A stalled state

The Queensland flood crisis is far from over, but this morning Queensland Anna Bligh slightly shifted her focus from disaster management to disaster recovery, when she said her state faces its greatest reconstruction effort since World War II.

It’s a point that Toowoomba rich lister member and entrepreneur Clive Bergohfer was quick to raise when I spoke to him earlier this week when floods decimated his beloved home town.

“The whole of Queensland is in a bloody mess. There are so many people not working because of the weather.”

He’s right. While we’ve been focused on Brisbane, Ipswich and Toowoomba for the last few days, Bligh was quick to point out this morning that 75% of the state has been hit by this disaster.

The state’s key coal sector has been hamstrung. Agriculture has been hit hard, particularly around Toowoomba. Retail is shut down in many areas of South East Queensland. Construction has stalled and transport and logistics has been frozen.

The question is, how quickly can these sectors get back on their feet?

The answer depends on a lot of factors. Initially, the speed with which flood waters recede and initial clean-up efforts can take place will determine how quickly supplies start flowing through the economy.

With key piece of infrastructure such as road, rail and ports incapacitated, this could take at least some days and perhaps a few weeks. But it is only once goods start flowing through the economy again that businesses of all sizes will really be able to restart.

Secondly, we’ll have to wait and see just how much damage has occurred and how much repair work needs to be done to get business up and running again. For a business like The Reject Shop, which has seen its six-month old distribution centre at Ipswich flooded in recent days, the wait to assess the impact must be hard to take.

Finally, we’ll need to assess the impact of the big reconstruction projects around the state. For example, Clive Berghofer was concerned the railway and roads into Toowoomba had been badly damaged, along with at least three bridges in the city centre. Those sorts of projects will take many months and possibly years to complete.

The point is we are looking at waves of recovery for the business community – an initial wave as basic services are restored in the coming weeks, a second wave as the clean up begins in the next month, and a wave of reconstruction that will occur over a much longer period.

It will take focus, patience and strength to see this through. But based on what we’ve seen in the last few days, that is something Queensland has in spades.