Rains continue to bring misery to many parts of state

by Roy Butler, Member for Barwon

I was in parliament last week, after a productive week out at Broken Hill and a quick visit to Maules Creek. The year is rapidly coming to a close, with only three sitting weeks left, but still no sign of the government replacing the days lost due to the death of the Queen.

A flurry of legislation is making its way through parliament, in anticipation of the upcoming election, which is making things very busy. This week should be no different. After that it will be good to be out on the road again around the electorate, roads and weather permitting.

Floods

The rains continue to bring misery to many parts of NSW and more is set to come, but fortunately my effort to have a state of emergency declared in some of the recently affected parts of Barwon has been successful, which will allow people to apply for assistance if they have been affected in several ways, either through damage to property, loss of production, loss of income through being unable to go to work or loss of revenue for businesses that have had to close.

I moved a notice of motion in parliament calling on the government to acknowledge the flood crisis and the fact that it will likely go on for some time to come, if weather predictions prove to be correct.

But I also asked the government to celebrate the brave part played by our amazing emergency service volunteers, councils and members of the community in keeping people safe, and I also urged them to call on the federal government to expedite funding assistance for households, councils, producers and businesses. There has since been some assistance made available for the floods since September.

Country media

While I was in Broken Hill I dropped into a local newspaper, the Barrier Truth, to chat with some journos for stories they were working on and while I was there they were keen to show me some of their new printing technology.

They have invested in a state-of-the-art platemaking machine that is greener, more compact, faster, better quality technology that etches the printing image onto thin aluminium plates.

While we have seen so many country papers moving away from creating printed copies in recent years, it is great to see a local paper still producing a print version for those people who don’t have access to the internet. Many members of the community still buy their copy of the paper at the shopfront and rely on the vital information they can see on the printed pages.

Unfortunately the government has pulled a lot of its advertising out of local newspapers, which was an important source of revenue for many of them and which sent some of them out of business.

My team and I are working on a way to reverse this and bring some of that government advertising money back to rural newspapers.

Country Press NSW awards

I was fortunate enough to be invited to present awards at the 2022 Country Press NSW Awards in Sydney last week.

Deputy Premier Paul Toole helped hand some of the much-deserved gongs. I was pleased to see that many of the awards went to papers in Barwon, including The Coonabarabran Times, Barrier Truth, Nyngan Weekly and The Courier at Narrabri, which took out the award for best paid newspaper. It was the first full awards ceremony in some years, but the organisers managed to get a good crowd and put together a great event, with a bit of entertainment from the Three Waiters who belted out some operatic arias and some classic songs.

Congratulations to the winners and to the organisers. Thanks so much for the invitation, it was a great event, one that I was lucky enough to be able to share with my wife Jenny, and one that I hope will be even bigger and better next year.

Regional councils funding model

I delivered a private members statement in parliament last week talking about the problems being faced by regional councils. With smaller rate bases and larger territory to cover than city councils, many are struggling to keep out of the red. Large urban centres have more ratepayers, offer more services, and collect money from things like parking fees and development applications.

Country councils on the other hand have much less population density, so fewer ratepayers, most do not collect any significant revenue from parking or development applications fees and yet they often have to deal with things like hundreds of kilometres of roads or multiple amenities spread out over a large area.

Country councils find they need to plug gaps with grants funding, but it is not always enough. There is also the major problem of the depreciation on assets acquired through grants, payment for upkeep can often be financially crippling, or on assets like firefighting and emergency services equipment, which they do not actually own but for which they still have to bear the depreciation.

It has become obvious that the government needs to reconsider the funding model for local councils. There needs to be more government funding of essential services in regional local government areas, and they also need a solution to the ongoing problem of depreciation, or some will go under.