The NSW premier concedes more financial support could be needed following last month's power failures in the state's far west. He and senior ministers have been in Broken Hill hearing from locals and businesses, some of which lost thousands of dollars when the lights went off.
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00:00Chris Minns says he's come to Broken Hill for a dose of reality.
00:06I've lived in Sydney my whole life, I don't pretend to be something that I'm not, but we do, we recognise that we need to be on the ground speaking to people directly.
00:14He's brought his cabinet out to the far west to listen to a community that he concedes sometimes feels forgotten.
00:22Last month was a case in point when a storm knocked down transmission lines and TransGrid's generators failed leaving thousands in the dark.
00:31Three weeks later a $200 payment is finally available for households to help soften the impact of losing food or earnings.
00:39They were very helpful, had to show some ID and tell them what happened and they were very receptive and I got a voucher so I'm quite happy.
00:51Some small businesses were saved by generators but many lost thousands of dollars worth of stock.
00:57At the moment just $400 is on offer to help them refill their fridges.
01:02That's ridiculous, that's no, $400, I lost about $480 worth of cold meat in my freezer, let alone all the stuff I lost in my fridge, it's just not enough.
01:13The Premier says he expects insurers to step up but he'll consider more support for businesses.
01:19I'm not going to close the door on future compensation, particularly for retail stores.
01:24I don't want to see them go out the door backwards because of no fault of their own.
01:28Broken Hill has a giant battery, a solar farm and these wind turbines yet none of them came to the rescue when they were needed most.
01:36The government concedes there's still a lot of work to do to get all the pieces of the power puzzle into place for when it really counts.
01:44It's giving over Crown land on a 65 year lease to build a compressed air energy storage facility on the outskirts of Broken Hill but it'll take five years to build.
01:54Until then people fear the next storm could bring the whole network crashing down again.