The announcement of a disaster declaration last Friday in relation to the previous week’s snow storm raised some eyebrows as Armidale Regional Council area, including the hard hit Armidale and Guyra, were not on the list of council areas included.
New England Times has now confirmed that the reason for the omission was the inaction of Armidale Regional Council, who had not submitted the required application to trigger a National Disaster Declaration (NDD).
While all residents and businesses benefit from the grants and support available under an NDD, Councils have to submit their damage assessment of public assets to trigger the process.
“There’s no politics at play,” assured a staffer with extensive knowledge of the process. “Armidale just hasn’t done the work. We can’t hold up support for others while waiting for Armidale.”
How it works
According to a factsheet on the process, a Natural Disaster Declaration (NDD) is made by the NSW Government, via the Minister for Recovery, when a natural disaster event has occurred, and it is expected that the event will qualify as an “eligible disaster” under national Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements (DRFA).
The DRFA is the mechanism through which the Australian Government supports states and territories and share the costs of providing assistance to disaster affected communities. It helps to alleviate the financial burden on states and territories and supports the provision of urgent financial assistance to communities.
The types of measures able to be activated once an NDD is made are determined by the NSW Government, based on the impacts of the event, and are set out in relevant guidelines. These can include financial assistance to individuals, businesses, and primary producers, and assistance for councils and other relevant agencies to assist with the cost of repairing or restoring essential public assets such as transport infrastructure. The NSW Reconstruction Authority coordinates the NDD process following an eligible disaster event, commencing with the collation and assessment of available information to ascertain if an NDD will be made.
To progress an NDD, the Reconstruction Authority must have a good understanding of what occurred and be satisfied the criteria has been reached, and in general terms, the more information about impacts and damage caused by the event the better.
The first step is completion of the Natural Disaster Assessment Form which captures a preliminary estimate of damage to essential public assets and other costs. This form is done by Council in most cases.
What happened in Armidale?
Staff in the office of the NSW Minister for Recovery advised yesterday afternoon that Armidale was not in the original declaration because they had not submitted the required form.
“The NSW Reconstruction Authority (RA) is working with councils, including Armidale Regional Council, to assess disaster impacts,” said a spokesperson for Minister Janelle Saffin.
“RA is yet to receive an assessment from Armidale but continues to support the council in gathering and submitting this information.”
Armidale Regional Council were contacted for comment first thing this morning and given the day to respond. The following is exactly what was received.
“Statement from Armidale Regional Council
“The application was lodged yesterday, and Council is expecting a joint media release from the NSW and Federal Government regarding the declaration in coming days.
“Armidale Regional Council was always confident it was eligible to receive a National Disaster Declaration after the significant snow event. The delayed announcement that included ARC was a timing issue.
“Our region had a significant amount of damage across a large network. This needed to be properly assessed. ARC was not going to short-cut the process and risk making an incomplete application that would result in insufficient funding.”
(Editors note: Ordinarily we would edit or paraphrase such a response from entities who lack professional communications staff to remove unprofessional or unhelpful elements that may be perceived badly by readers. In this case we are making it exceptionally clear that we have copied and pasted exactly what was written, because this threat was accompanied by a threatening email from General Manager James Roncon. For complete transparency, we have included the entire email chain below, with the contact details of the junior staffer who sent the email redacted.)
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