Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. The 2016 Tasmanian floods devastated many Tasmanian communities, including the township of Latrobe. Therefore, instead of continuing with his arrogant and out-of-touch policy to give $80 billion tax giveaways to the big end of town, when will the Prime Minister adopt Labor's plan to invest $3.4 million to fund flood mitigation works in and around Latrobe to protect every single house and business in the township from future catastrophic floods?

Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Minister for Law Enforcement and Cybersecurity) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. Of course, on this side of the House we know the importance of disaster relief and mitigation. We also know that the floods of June 2016 in northern and north-western Tasmania were both devastating and tragic. Bill Shorten, the Leader of the Opposition—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister will refer to members by their correct titles.

Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Minister for Law Enforcement and Cybersecurity) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Opposition made a rushed announcement yesterday. He can't deliver what he's promising. He's not in government, and he won't be in government after the by-election. We have only just received a report outlining options for flood mitigation for Latrobe, partly funded by this side of the House, by this government.

During the 2016 floods, the Hodgman government and the Turnbull government worked together through our Natural Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements to deal with what was a devastating and tragic set of floods. The response included category C funding of up to $10,000 for severely affected primary producers. We know how to deal with those problems on this side of the House. In nine local government areas, including in Latrobe, there was a total of $6.6 million of funding. It also included category D funding for $16 million worth of projects, including a $3 million flood-mapping project for all affected local government areas.

The Turnbull and Hodgman governments again look forward to working together cooperatively with the Latrobe Council on any long-term solution that better protects residents and farmers from floods like this one that occurred in 2016. That's why we took the view some time ago that we needed a framework for disaster resilience to be revised and updated. In April 2018 we formed a national task force within the Department of Home Affairs to tackle exactly this issue. We are proud of providing assistance to communities impacted by disasters. Our government respects the processes of the Latrobe Council, which will be dealing with this issue this week, and we look forward to working with them to protect the region from future floods.