Community bushfire recovery funds flowing, says Scott Morrison

Scott Morrison has detailed new spending from the government’s promised $2bn recovery budget, including $650m to help affected communities.

Scott Morrison says the government was about a third of the way through its recovery effort. Picture: AAP

Scott Morrison acknowledged how difficult the clean-up had been in the wake of the horror bushfire season as he detailed new spending from the government’s promised $2bn recovery budget, including $650m to help affected communities.

The Prime Minister on Monday said the government was about a third of the way through its recovery effort, with the clean-up expected to be completed by the end of June in NSW and in August for Victoria. He said South Australia’s recovery was “almost done”.

“They’re about a third of the way through,” Mr Morrison said. “We’re funding half of the project, but the project is run by the states and territories and the commonwealth doesn’t run them.”

Mr Morrison said the government had rolled out about $1bn on bushfire recovery efforts so far.

Opposition emergency ser­vices spokesman Murray Watt took aim at the government’s response, saying only one in eight dollars of the promised funding had been delivered.

“When the $2bn National Bushfire Recovery Fund was announced in January, Prime Minister Scott Morrison claimed the funds would be ready to hit the ground in communities where the firefront had passed to help them rebuild,” Senator Watt said.

“The government is now inflating its so-called bushfire spend by including amounts committed but not yet paid, and by including traditional disaster assistance and other items that are not paid from its bushfire fund.”

The Labor senator said new figures released in response to a question on notice showed the government had paid out less than $260m of its promised $2bn, with some of its most hyped funding pledges, including mental health assistance for schools and rural financial counselling, yet to receive a single dollar.

When asked about this gap on Monday, Mr Morrison said the money had been paid.

“I can tell you it’s in rural fin­ancial counselling, it’s in childcare subsidies, it’s in mental health for school communities, it’s in wildlife and habitat recovery,” he said. “But a large part of what is still to come relates to the payments to the states for the site clean-ups. Those items will be billed separately and they are hundreds of millions of dollars.”

The package includes $448.5m to be shared between communities to support local projects and recovery plans, with priority given to the most severely impacted regions.

Bushfire recovery agency boss Andrew Colvin said he thought the states were doing a “remarkable job” cleaning up the damage but admitted recovery had taken some time to get going.

“I think the states are doing a remarkable job of trying to clean up as many sites as they can,” Mr Colvin said. “Yes, it took a little bit of time at the start. I think things are moving very quickly now.”