Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

I commend this motion to the House, and I thank the member for Mallee for bringing it forward and for her cooperation in working with me on it. This is an incredibly important motion. It's really just calling for one thing, and that is: would the Victorian state government please move quickly to provide additional support and help to these communities in and around the Grampians—Halls Gap, Pomonal, Dunkeld and others—that have been impacted by the bushfires which have ravaged the Grampians since just before Christmas.

What I would say is that people have been out doing their bit throughout this period of time, and the selflessness has been extraordinary, but the time has come for businesses in particular to get a little bit of support and help. The member for Mallee knows that. I know it. Everyone who can go and have a look—and I encourage everyone to do so—will see it firsthand if they just speak to local businesses. Yet for some reason the Victorian state government does not want to move quickly. Well, I say to the Victorian state government: please move quickly and help and support these communities.

To know and understand what has happened in and around the Grampians over the last six weeks is to know that a fire has raged like no other, and we have seen volunteer and professional firefighters do an extraordinary job keeping communities safe. The fact that they've been able to contain that fire, to protect communities, when we have had some of the worst conditions you can have when firefighting is quite remarkable. To every volunteer and paid professional who has been out there keeping this fire within the bounds of the national park, I say thank you. We've seen periods where it has got out, and the way they have acted to bring it under control has been remarkable.

While that has been happening, these tourist towns—Halls Gap, Pomonal, Dunkeld—have suffered. The reality is—and you can't blame them, but this is the reality—as soon as people, especially from cities or from interstate or from overseas, hear that a fire is burning, they tend to cancel their bookings and go elsewhere. They don't think, 'Well, perhaps we should wait until it's under control and then honour our booking.' They just don't do that. What that means for business is their normal peak period, what I would call their 'shearing period', when they make the majority of their money—the Christmas period, the New Year period, the Australia Day long weekend period, and now we're heading to the Easter period. That is when they maximise their income for the whole year, and that has just been taken away from them.

When we had the Leader of the Opposition come down—we visited Halls Gap and Pomonal—we heard firsthand about that, about how businesses had stopped for this period. They've had to watch their stock waste because the people weren't there for them to service. And they love servicing the tourists that come. That's their pride and joy. They love the communities they live in, and they want to make sure that, when people come, they are there and are ready to give them the best tourist experience they possibly can. But that hasn't been able to take place, and that is why we need the Victorian state government to act.

All the Victorian state government needs to do is put that claim in to the federal government so it can be assessed. They've done category A and category B. That is a big tick, tick. But now it is the businesses that need help and support, and that's why they need to move quickly on that, and that's why I want to support and commend this motion. The member for Mallee has been on the ground. She's heard about the experiences that these businesses have been going through. I have, too. We want to ensure that herculean effort that has been undertaken by those to keep the communities safe is backed by the government coming in and supporting the businesses that need it at the moment.

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