THE DOORS OF ALCOHOLICS

sustainable agriculture and natural resource management.

Local Land Services NSW and Landcare NSW are now working together to maximise the outcome from the expanded program for the public of NSW and the environment.

The fresh funding will enable more investment in training and capacity building and strengthen community efforts to become more resilient in the face of extreme

Premier Chris Minns appointed me to a new role as Parliamentary Secretary for Disaster Recovery. I am honoured to take on this new role and will do my best to work on how to ensure continuous improvement in recovery.

We all know now from lessons hard learned that ‘better prepared, better response, brings better recovery’. We were not prepared for what happened in the 2022 foods and the then NSW bushfre season than usual and communities need to start preparing.

Tenterfeld local government area (LGA) has already entered the Bush Fire Danger period and from 1 September several more northern NSW LGAs will enter, including Lismore, Kyogle, Clarence Valley, Tweed and Richmond Valley.

The Rural Fire Service (RFS) is ramping up backburning operations and has begun rolling climate events.

Landcare has announced more than 100 community leaders are being employed to help combat the increasing skills gap expected to occur over the coming decade in rural and regional NSW, and an additional 11 new regional First Nations Landcare offcer roles are also being created.

It’s estimated that a supported Landcare community returns at least $4 for every $1 invested, meaning the $59 million will generate around a quarter of a billion dollars in benefts for NSW regional businesses, government agencies and rural economies.

Hard-won local experience to inform my new role

On 23rd August

Government had not taken on board any of the recommendations and learnings from the tragic 2017 foods.

I shall not lose sight of the enormous amount of recovery work that still needs to be done up here in my home patch and in step with my duties to play a coordination role across the government agencies. We are also fortunate to have our local MPs and Mayors backed by their councillors and councils all active in our recovery and we now meet every fortnight to advance and action all matters to do with recovery.

Be prepared for early start to fre season

The ongoing dry weather across the Northern Rivers heralds an earlier start to the out new digital fre warning signs, with northern NSW among the priority areas. The digital signs will be updated automatically each day, meaning RFS volunteers will no longer need to manually change the signs.

It’s also reassuring to know that over 1,300 Fire and Rescue NSW and NSW State Emergency Services (SES) vehicles are now equipped with stateof-the-art 4G satellite communication systems.

This means that frst responders will be able to continue using radios, mobile phones and other handheld devices anywhere and at any time, even if communications infrastructure is damaged in a disaster.