Federal Member for Parkes, Mark Coulton has welcomed last week’s joint Commonwealth-State funding announcement of more than $1.55 million in projects to assist communities across New South Wales build resilience to natural disasters.

Projects are jointly funded by the Commonwealth and New South Wales governments as part of the 2015-17 National Partnership Agreement on Natural Disaster Resilience.

Mr Coulton said that more than $160,000 in funding had been committed in the Federal electorate of Parkes to help the communities or Bourke and Narrabri to better prepare and respond to natural disasters.

“Natural disasters can have an enormous impact on local economies impacting on families and crippling small businesses,” he said.

“The projects being funded through this joint Commonwealth-State arrangement will assist these Western NSW communities to be more resilient and better prepared to prevent and lessen the impact of future natural disasters.”

Funding will support the following projects:

• Bourke and District Children's Services will receive more than $17,000 towards their Disaster Preparedness for Children's Services in Rural Remote NSW project that will aim to build the disaster preparedness of Bourke Children’s’ Services; and

• NSW State Emergency Service will receive $150,000 towards their Get Ready Narrabri project that will be undertaken in partnership with Narrabri Shire Council and will pilot the use of a deliberative democracy approach of two Citizens' Juries (one adult, one youth) to engage with the Narrabri community on the issue of disaster risk management.

Mr Coulton said preparing for, withstanding and recovering from disasters is not something the Government can do alone – we need everyone in the community to get involved.

“This funding encourages a partnership approach to disaster resilience, with funding recipients helping to build a culture of shared responsibility with governments,” he said.

Further information can be found at https://www.emergency.nsw.gov.au/emsector/funding-programs/community-resilience-innovation-program/