We move into the holiday break after another busy year for Northern Tablelands communities. Recent weeks of heavy rain have been a mixed blessing with many grain farmers struggling to harvest their crops and local councils facing huge costs to mend damaged roads, bridges and other infrastructure. Benefits flowing from Natural Disaster Declarations will assist but we do need extra funding to cover the full price tag of bringing the road network back to full repair and to assist farmers.
As always, country communities like ours pull together and help each other out during tough times. Our level of volunteering is one of the strongest in the state and it is a major contributor to our wonderful quality of life. This spirit of generosity is evident through emergency services, service clubs, school communities, charity and community groups and sporting organisations which accomplish so much through the goodwill of volunteers. I meet so many of them in the course of the year and never fail to be impressed by their achievements.
We have good reason to be optimistic as 2012 approaches with population growth in most of our centres, a very flush season despite the downside of the rain and many positive projects realised with many others being planned or on the drawing board. I look forward to working on these with the community in the coming year.
It has been a particularly busy time in Parliament with a new government settling in and long sitting weeks to meet the legislative agenda. I am looking forward to a break and spending the holiday period with my wife Rosemary and children Leah, Angie and Joel and our extended family. They and my staff join with me in wishing you all a very Happy Christmas and a very prosperous 2012.
Richard Torbay
