MAYOR Jon Raven has apologised for his role in the introduction of controversial new flood mapping, saying he “got it wrong” and should have been more sceptical.
Cr Raven used the final moments of Logan City Council’s last public meeting of 2025 to address a topic that has fast become a poisoned chalice for the council.
Not only did the mayor, who was a divisional councillor at the time the new maps were introduced in 2023, apologise last week for “not asking the right questions”, but he assured residents he was committed to change.
“I [supported the mapping] because we were part of a council where the mayor was very determined that that was the best thing for our council – I trusted his judgement and I supported him completely,” Cr Raven said at the meeting.
“But I can see now that I made a bad decision in doing that. That by trusting someone else’s judgement, instead of asking the extra questions that I could have and should have to challenge the logic and to understand exactly what we’re doing, I let the community down.
“I want want to apologise to the community for the distress it has caused now.”
Cr Raven later clarified he was not blaming the former mayor, Darren Power.
“It’s not his fault. I am not blaming Darren – I made the decision not to interrogate and ask more questions because I trusted him. That’s my choice.
“Darren’s position was fair and reasonable given his experience. But I made a decision not to do my job as well as I could have.”
Cr Raven promised to do better, starting with a new communications plan next year that will provide updates and a timeline around the work being done to change the mapping.
He said the goal was to ensure the community was fully informed “every step of the way”.
“My commitment to those residents who have been impacted is that I will do everything in my power to make these flood maps better.”
The new maps had a rocky start back in 2023, with thousands of residents outraged after they were notified by a “poorly-worded letter” that their properties – many of which had never been touched by a drop of flood water – were suddenly deemed “at risk” of flooding.
It started because all councils across Queensland were in 2022 mandated by the state government to update their planning requirements and flood mapping following recommendations from a Commission of Inquiry into the 2011 floods.
Council at the time said it had no choice but to comply, but Cr Raven now says there were ways the council could have better protected residents from the consequences, which for many meant insurance hikes and hits to property value.
“The glory of the state government requirement is that it is very grey,” Cr Raven said.
“I feel there is a lot of room to push back against it, but we didn’t, because we didn’t know to.”
The purpose of flood mapping is to stop houses, community centres, businesses and other developments from being built in flood prone areas and to keep people safe, according to the council.
Before the shades of blue and yellow seen in today’s map – symbolising high risk (dark blue), moderate risk (light blue) and low risk (yellow) of flooding – it consisted of a single shade of blue that was based on a one-in-100 year flood.
This map didn’t take into account factors like how deep and how fast flowing flood waters were, or projected impacts of climate change.
The new mapping, introduced in 2023 and updated twice since, considers several potential future floods impacting tens of thousands of properties and ranging from as frequent as one in 20 years (dark blue) to one in 2000 years and rarer (yellow, which at its rarest is known as the probable maximum flood, or PMF).
These floods do not represent any historical flood event in Logan. And this is where residents and local councillors take issue.
Residents want the mapping to reflect more “realistic” chances of flooding.
Cr Raven agrees, and said he should have asked more questions about the PMF at the time, specifically regarding its accuracy and necessity.
He said councillors should have also asked more questions about the flood risk categories and other flood areas, and their impacts on people’s land rights.
Cr Raven said many of the unasked questions would be answered by a new investigation he promised was more than just good optics.
These include topics like flood risk categories, mapping creeks, high flow areas, and more.
He said the review could end up providing an out for properties targeted by the most rare, unprecedented floods.
