Residents of a Blue Mountains community that lost 12 houses in the Black Summer bushfires are pleading to be pork-barrelled after they unsuccessfully applied for a grant to secure their water supply, only to become the bewildered recipients of dance lessons.
Bilpin residents applied for a Bushfire Local Economic Recovery grant last year to pay for a pump for the creek, a bore for extra water, storage tanks and tar for a sealed parking area for NSW Fire and Rescue trucks to refill with water at the Kurrajong Heights Bowling Club, which is the town’s disaster staging area.
Helen Foulis, in pink, says Bilpin residents can already dance and would rather receive a grant for bushfire infrastructure equipment.Credit: Dean Sewell
But the application was rejected after they attached an incorrect document to the form. Resident Kooryn Sheaves said the group rang Resilience NSW after they identified their error and asked if they could amend their application, but were told it was too late.
So they were dismayed to learn recently that a community group from the unburnt side of the mountains had been granted $300,000 to provide dance lessons in their town, through a separate process - the Bushfire Community Recovery and Resilience Fund (BCRRF).
Peppercorn Inc, a not-for-profit agency of the Hawkesbury City Council, is providing the classes in Bilpin, Wiseman’s Ferry, Richmond and Colo Heights, to foster connection and build community resilience.
Ms Sheaves said the project did not appear to have met the funding application guidelines which stipulate that grants will not be delivered to projects that supplement the core business of the lead organisation, and nobody in the community had asked for them.
“The community was absolutely horrified to be landed with these dance lessons,” she said.
“It’s important that we look after our mental health, but to do that we need community-driven responses. We desperately need roadside water storage at our disaster management areas to make us more resilient in bushfires.”
Documents obtained by Bilpin residents under Government Information (Public Access) laws show that a panel of Resilience NSW officers determined in February that the dance classes were “meritorious” but could not be funded under the BCRRF. However, Resilience NSW later went on to award Peppercorn the highest amount payable under that scheme.
Ms Sheaves said the decision to award $300,000 to Peppercorn Inc smacked of pork-barrelling. “So we are looking for someone to pork barrel us, please.”
A spokesman for Resilience NSW declined to answer specific questions about how the dance classes met the funding guidelines or what community consultation had been held. He said the money had been allocated through an open, competitive, merit-based funding round.
“The assessment process determined that the project had merit and would help foster connection, support social recovery, improve access to mental health support, and build community resilience for people impacted by bushfires in the Hawkesbury region,” the spokesman said.
The lack of water storage along the Bells Line of Road had devastating consequences when an escaped backburn tore through Bilpin, Berambing and Mount Tomah on December 15, 2019.
Helen Foulis grabbed her chicken and cat and only just made it out alive before the fire destroyed her cottage and her next-door neighbour’s residence at the Tutti Frutti cafe.
Two NSW Fire and Rescue trucks watched on. They were not carrying enough water to douse the flames and their vehicles were not designed to go off-road and fill up from local dams like the NSW Rural Fire Service [RFS] trucks.
“We had a false sense of security,” Ms Foulis said. “We had those town fire trucks at our place and we thought, ‘We’re safe’. But they couldn’t go off-road. They aren’t built for that.”
In the bush block behind, an RFS truck emptied its water onto the Bilpin district fire captain’s house to save it.
Ex-RFS senior deputy captain Kevin Tame said if the Fire and Rescue trucks had been able to refill, Ms Foulis and her neighbour’s homes could have been saved.
A NSW upper house parliamentary committee is inquiring into bushfire relief grants, following allegations that $177 million was improperly allocated. It found in March that the Stronger Communities Fund, which was designed to assist councils after the amalgamations process, lacked transparency and that the vast array of grants in general were “wasteful and inefficient”.
Premier Dominic Perrottet has ordered a separate review of the government’s processes for awarding taxpayer-funded grants.
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