Politicians and drought awareness campaigners did agree on one thing on Sunday’s announcement, send money to charities if you want to help.
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The Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull visited Trangie, 70 kilometres west of Dubbo on Sunday to make a further drought assistance announcement and speak to local families.
Mr Turnbull said the best way to help farming families and drought stricken communities was to send money, help the township turn money over and keep small businesses going.
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“Send money, don't send hampers and tinned food, what the charities need is cash. Anything that is putting physical cash into these communities is so important… it’s not just the cockies, it’s everyone in the town as well,” he said.
“[This] will then go to communities and they will spend it in town. We don’t want to be in the position where this is lot of tinned food delivered, that means there is less business for the local towns, we want to see it spent in local communities.”
We don’t want to be in the position where this is lot of tinned food delivered, that means there is less business for the local towns.
- Malcolm Turnbull.
Drought awareness campaigner and ‘One Bucket’ founder Edwina Robertson said the message to people in the cities needs to be consistent.
“We all need to be consistent in our message of how bad the drought is,” she said.
“This message needs to flow onto city areas. Our money is going to come from charitable help, we need Aussies to get together. The money is not going to come from the government.”
The social media influencer and photographer said that she will keep campaigning and working with the charity ‘Drought Angels’ until the drought has broken.
“The money is not going to come from the government.”
- Edwina Robertson, Drought Awareness Campaigner.
Ms Robertson is travelling around NSW to talk to farming families and businesses that are impacted by the drought.
“I’m going to keep going until the drought breaks,” she told Fairfax Media.
She broke down in front of the Prime Minister whens he met him on Sunday explaining some of the stories she has learned and experienced during her trip.
“Everyone is sick of hearing that farmers need to be resilient, how resilient do people have to be to get through the financial and emotional toll to get through this, not for a couple of weeks or months, but even years,” she said.
“If they weren’t resilient now they wouldn’t still be here.”