Here’s some shit news. The NSW government’s promise of nearly $1.6bn in state-funded support for flood-affected communities is currently falling short – very short. Less than 8% of that amount being paid out to victims so far.
Quick math: that means nearly 93% of the promised support money hasn’t been provided to the flood victims. Resilience NSW oversees the flood response and confirmed to news.com.au that $124m has been allocated to flood-affected folks so far.
A quick reminder for those in the back. it’s been over two months since the floods began to devastate NSW.
Deputy Premier Paul Toole reckons the hold up is because of having to weed out fraudulent applications – plus a large volume of applications in general.
“My priority has always been and continues to be helping flood-affected communities rebuild – and a big part of that is getting money out the door and in the hands of impacted local residents, farmers, and business owners as quickly as possible,” Toole said.
“Like any funding support, it’s important we do our due diligence and take our time to get the process right to ensure money is directed where it’s needed – not to fraudsters taking support and resources away from victims.
“Some grants have had an unprecedented volume of applications. The NSW government has deployed additional teams at Service NSW and Revenue NSW to speed up grant application assessment timeframes across multiple streams available and for those that are soon to open.”
Kath Robb is a farmer from Broadwater who is still yet to see any support in her bank account – despite applying for several grants in mid-March. The losses she and her husband faced during the floods amounted to $180,000.
Robb told news.com.au: “It feels quite frustrating because the first one is just the cash grant of $15,000, you would think that would need to be a fairly simple process to be identified when forms come in from all the farmers.”
Toole previously stated in March that Prime Minister Scott Morrison was “a bit slow” in providing support to those in NSW’s north. Following that, he stated that “the federal government has gone missing in action” regarding the decline from the Commonwealth for a home rebuilding scheme.
