Inquiry condemns ‘deeply problematic and flawed’ grants program that deprived Blue Mountains of critical bushfire funding

The official parliamentary inquiry into the state government’s handling of bushfire grants points to serious flaws that saw funding go predominantly to Liberal and National electorates.

The report, released in February 2022, censured the government for a series of critical failures in its grant distribution that left many badly affected non-Coalition seats without much-needed funding.

This included the Central Coast with economic damaged valued at $163.3 million, the Blue Mountains with damage of $65.4 million, and Ballina with $4.2 million. None of these councils received funding under the Bushfire Local Economic Recovery stage one funding.

“This upper house inquiry pulls no punches in its criticism of the state’s government handling of grants after the devastating bushfires of 2019/20,” Mayor, Cr Mark Greenhill, said.

“We said at the time that these grants were politically driven and this inquiry confirms what we’ve long suspected.

“After the devastation members of our community experienced, during and after this time, it astounds me to know that our own state government acted in this way when so many were hurting.”

In her testimony to the inquiry, Council’s CEO Dr Rosemary Dillon described it as “quite shocking that the council was asked to submit proposals, but was not given specific criteria”. This made it impossible for Blue Mountains City Council to receive funding, a finding supported by the inquiry.

“The findings of this report vindicate our stance, and that of other NSW councils, that these grants were improperly allocated and based on political motivation, rather than need.”

Some statements from the report include:

• “In this final report, the committee turns its attention to examining the misuse and maladministration of the bushfire relief grants, and arts and cultural grants. We again see a complete lack of transparency and accountability for these grant programs.”

• “The allocation of $108 million under the fast-tracked priority local infrastructure projects stream of the Bushfire Local Economic Recovery Fund was politically driven, based on changing and opaque criteria, without clear approval processes and without any formal public notification process.”

• “Given this, it could not deliver the maximum public benefit that bushfire impacted communities deserved from a government grants program whose goal was to mitigate the impacts of such a devastating emergency.”

• “In the ‘fast tracked local priority infrastructure projects’ stream, no guidelines were published and no application or merits process occurred. A few projects were simply cherry-picked for funding. This meant many worthy projects in areas heavily-impacted by bushfires, like the Blue Mountains, were not funded, while other projects that were not supported by local communities were.”

The report goes on to outline a series of urgent recommendations for systematic change to the NSW Government’s administration of grants.

“Following our agitation after receiving no funding in the first round, we are grateful and relieved to have now received critical funding from the second round of state government bushfire recovery grants,” Mayor Greenhill said.

“However, we back the report’s recommendations for major and meaningful change to how disaster recovery is directed in future.”

The full report can be downloaded here.

/Public Release. View in full here.