Wyatt Roy (Longman, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Innovation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The completion of the Dale Street flood levee is a very exciting and significant milestone for our community. As locals know, Dale Street has often been a street of tragedy. Almost every time it rains, the houses in Dale Street flood. In 2011, our community saw terrible floods. In more recent years we saw another bout of flooding that tragically took life in our community. While in this case not lives were lost in Dale Street, once again homes were inundated, impacting horribly on the residents.

I am very proud to say that, under the former state LNP government, I came together with the then state member for Morayfield, Darren Grimwade, and local councillor Peter Flannery to delivered a pretty innovative funding solution. Traditionally, the Commonwealth government does not fund flood levees. But, after knocking on just about every single door in this building and after going to just about every single minister to see how we could fit this square peg in that round hole, I sat down with the Prime Minister and we found an innovative funding solution to ensure that the Commonwealth could contribute a third of the funds. The former state LNP government, through the efforts of then local member Darren Grimwade, also put a third of the funds on the table, and the Moreton Bay Regional Council, through local councillor Peter Flannery, contributed the remaining third. We have been able to build this flood levee and officially open it this week, and it will fundamentally change the lives of locals in that community.

Just to give you one example: I met Kelly, a local resident, who was absolutely ecstatic when we opened the levee. I asked, 'What does this mean for you?' She told me the story of how Riley, her six-year-old son, would always get scared when it was raining and he was often quite stressed. However, now he is completely relieved. He loves the new flood levee, because there is a huge green space that he can run around and play on. It also means that Kelly has been able to build a bedroom for Riley downstairs—of course you could not put anything downstairs if you knew when it rained it was going to flood again. Little Riley now has his own bedroom, which is incredibly exciting. He does not have to stress and he has got a great park that he can play in.

I think this shows what can happen when the three levels of government come together and are prepared to do what it takes to find a solution that improve the lives of locals in our community. I am incredibly proud to say that I played a small part in the building of the Dower Street flood levee.