Projects aimed at stimulating drought-affected communities are taking almost 18 months to complete, says a review of the Coalition’s drought communities program, raising doubts about the $300m scheme’s effectiveness.
As the government announced a shake-up of the funding model to guide a $47m expansion of the program, a review undertaken by Ernst & Young has found that the design of the flagship drought package has so far shown “limited ability to target areas being economically affected because of drought”.
It also reports that of the 38 different drought initiatives, only eight have a focus on supporting wider drought-affected communities, and these programs collectively received less than 5% of the government’s $7bn in announced drought funding.
The minister for the drought, David Littleproud, ordered an audit into the drought communities program last year after it was revealed that one council, Moyne shire in Victoria, was awarded $1m despite not being in drought.
Under the program, the federal government provides $1m in funding to affected councils. An expansion announced in November gave 122 previously eligible councils an extra $1m, and added six new councils.
On Tuesday Littleproud and the prime minister, Scott Morrison, announced a further 52 councils would be included in the scheme, which has had its criteria for funding tweaked as a result of the EY report.
The review, handed to the government in early January, identified nine “pain points” in how the program was currently run, and observed that there was a “limited focus on initiatives that support the wider community” in the government’s broader drought response.
It also found that the large number of departments who owned different programs potentially made the government’s drought response difficult to govern and raised the risk of duplication.
“There is a potential duplication of assistance provided to individuals at both a state and commonwealth level, [and] it is difficult to assess the outcomes of each initiative and map these to respective programs,” the report said.
Looking specifically at the drought communities program, the report said there were a number of factors stopping the government from being able to deliver a “rapid, targeted and impactful” response, recommending an “extensive redesign” for the extension of the program.
It found that the end-to-end process to identify a need as a result of a drought event through to project completion took on average 493 days – almost 18 months – suggesting this could be due to the program not considering “future-looking metrics to allow for preparedness and proactive responses to drought.”
The report shows that the blow-out in timeframes is substantially more than councils undertook to deliver. The agreed end date was an average of 97 days compared to the actual result of 493 days.
The maximum reported timeframe for project completion was 805 days – more than five times longer than the maximum agreed delivery schedule of 148 days.
The report also points to problems with the scheme being able to deliver a “targeted response”, pointing to shortcomings in the data used by the government, including the potential for funds to flow regardless of a change in circumstances, such as rainfall over a short period of time.
“The current design of the DCPE has limited ability to target areas being economically affected because of drought,” the report says.
The report also questions whether the funding is “impactful”, saying the economic impact of the drought communities package “could be considered variable and unknown”, given the loose reporting requirements.
“The information reported on in grant agreements is variable and there is limited analysis of outcomes at a program level,” the report says.
Littleproud said the government would continue to assess its drought programs, and this was one of the key tasks of the national drought agency which is being led by former NT chief minister, Shane Stone.
“We’ve tried to make sure that we’ve reached as many communities that need this as we possibly can,” Littleproud said.
“But we’ve got to draw a definite line in the sand about where this program is targeted, because it is ultimately about stimulating the communities that are doing it the hardest from the drought.”
While the government is yet to respond to all of the EY recommendations, it has adopted a series of “interim measures” for the expansion of the drought communities program, including changing how rainfall data is used to assess drought, how workforce data is used to assess which councils are affected, and the use of a scaled funding model to ensure smaller councils get less than larger councils.
The shadow agriculture minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, said the drought communities program had been “plagued by confusion” and called for a “cohesive national strategy”.
“The drought response from this government has been ad hoc which has left farming communities confused,” Fitzgibbon said.
