Fixing thousands of kilometres of roads after record-breaking floods in New South Wales may take councils years to complete, and some farmers with heavy machinery want to lend a hand.
Key points:
- 10,000 km of regional NSW roads need repairing after floods
- The repairs are expected to cost about $2.5 billion
- Landholders are willing to help for free but can’t get liability cover
But those offering their services are being knocked back by local councils and the state government because they are unable to get liability cover.
The roads around Braidwood farmer Peter Jansson’s property are so bad he mothballed the farm and bought a house nearby.
The property was damaged by the Black Summer fires, and the flood damage to the roads was the last straw.
He offered to repair the road for the council and got their permission, but when he asked about liability cover in case there was an accident or quality issues, he couldn’t get a reply.
“We wanted to know our position but they flatly refused in their letters to us, saying they would not comment,” he said.
The road still isn’t repaired.
Council crews stretched
Barwon MP Roy Butler said councils didn’t have the capacity to repair all the roads that were damaged.
“You can’t hire or buy a grader at the moment in NSW for love nor money because they’re all out working,” he said.
“There’s a lot of landholders that have the equipment who want to do some work on roads, but that creates all sorts of liability issues, and we don’t have a pathway through that yet.”
He said councillors didn’t want to take responsibility for authorising the works because if something went wrong or someone had an accident, then the council could find themselves liable.
“I don’t want to see farmers or landholders in court over a liability issue where somebody has had an accident,” he said.
He said he had spoken to the state government about indemnifying councils against liability.
“That’s something they indicated would take too long to set up for the urgency of the work that was required,” he said.
Road funding ‘a joke’
The NSW Farmers Association is calling on the NSW government to set up a billion-dollar fund to repair 10,000km of damaged roads in regional areas.
Vice president Rebecca Reardon said the government should match the billion dollars it had set aside for Western Sydney roads with similar funding for the regions.
“What they’re contributing is a joke compared to the size of the task,” Ms Reardon said.
She said agriculture was worth $23 billion to the state, and some farmers couldn’t get grain or livestock to markets.
She dismissed the idea that farmers might not do a good job.
“I think you’ll find that most farmers are very good at grading roads. They look after kilometres of roads on their own place, and a lot of the roads [built by council] are not done up to standard to withstand floods,” she said.
She said many landholders were travelling on dangerous roads daily to get their children to school.
“They’re a safety risk, they’re unusable, and it’s a huge problem for us at the moment.”
Cut the red tape
Local Government Association of NSW president Darriea Turley said the bill for road repairs in regional areas of the state was $2.5 billion, based on figures from the NRMA.
The Broken Hill councillor said she wanted to cut the red tape that was stopping farmers from fixing the council roads around their properties.
She said she wanted the state government to trial a scheme put forward by Coonamble Council.
“They had farmers on board, they thought it was viable with supervision and the government had said the liability risk is too great,” she said.
State government disagrees
NSW Roads Minister Sam Farraway said he was keen for farmers to get involved in road repairs but that the way to do that was for them to get set up as contractors.
“Talk to council, get accredited, get on their books and see if you can do some work for them,” he said.
“This is taxpayer money. We need to make sure people are qualified, and the job is done right.”