Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

RAMSEY (—) (): Earlier this week I gave a bit of quick run down on the flooding situation on the Stuart Highway in South Australia. A number of outback highways were cut. I gave a bit of an update. I also spoke about the unincorporated areas in councils. I spoke about the damage that was done in my own council—and on my own farm—particularly to the roads of the Kimba district council. This is a council of about 1,040 people with probably in excess of $5 million worth of road damage alone so it has been a pretty challenging event.

The disaster recovery funding arrangements are now in place. I thank both the state government for getting that claim organised and Minister McKenzie for turning it around so quickly—I think in about 48 hours. For the benefit of those local councils and communities, I thought I might run through just what that entails. It's fifty-fifty state and federal funding. In this case it covers 14 local government areas and that includes the unincorporated areas of the pastoral land which is covered by the outback areas authority. It includes the Cleve, Coober Pedy, Elliston, Flinders Ranges, Franklin Harbour, Grant, Kimba, Lower Eyre Peninsula, Port Augusta, Roxby Downs, Streaky Bay, Tumby Bay and Whyalla councils. It is important to note that, for these councils, this funding will cover assistance to help state agencies and councils cover the costs associated with delivering to impacted communities exceptional relief and recovery measures that go beyond the capacity of state and local government and may include activities to protect the general public, prevent damage to residential areas and so on. It is also for the restoration of essential public assets. The measure provides financial assistance to help them with the cost of restoring and repairing to their predisaster standard eligible essential public assets with infrastructure damage as a direct result of disaster. It also covers emergency works such as removing debris and making temporary repairs undertaken immediately after the disaster to enable an eligible asset to be operational.

The important part about this is that these areas that have been affected can now budget, plan and get on with the job of the restoration process. It's tough enough being a councillor or a CEO in a small council and wondering how on earth you're going to deal with these issues, but know that the governments at all levels, as I said in a radio interview, have got your back. This is the insurance operation that means you can confidently go about your work in future. So I look forward to all those assets, particularly the ones that I drive on, being restored.