LGNSW President, Inner West Council Mayor, Darcy Byrne will today give evidence to a Parliamentary Inquiry into the operations of the NSW Reconstruction Authority.
President Byrne said his evidence will highlight the need for a more streamlined payment of claims to councils and a greater investment in long term resilience to avoid the impacts of disasters.
“The massive increase in floods, storms and fires across NSW has devastated many local councils and their communities,” said Mayor Byrne.
“While the Reconstruction Authority is improving, the system for processing claims is inadequate with payments totalling hundreds of millions of dollars overdue to councils who are struggling with recovery.”
President Byrne pointed to recent examples of MidCoast Council and Kempsey Shire Council, which are still awaiting the processing of claims totalling tens of millions of dollars each in the wake of the flooding events of May last year.
“In the MidCoast Council area the floods had an impact of $226.5 million on Council Transport and Infrastructure. To date, Council has spent $43 million on emergency and immediate reconstruction works on their transport network and has only received $6.1 million from the NSW Reconstruction Authority,” he said.
“In the nearby council area of Kempsey, there was a $115 million impact, and that council has only received $5.7 million in funding. As we approach the one year anniversary of these devastating floods, it’s time recovery funding is paid in full.
“We know the local government sector is facing some real challenges with financial sustainability – particularly in rural, regional and remote communities. Having these unpaid claims on the books threatens the financial viability of these severely impacted councils.
“Too often we’re seeing claims for funding getting bogged down in red tape – leaving these councils out of pocket – often by millions of dollars for months if not years on end.”
“This is grossly unfair – with councils facing a financial crisis that is absolutely not of their making. The harm from natural disasters is being compounded by bureaucratic delays.”
LGNSW is calling for immediate improvements to funding, coordination and resilience planning to protect communities now and into the future.
“We are calling for greater transparency from the NSW Reconstruction Authority in order to drive improvement. As a starting point, we want them to transparently publish data clearly showing the number of claims received, how many have been approved and paid and also detail the decision making and processing timelines.”
Mayor Byrne will appear at the Parliamentary inquiry from 10:30am EST.
Watch the livestream here. Read the LGNSW Submission to the inquiry here.
