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Byron misses out on bushfire recovery funds as rorts scandal unfolds
Mia Armitage, featuring NSW Greens Member for Ballina Tamara Smith
The latest government grant rorts scandal has directly impacted the Ballina electorate and the neighbouring Lismore state electorate and Greens Member for Ballina Tamara Smith is disgusted.
Freedom of information requests from Ms Smith’s colleague in the upper house, David Shoebridge, show the Lismore electorate received less than two and a half million dollars in recovery funds after the so-called Black Summer of 2019/2020 while the Ballina electorate received none.
The NSW Bushfire Economic Recovery grants scheme has been under investigation in a parliamentary inquiry this month, with analysis by Michael West Media showing nearly all of $177 million in Round One was distributed to coalition-held seats without a proper application process and without independent oversight.
A council general manager in The Nationals-held Clarence electorate told Michael West the Clarence Valley Council was simply told ‘to provide shovel-ready projects’; ‘didn’t know’ what the application was for; and the process was ‘probably’ pork-barrelling.
Greens MP Tamara Smith says the grants scheme was basically ‘a slush fund for The Nationals’.
$90 million Black Summer impact on Ballina
Residents and businesses on all sides of Mount Nardi in the Byron Shire and Lismore Local Government Area were living in anxiety from day to day while a fire there raged for weeks in late 2019, burning through the national park and threatening the Rocky Creek Dam vicinity.
Further South, grass fires were prone to flare up on high fire danger days while fires throughout the state meant visitors and workers that would normally travel to the region weren’t guaranteed safe passage.
Economic damage to the Ballina Shire was officially estimated at $90 million, with Ms Smith saying the figure mostly represented losses in the tourism sector but also took into account interruptions to usual supply chains.
Ms Smith says the deputy premier’s offer last week to speak to her and other non-coalition MPs whose electorates missed out on much-needed funding was too little, too late and further underlined a lack of accountability in the grants process.
‘We don’t want to get money that is not fair and open and transparent,’ she says, ‘it belies a larger picture’.
Community Newsroom with Mia Armitage and BayFM Newsroom Reporters 
