DON'T feel pity when you see these TV pictures of Australian towns yet again flooded and the locals crying for what they've lost.
Feel embarrassment. Shame.
How stupid is this country that we not only built towns and suburbs in flood-prone areas, but left them defenceless against the inevitable floods?
Some properties in Queensland are now under water for the second or even third time in four years
Bundaberg, the worst hit town with 2000 homes damaged, still has no real levee despite being built along the Burnett River in an area subject to tropical cyclones.
Are we mad? The inevitable happens, we spend billions on repairs and donate hundreds of millions of dollar to victims, many of whom didn't even bother to take out insurance. But we don't spend the fraction of the money needed to save those towns in the first place.
My parents came from Holland, so low-lying that a quarter is below sea level and nearly a third subject to river flooding.
But 700 years ago the Dutch started to build dykes and levees against floods. It is now 60 years since the country's last catastrophic flood - caused by a failure in some critical dykes.
But here? Even parts of Brisbane, our third-biggest city, have flooded for the second time in two years.
Slowly, slowly, we're learning it's cheaper to build a levee than to repair a town each time it floods.
In NSW, Grafton and Lismore, for instance, now shelter behind earth walls.
The Queensland government recently promised another $40 million over three years towards building levees and drains for towns such as Laidley, Forest Hill and Roma - which alone has suffered tens of millions of dollars of damage in two floods in two years. But it's a bit late for the Lockyer Valley, flooded for the second time in two years.
What's more, that $40 million isn't enough on its own to do the job of saving Queensland billions. Federal money is wanted as well.
And so a nation that could find $16 billion to build overpriced school halls watches as swollen rivers again drown houses built on flood plains.
That's embarrassing.
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