NSW flood relief payments delayed to farmers due to fraudulent claims

Farmers in the Northern Rivers are becoming increasingly frustrated with delays to accessing desperately needed disaster recovery funds. Key points: Less than a third of the 2,500 applications for $75,000 grants have been processed, with a tenth of those considered fraudulent A beekeeper, who lost 500 hives, says he's been waiting for more than two months for his disaster relief grant to be processed Younger generation farmers unable to produce tax returns are being denied access to the $25,000 rural landholders grant Only 820 out of 2,500 applications for the $75,000 primary producer grants have been processed 12 weeks after catastrophic floods caused widespread damage to livestock and crops. "We've heard of things like people trying to change driver's licence addresses to show that they are in the area, some people will claim to be a primary producer when clearly they're not, others will claim to be a landholder of certain size when they're clearly not, people will use photos from social media to try and backup claims that they are in an area," he said. "It could be beekeepers, it could be people that think they're beekeepers, so it's just anyone who thinks that they can get free money," he said. "We're accepted as primary production through Australian Taxation Office and I do find it real strange when you're using livestock to derive an income, then you should be declared as a primary producer," he said.