Six months after one of the biggest natural disasters in Australian history hit northern New South Wales (NSW), flood-impacted farms and businesses are still waiting for support announced by the state government in March, putting incomes in jeopardy, according to Nationals federal member of parliament, Kevin Hogan.
Farmers and businesses have not yet received grant details or criteria they need to make important decisions about their future, which is “unacceptable,” the member for Page in northern NSW said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Sugarcane farmers need to replant crops and replace equipment that was washed away. Dairy and beef farmers need to replace stock that drowned. There are many other types of farmers waiting as well,” he said. “This package has been talked about for months.”
Speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) on Tuesday from Woodburn—one of the northern NSW villages that was wiped out during the February-March floods—Hogan said that a primary producer grant designed to support critical producers such as sugarcane, dairy, and beef farmers was announced almost six months ago.
“To give you one example, our sugarcane farmers have two-year crops, it takes two years to grow a sugarcane crop, so they have half maturing one year and half the next,” he said.
“Now the one-year crop with this event got wiped out in the lower Richmond, so all the sugarcane farmers have to replant that one-year crop, and it’s very expensive, it’s hundreds of thousands of dollars for most of them.
“Now, this critical producer grant that was announced back in March, the criteria is still yet to be set, the money is still yet to flow, and none of these farmers can even apply for it yet,” he said.
Hogan stressed that sugar farmers have to plant this one-year crop by September, or it will be too late, and without the grant coming through before then, farmers may not be able to do this, meaning they have no income the following year.
He also spoke of instances where beef and dairy farmers lost 100 head of cattle to the floods and will not be able to restock without the grants.
“Again, they can’t restock, they haven’t got the grant yet, they don’t even know the criteria and if they apply yet,” Hogan said.
‘Sense of Urgency Lost’
When asked whether the NSW government deserves any credit for the grants they’ve announced, Hogan told the ABC he believes the government has goodwill to support farmers but is not treating it as urgent enough.“This is urgent, this was the second biggest natural disaster in Australian history, and as I said with the sugarcane example, these people won’t have income next year if they don’t start to get the grants within the next few weeks,” he said.
“And again, a good intention in the sense that this program and this funding was announced back in March, but over five months on, you can’t apply, you don’t even know the criteria, you don’t know if you qualify, so I think the sense of urgency has been lost and that’s why I’m publically calling them out.”
Hogan said he wrote to the relevant ministers weeks ago, asking for an update on the grant packages, but has received no response, and there has been no action.
The Epoch Times reached out to the NSW government for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
