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

It gives me great pleasure to rise and talk about the appropriation bill and this year's budget because they're focused around our response to the royal commission into natural disasters. I'm proud to say that, as of today, 14 of the 18 recommendations that were directed primarily to the federal government have been completed and many more will be completed by the end of this month, as we have new agencies standing up ready for action in future disasters.

We've brought together the Bushfire Recovery Agency and the National Drought and North Queensland Flood Response and Recovery Agency, as per the recommendation. We've brought in the new National Resilience and Recovery Agency, which will play a pivotal part in our response to natural disasters in the future. It's standing up. It will be led by Shane Stone. It will commence on 1 July, ready to tackle, coordinate and cooperate with state agencies should there be another emergency.

I'm proud to say that, of the $2 billion of bushfire money that was committed—in addition to the immediate short-term support that we gave to bushfire victims—as of today $1.6 billion has been spent. We announced last month that, where there have been underspends, there will be a final spend to spend right up to that $2 billion. There is a $280 million fund to help communities reconstruct, invest in infrastructure and diversify their economic base. We've made that commitment to spend $2 billion, and that will continue.

We're looking also to the future. There was significant investment in standing up not just the Resilience and Recovery Agency but the Australian Climate Service. This is a new agency that brings together the skills of 10 agencies—from BOM to CSIRO and Geoscience Australia—so that we have real-time information. We are able to centralise, collate and provide that data to first responders who are making real-time decisions. This is the first time this has been done in our nation's history. We're also ramping up the capacity of Emergency Management Australia to support that agency in delivering a real-time response to our state agencies in natural disasters.

But we want to go further than that. This was part of the recommendations of the royal commission. We make a real commitment towards betterment and more resilient communities. We have a number of programs. We have worked with the Queensland government on household improvement programs. We're investing in a partnership with them to allow homeowners do renovations to their houses to make them more resilient to cyclones. We've had a very successful program. In fact, that has had some results. Some insurance policies have come down by nearly $300 as a result of that investment. As a result of the experience of those types of programs we have announced $600 million in the Preparing Australia Program. It's a very important program. There's $400 million for public mitigation infrastructure and $200 million for household infrastructure, similar to what I just articulated. It's important to build infrastructure in the community, such as levee banks that will keep water away from towns that have previously been inundated.

We're partnering with state governments also. The states have worked with us on mitigation works. Some are better than others. I have to say that the Queensland government has a betterment fund of over $100 million. We're trying to partner with that. That's on top of the $260 million—we have partnered $130 million each—in the national risk reduction framework fund to reduce the risks to our communities.

These projects are important. That's on top of the Emergency Response Fund. I'm proud to say that the $50 million that is available from the fund will be paid out and expended before 30 June—the full $50 million. We have projects right across the country. This year's mitigation was around flooding because the advice we received in the lead-up to this disaster season was around cyclones and flooding. Again there was meticulous preparation by emergency service personnel. They planned and they were right. We saw a number of cyclones and floods in New South Wales and, as we speak now, Victoria. The mitigation works will again go into a lot of flooding infrastructure. It will support those communities and those households. I'm proud to say that $50 million will be expended. We will be opening up next year's round in July to make sure that we can continue to roll that money out. We're making continued investment in not only the immediacy of supporting those who've been impacted by natural disasters but also building resilience to protect families, businesses and communities.

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