Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories. How is the Albanese Labor government ensuring that regional communities devastated by flooding have the funding they need to rebuild local infrastructure?

Kristy McBain (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you to the member for Macquarie, who has experienced not only bushfires but floods over the last couple of years. I know how important that engagement with your local councils in the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury has been, and thank you for the advice that you've provided to me and my office. As a mayor of a former regional council we experienced nine declare natural disasters in four years and the impact on communities, on businesses and on livelihoods is extensive and ongoing. Right now we're experiencing devastating floods. Over 100 local council areas across four states are currently declared natural disaster areas.

I have been liaising with a number of mayors across the country, as well as members across this chamber, on the impacts being experienced by communities at this point in time. The cost to local councils is extraordinary. In my own electorate Cooma, Adelong, Yass, Murrumbateman and Bega have experienced flooding, as well as a number of other localities. In Adelong residents were ordered to evacuate, cars were swept away and paddock fences were erased—just like so many other places across our regions. In Gunning, not far from here, in the member for Hume's electorate, two lives were sadly lost. My sincere condolences go out to their families and to all families that have lost loved ones in these floods.

The impact to our agricultural sector is immense, from damaged crops to livestock deaths, to delays in getting machinery on farms to start to repair some of that damage. The government has acted quickly though to make disaster assistance payments available. I want to thank Minister Watt for the timeliness in his response to this. Over one million disaster payments have already been made to date. Disaster recovery funding arrangements are already in place with state and territory governments. We are providing on-ground assistance to them.

In the budget, our government committed $38.3 million over four years to boost federal disaster response payments, in particular to the veteran-led Disaster Relief Australia, because we know we need boots on the ground when disasters hit. We're providing financial support to people in Victoria, Tasmania, New South Wales and Queensland affected by ongoing and extensive flooding. We are investing heavily in mitigation and resilience—over $1 billion over five years for mitigation resilience projects. We want state and territory governments to partner with us to build things like flood levies and fire breaks, and invest in community resilience projects. We have to be there not only now but well into the future. Grants of up to $25,000 are available to support small businesses and primary producers impacted by October flooding with clean-up and restoration activities.

This year we invested an additional $250 million under the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Program. There will be a particular focus on regional roads to enable those local governments to deal with the impacts on their roads.

Roads to recovery continues to provide an important source of funding for our local councils. We need to be here not only—(Time expired)

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper. And can I give a shout out to Andrew, Craig, Harry and Adam, proud members of the Australian Workers Union, who I met with earlier this morning. Good on you. Thanks for coming and having a chat.