David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party, Minister for Agriculture, Drought and Emergency Management) Share this | Hansard source

This is a serious issue. With all due respect, this is about mental health and the wellbeing of those people that went through the trauma of one of our worst fire events. I find it abhorrent that you would sit here and interject during this answer, absolutely abhorrent.

Today we carved out $11½ million for those first responders, those brave men and women who aren't sitting here, who are actually out there fighting the fires and actually trying to protect our lives and to protect the homes of Australians who were facing one of the worst natural disasters we have seen. So it's important we understand that their unique recovery, their healing, is separate. We're saying to them that we're going to empower Black Dog Institute of Australia and Fordham Australia—a great organisation that has currency with our first responders, those men and women who put their lives on the line for us. We're going to look at how we help them heal and make sure we work with the states to put in place a better PTSD recovery model for all first-responders across this country. We should be damned proud of these Australians, ordinary Australians who did extraordinary things for our nation. We should never forget what they've done.

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