years. The recent Kimberley floods should motivate the new minister, Don Punch, to urgently review that decision and finalise this critical work as soon as possible. Furthermore, we need urgent advice from flood experts about priority works to reduce the impact of any future significant flood event with associated funding being made available. It is only a matter of time before we see a Kimberley-style flood hit our Gascoyne region, so we must act to ensure our main highway north, as well as the town of Carnarvon and our horticultural sector is properly protected into the future. Neil Thomson is a Liberal MLC for the Mining and Pastoral Region and shadow minister for planning, lands and heritage