Balranald Shire Council Mayor Cr Louie Zaffina has called on both the Australian and NSW Governments to urgently reform the way grant funding reaches communities affected by water buybacks, saying the current competitive model gives small rural councils no fair chance.

Cr Zaffina said the problem was not one program or one decision but something built into the design of government funding itself.

“The problem is structural. Large councils often have dedicated grants staff, strategy units and forward-planning teams. Small councils do not,” he said. “In remote Australia, the same small executive and management teams that are trying to keep roads open, services operating, compliance up to date and communities supported are also being asked to prepare complex, competitive grant applications at speed.”

“That is not a level playing field. It is a built-in disadvantage.”

Council’s analysis shows Balranald Shire has received just $731,331 under the Sustainable Communities Program, despite substantial water buybacks occurring in the area. Cr Zaffina said that figure reflected a deeper problem in how government funding is allocated to affected communities.

“If a community is bearing the direct consequences of water recovery, it should not have to win a contest against better-resourced councils just to be treated fairly,” he said.

Cr Zaffina said standard benefit-cost-ratio methodologies made the problem worse by favouring projects with larger populations and more easily monetised benefits, while undervaluing the needs of smaller and more disadvantaged communities.

“A small community can be hit hard by government policy and still lose on paper because its population is smaller and its benefits are harder to monetise. That is not equity. That is a system that mistakes size for merit,” he said.

He said the way grant applications are handled also needed to change. “If an application meets the criteria but requires additional information, there needs to be a better attempt to get that information and allow for human error before the delete button is hit.”

“When governments create the impact, governments should not force the smallest communities into bureaucratic cage fights for compensation.”

Balranald Shire Council is calling for a transparent explanation of how water buyback impacts are weighted in current assessments, a needs-based funding stream for the councils most directly affected by water recovery, simpler application pathways and bid-development support for small remote councils, and assessment models that give proper weight to equity, resilience and disadvantage rather than relying too heavily on narrow benefit-cost ratio outcomes.

“Small communities should not be punished because they are small,” Cr Zaffina said. “If anything, public policy should lean toward those communities, not away from them.”

This article appeared on Back Country Bulletin on 6 July 2026.