Disaster Ready Fund

The Australian Government has established the Disaster Ready Fund (DRF), to help communities protect themselves against the impacts of natural hazards across Australia.

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On 7 September 2022, the Australian Government announced their flagship disaster resilience and risk reduction initiative, committing $1 billion to be made available nationally through the DRF over five years, from 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2028.

The DRF provides investment in disaster mitigation across infrastructure and systemic disaster risk reduction projects, to address any, or multiple, natural hazards including extreme weather events and geological hazards.

Only Australian state and territory governments are eligible to apply to the DRF and the NSW Reconstruction Authority (RA) is the jurisdictional lead agency and ‘applicant’ on behalf of NSW.

Funding rounds

Program objectives

The DRF supports projects that:

  • increase the understanding of natural hazard impacts, as a first step towards reducing disaster impacts in the future;
  • increase the resilience, adaptive capacity and/or preparedness of governments, community service organisations and affected communities to minimise the potential impact of natural hazards and avert disasters; and
  • reduce the exposure to risk, harm and/or severity of a natural hazard’s impacts, including reducing the recovery burden for governments and vulnerable and/or affected communities.
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Disaster Ready Fund - Round 3

The Australian Government is expected to release the DRF Round 3 Guidelines in late 2024 or early 2025, with the final application process to open in early 2025.

The NSW Reconstruction Authority (RA) is responsible for coordinating the NSW Application.

Under Round 3, the RA will offer potential applicants the opportunity to register their project concept and indicate the level of support required for Round 3. 

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Funding rounds so far

Frequently asked questions

Round 1 FAQs

Round 2 FAQs

Round 3 FAQs

Get in touch

If you have any questions or would like to receive future correspondence regarding the DRF, please contact drfnsw@reconstruction.nsw.gov.au

Please note that the NSW DRF Team can only provide information that is publicly available. Further information and applicant guidance will be made available when the EOI has opened.

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