Australia's Costly Disaster Recovery Program Fails to Deliver Homes

Australia's most expensive disaster recovery program has failed to deliver a single home or housing lot in the more than three and a half years since its creation, according to a new audit.

Disaster recovery programs were ​implemented in response to the 2022 floods across northern NSW, which saw 4,055 properties left uninhabitable, and a further 10,849 damaged.

A performance audit of the $880 million Resilient Homes program and the $100 million Resilient Lands program by the NSW Auditor-General (AG) found neither had been effectively planned or administered by the NSW Reconstruction Authority (RA).

Of the 4,382 homes or housing lots promised through the programs, zero had been delivered as of March 31 this year.

The AG stated the RA's ability to deliver land within the anticipated five-year period was "at risk".

"The Resilient Lands program … is not yet fulfilling its role of supporting flood-affected residents in the Northern Rivers," the report stated.

The programs, announced in October 2022, were described by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as "the biggest agreement of its kind ever in response to a very significant event".

The report found "there was no business case or cost-benefit analysis to inform the design and establishment of either program".

The programs were shrouded in controversy almost from the start, with the initial promise of 6,000 homes being eligible for buy-back, raising or retrofitting being whittled down to 2,000 by June 2023.

The report found the RA would not meet its initial funded target for the buy-back scheme.

It outlined how buy-back numbers were revised to 1,345 houses when the Resilient Homes budget was increased to $880 million in December 2024, but this was reduced to 1,000 houses in August 2025.

As of March 31 this year, 793 buy-backs have been finalised.

The buy-back scheme left a swathe of empty homes in Lismore, some of which became a haven for squatters.

Delays hamper recovery

The effectiveness of the program has already been questioned by flood survivors and community leaders.

Many have questioned why NSW could not have followed the lead of Queensland, which announced its own Resilient Homes Fund in May 2022.

The report found there were persistent delays in the Resilient Homes program because "key issues", including procedures for home relocations, were not identified during the implementation process.

Delays were also caused by changes to the way home owners were able to access funding to raise or retrofit their homes with flood-resilient materials.

This meant the first payments were not made until 21 months after the record-breaking flood event of February 2022

Land considerations

With more than 800 homes in high-risk flood zones bought back by the government, communities like Lismore were left to wonder what the future might look like.

The report found the former Northern River Reconstruction Corporation and the RA did not consider future planning for land left vacant by the buy-back scheme, other than rezoning them to prevent future residential use.

The Auditor-General recommended that the RA find ways to accelerate the delivery of sites to which flood-affected people can move by September this year.

By June next year, the report recommended the RA finalise and implement plans for land left vacant by the buy-back scheme, and document lessons to inform planning for future disasters.

In a statement, Reconstruction Authority CEO Kate Fitzgerald said the RA accepted the findings and was acting on its recommendations.

"We acknowledge that key elements of planning, governance and delivery for the Resilient Homes Program and Resilient Lands Program were not sufficiently developed before the programs commenced in 2022," Ms Fitzgerald said.

"That urgency enabled rapid mobilisation, but it also limited up-front planning and contributed to implementation challenges.

"As both the parliamentary and independent inquiries into this disaster found, the 2022 floods tested the state's capabilities, but we've continued to grow and learn since these events."