National
News that the Morrison government would be putting $2 billion into bushfire recovery was greeted with three cheers at the Mosman Rowing Club, who are ‘pretty confident’ they’ll get a grant.
“It got so smoky here one day in Sydney that one of our quad skulls hit our eight,” said Squadron Captain Charles Smith. “And those things cost a pretty penny, so we’ll definitely be applying.”
Smith says it has been a particularly hard time for the club to fundraise for the repairs.
“After Scott Morrison’s tax cuts most of our members went to Europe for our summer, so it’s like a ghost town around here.”
The Mosman Rowing Club, who recently received the top grant possible, $500,000, in through the government’s Community Sports Infrastructure Grant program, denied that the application process for such grants was hard work.
“I saw a lot of the losing parties complaining about the paperwork, but we didn’t find it hard at all,” said Smith sitting in his office overlooking the harbour. “All we did was sign the forms and somebody in Tony Abbott’s office did the rest for us.”
After successfully handling the Community Sports Infrastructure Grants, Former Sports Minister Bridget McKenzie has been given the job of ensuring the Morrison government’s $2 billion bushfire recovery fund gets to ‘the right places’.
“It’s just such a tragic waste,” said Ms McKenzie staring at a map of the bushfire devastation across Australia. “So many of these fires didn’t make it to Liberal electorates. We may end up with money left over.”
Back at the Mosman Rowing Club Captain Smith dismissed claims that they were insensitive to the real victims of the fires.
“That’s not true at all, we just held a sausage sizzle to raise money for the RFS last week,” he protests. “After we paid for the organic sausages and sourdough costs we did make a slight loss, but I’m not even going to ask the RFS to cover that shortfall. That’s just the Australian spirit when a tragedy hits.”
As for those who has lost their houses to fires Captain Smith has some advice.
“Just get in contact with your local Liberal MP, they’ll help you out.”
And for those who don’t live in Liberal electorates?
“I just don’t know. One of our members just lost a holiday house in a Labor electorate and I’m buggered if I know what to tell him.”