NSW government officials say they are beginning to grow impatient with the federal government, which has been accused of dragging its feet on a co-funded flood relief package worth close to $1.4 billion as Prime Minister Scott Morrison prioritises his election campaign efforts in Western Australia. When the relief funding is eventually announced, the package will become the most substantial round offered to flood victims across the northern rivers of NSW. But officials from within the NSW government told VICE that Morrison has left them in the lurch, waiting for the go-ahead to formally announce the package, after they had worked through the night on Wednesday, “until 3a.m.”, to get it locked before the birth of NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet’s seventh child. “We’re just standing around here like idiots with our arms crossed, while thousands of people have just lost their entire lives, and are sleeping in fucking tents,” one NSW government official told VICE.“We have no idea what’s going on. We’re literally just sitting here waiting for the feds. We’re desperate to announce it, but I can tell you, it isn’t going to happen today. And, of course, we’ll be the ones who cop it.”It comes just over a week after the Morrison government announced a $434.7 million emergency relief fund that would offer flood victims in Nationals-held government areas relief payments worth $3,000, while flood-affected towns in coastal Labor-held government areas received payments worth $1,000.That same package also offered $75,000 grants to primary producers, and up to $50,000 for small businesses and not-for-profit organisations devastated by floodwaters, which will soon be made available through state government agencies. But NSW government officials are now seething, after Morrison spent the last three days in Western Australia campaigning in the lead-up to May’s federal election. The move has rattled leaders from across the NSW government who feel like he’s putting the campaign trail before much-needed disaster relief funding.State officials told VICE that Morrison hasn’t yet signed off on the details. On Wednesday, a spokesman for the Prime Minister told the ABC the federal government “hopes to finalise the details of the additional support very shortly”.The new funding package is set to include a range of new grants, many of them much larger than previous support measures. VICE understands that close to 100,000 households are set to benefit.People renting homes in flood-affected regions, for instance, will be eligible for grants worth $5,000, while homeowners will be eligible for “back home” grants worth $10,000. Even landlords are set to pocket payments of $5,000, too, to help them with clean-up and restoration costs, so tenants can use their grants to replace belongings and find accommodation.Another NSW government official, however, told VICE that homeowners living in rural and regional areas could be eligible for even more, “up to $25,000”, depending on where residents of the state are based.The latest round of housing relief adds to the $551.7 million housing package announced by the NSW and Commonwealth governments last week, the majority of which will be spent on temporary housing arrangements for those whose homes are now condemned.As it stands, more than 2,300 homes in NSW have been deemed uninhabitable as a result of the catastrophic flooding that tore through regions across the northern rivers of the state at the end of February. The emergency has only highlighted the worst of what has become a decades-long housing crisis in the region, which experts and local officials say are only likely to worsen over the next decade – and beyond. Follow John on Twitter.Read more from VICE Australia.
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