Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Emergency Response Fund Amendment (Disaster Ready Fund) Bill 2022. The bill proposes to amend the Emergency Response Fund Act 2019 to repurpose the existing Emergency Response Fund as a dedicated ongoing source of funding for natural disaster mitigation and risk reduction. It will be known as the Disaster Ready Fund. The Disaster Ready Fund is expected to commence on 1 July 2023.

This bill will also allow up to $200 million per annum to be debited from the Disaster Ready Fund for natural disaster resilience and risk reduction. It will allow the minister to adjust the maximum disbursement amount via a disallowed legislative instrument and facilitate the transfer of responsibility for fund expenditure to the NEMA and streamline administrative arrangements in relation to transfers from the fund.

I represent an electorate where this fund will matter. I am grateful to the minister and his office for detail on its proposed operations, including its focus on built-environment projects, such as levees, and community resilience projects, including preparedness plans and place based responses. I understand that disbursement of these funds will be directed through eligibility guidelines. This is very important to ensure these funds are going to worthy projects that stack up, because the last thing that emergency affected communities want is white elephant projects that look good to announce but do nothing to build our resilience.

I supported the former government's Emergency Response Fund Bill in 2019 when it was passed in September of that year. Back then, my electorate was experiencing drought. The Benalla Rural City Council and rural city of Wangaratta became eligible for Drought Communities Program funding, with these areas experiencing hardship as a result of years of below-average rainfall. Who could have foreseen that since that time the pendulum would swing right back around with floods brought about by the third La Nina event in three years? And of course there were the Black Summer bushfires that ravaged my electorate.

It is regional Australia that endures the brunt of disasters, the droughts, the floods and the bushfires that are becoming increasingly severe and happening increasingly often. These aren't one-off events. We barely get a chance to breathe between them, and we can't keep reacting to disasters. We can't keep going with knee-jerk reactions—a ministerial announcement or an ad hoc appropriation. We need to shift our focus from recovery towards prevention and mitigation. We need to reduce the economic and psychological impacts of these disasters which are increasingly becoming a part of our lives.

Right now my electorate is very wet. Rainfall records for October have been tumbling. Benalla, Euroa and some parts of Wangaratta have experienced flooding, and there's more rainfall forecast. Right across Murrindindi, the rivers are full and overflowing. Our soil is saturated right across our electorate. This will be an ongoing situation for us. I have spoken with federal emergency services minister Murray Watt and local government minister Kristy McBain about the support and repair works that are needed. I am grateful for their attention to the unfolding disaster and their rapid approval for disaster recovery payments. I am very grateful to Minister Watt for his frequent phone calls to me over the course of the last couple of weeks, checking in on the community.

Our councils, though, are now facing enormous costs to clean up and fix potholes on our roads. The price tag is eye watering. And these are councils which already have a low rate basis. Before the flooding, we had significant problems right across our rural road networks. This flooding is causing enormous damage. That's why I was disappointed to see the lack of new road funding in the budget. I was heartened to see that the government will continue to partner with state and territory governments to fund projects under the Road Safety Program, with the delivery of total nationwide funding of $3 billion to continue through to mid-2025. But so much more is needed in these times to equip us. It is incredibly difficult for local councils—I can't underscore this enough—to keep up with the necessary repairs. This area needs significant investment, and Labor missed an opportunity in the budget to strengthen roads further in light of the recent floods.

I was pleased to see in the budget last night a measure that addresses insurance premiums for areas that are prone to natural disasters. I have lobbied the Minister for Emergency Management, Murray Watt, from the day he took office to address skyrocketing premiums for businesses and households affected by bushfires. Insurance premiums are driving our iconic businesses to the wall, especially in our alpine areas. I make special mention of Mr Steve Bellow, from the alpine areas in Indi, who I've worked with closely on this really difficult area of insurance. He has come to me many times. He's worked tirelessly on bushfire recovery and he's been a champion for the businesses in our alpine resorts. Mr Bellow, I hope you are listening, because there is a little glimmer of hope in the budget. But so much more needs to be done to address this insurance crisis.

I welcome the government's commitment of $22.6 million over four years to start tackling this insurance problem. We know how complex the issue is, and greater regulation will not solve the issue on its own. The government has proposed partnerships between government and the insurance sector and to inform mitigation projects to reduce the cost of this essential protection. The measures in the budget papers last night were welcome but they are light on detail. I want to see evidence that shows the government's proposals are linked to real action.

The first three years of my parliamentary career have been marked by me fighting alongside the community to get access to government support to help my constituents recover from the impact of natural disasters. After the Black Summer bushfires, affected communities were nonsensically excluded from support. This was a gruelling process of advocating for their inclusion that resulted in the long-awaited extension of the $10,000 small business bushfire recovery grant to Indigo, Wangaratta and Mansfield six months after the fires—sadly too late for many businesses. At the end, though, together with the community, we made progress with our recovery and resilience through securing $938,000 for 18 primary producers, including grape growers affected by smoke take; $6.43 million for 642 small businesses; and $2 million for individuals and families impacted by the 2019-20 fires.

My observation is that through this hard-fought process this government is incrementally getting better at responding to communities' needs. There is more consultation, and recovery payments flow quicker. Time is of the essence with these emergency supports. It needs to be responsive so that it can save businesses and get lives back on track quickly, because we know there is a long tail for recovery, and the economic, psychological and social impacts last for years and sometimes decades.

We also need to continue to systematically engage affected small businesses and primary producers to identify whether the support provided is enough to sustain them. If it's not, the government will have to decide what price it's willing to pay to save regional communities affected by disaster. Natural disasters will continue to dominate our lives in regional Australia, throwing lives into chaos, affecting businesses and disrupting our agricultural and production sector.

This bill is a good development, but we do need more. I'd like to see the inclusion of emergency services precincts or emergency operations precincts in eligible projects. These would coordinate emergency and volunteer services efforts and help recruit the much-needed volunteers. Everywhere I go across my electorate, most particularly in the last couple of weeks with the floods, when I speak the SES and the CFA, they tell me that their volunteer numbers are down and those who are left are exhausted. When we talk about resilience funding, we need to make sure that the guidelines enable us to address that as a key problem and to address the fact that multiservice precincts are a great way to go to capitalise on the volunteers that we have got—share resources, share information. I believe those things fit squarely within the resilience aspect of these funds. I know right now Mansfield and Myrtleford are two places that could benefit so greatly from emergency services precincts.

We need a nationwide plan to adapt our country to a changed climate. This would involve practical steps to protect our farm and small business sectors and keep our communities safe. We need to restore funding to research organisations leading this work. I suggest that the government adopt my proposal for an adaptation plan for the agricultural sector, including research investment into climate-resilient crops, more support for farmers to diversify into new types of crops, and payments to landowners for their extraordinary ecosystem management. Farmers have so many answers. We need to back them when it comes to adaptation and climate change.

Finally, we must reduce the likelihood and severity of these disasters by cutting carbon emissions at home and abroad. As long as emissions continue, our temperatures will rise and these crises will escalate. To say this should be as controversial as saying water flows downhill—and it flows a lot.

Regional Australia bears the brunt of natural disasters, but we also have the most to gain from smart, practical action to lower emissions and create new industries in rural and regional Australia. The opportunities are there if we are clever enough to seize them and the opportunities in this bill are there if we're smart enough to realise what communities need be resilient.

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