Economic Recovery

Economic recovery

The NSW Reconstruction Authority (RA) is working with councils and the private sector to deliver economic recovery and reconstruction initiatives that encourage investment and contribute to long term regional employment, economic outcomes and economic adaptation for the Northern Rivers.

The economic recovery programs will ensure reconstruction takes place hand in hand with local business development and provides employment and training opportunities for the Northern Rivers community.

The economic recovery programs include:

• Northern Rivers Towns and Villages Resilient Business Activation Program
• Business capacity building for disaster preparedness
• Northern Rivers Community Resilience Grants program
• Workforce diversity and construction industry capacity building
• Northern Rivers Disaster Adaptation Plan Economic Impact 

Aboriginal business and community engagement

RA has a dedicated focus on Aboriginal engagement, ensuring Aboriginal business and community organisations are actively engaged for their wisdom and cultural knowledge through recovery, supporting community preparedness, adaptation and mitigating the impact of disasters.

RA is developing a Northern Rivers Connecting with Country Framework to underpin our work in Aboriginal communities. Its principles will be embedded across all our engagement, programs and projects.  

RA has a strong focus on supporting Aboriginal outcomes, including:

• listening and responding to community cultural values in the way we engage with local Aboriginal communities
• the protection of cultural heritage while delivering recovery programs and developing more resilient infrastructure
• Indigenous skills development and supporting Aboriginal businesses across the supply chain. 

These programs will work closely with our reconstruction program, the Resilient Homes Program, and the Resilient Lands Program.

Get Ready Business

Visit RA’s Get Ready Business to access support resources for businesses and non-profits for planning ahead, preparedness and developing resilience. These include:

• A video series of resilience stories from business and non-profits who have faced natural disasters and disruptions
• NSW Small Business Commission guides for preparing for the unexpected, disaster recovery, and getting back to business
• Links to the Service NSW Business Bureau for personalised support and online tools.

Business Beyond Disasters and Business Continuity Workshops 2025 program is now closed

Business Beyond Disasters was a free online course that was available in 2025 and has now closed. It was delivered by Resilient Ready, supporting Northern Rivers businesses and non-profits to get ready for risks caused by natural hazards and other disruptions.

It was supported by Business Continuity Workshops delivered by Safer Future in Northern Rivers in October-November 2025.  

This Disaster Ready Fund project was funded by the Australian Government and NSW Government.

Northern Rivers Towns and Villages Resilient Business Activation Program

Fifteen small to medium businesses and three local councils in the Northern Rivers are the successful recipients of over $9.2 million worth of grants under the Towns and Villages Resilient Business Activation Program.

The program is part of our commitment to support long-term recovery, betterment and disaster resilience, with businesses in each of the seven most impacted Northern Rivers Local Government receiving funding.  

Successful projects are listed in our media release.

The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development is engaged by RA to administer the delivery and management of the Program. 

Further information is available at Northern Rivers Towns and Villages Resilient Business Activation Program Guidelines or by emailing programdesigndelivery@regional.nsw.gov.au

Workforce diversity and construction industry capacity building support for reconstruction

RA is working with local councils, state government agencies and the construction industry to achieve legacy outcomes by building capacity of the Northern Rivers construction sector and encouraging workforce diversity targets and reporting in reconstruction contracts. 

Construction industry capacity building supports include:

• Consolidating procurement opportunities through the Live Northern Rivers Tender Portal – this saves businesses from signing up to multiple procurement platforms to find out about reconstruction projects. Any registered business interested in getting involved in the delivery of the infrastructure projects across the region, will need to sign up to these individual procurement platforms (PDF 132.83KB).
• Identifying industry issues or barriers and brokering solutions, examples include:
  • delivery of waterproofing training skills set with a subsidised pathway for full licencing using recognition of prior learning, that resulted in 14 new licenced waterproofers in the region. These skills will provide greater local capacity to achieve resilient housing retrofits.
  • civil skill set training to address industry feedback that new entrants to the civil workforce were not job ready. The first round of training was undertaken in January 2025 and was completed by 11 participants. A second round is planned for May 2025.

You can learn more about our infrastructure reconstruction program at the Northern Rivers Reconstruction page.

Workforce diversity

RA is supporting the inclusion of diversity targets and reporting in contracts for reconstruction projects in the Northern Rivers.  

A diverse workforce brings many benefits to businesses, including:

• access to a wide range of talent
• innovation through employee life experiences contributing to fresh ideas
• better performance as valued staff create an environment where employees work harder
• lower staff turnover and increased profit
• different perspectives that contribute to understanding the needs of a wide customer base.  

A workforce diversity tool has been created to help businesses develop their own diversity targets across groups including Aboriginal people, women, young people, apprentices and learning workers. 

More information is available in the Workforce Diversity in Construction fact sheet. This tool provides key contacts, for both contractors and the community, to engage with on training pathways, apprenticeship opportunities and connections to employment.  

For more information, please email our programs team.