Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Margaret and Simon at the Bilpin Fruit Bowl, one of the major fruitgrowers in the Hawkesbury hit by fires last summer, are worrying about whether their current crop of apples and figs will make it to be picked, because the promised federal government funding has yet to be delivered. The $120,000 is needed to net 40 acres of fruit. It's nine months since we first raised the issue with the minister, and, while the New South Wales funding to buy the netting has come and been spent, great bales are still sitting alongside the flowering trees, where the fruit is starting to grow. Can you imagine how Margaret felt when, a few weeks ago, she was told that no criteria had been established for the federal grant and no decision made on which government department would administer it? Just before Christmas last year, she and Simon looked out despairingly on 7,000 lost apple trees, the netting protecting them gone and the poles burnt. Last Friday, it was still a forest of burnt poles, with wires precariously hanging and any netting still left pitted with holes. There are 3,000 new cherry trees, and that is a glorious sight, but it's actually the surviving apple trees that are most vulnerable to hail, bats and birds, as the fruit ripens and the summer storms come. Installing the nets will take at least three months. It's a huge job. I don't know what's causing the delay, but it has to be fixed. This government has to get over getting the photo and start fixing the problems. (Time expired)