Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much for your question. What I can confirm is that we are absolutely committed to standing by every person that has been impacted by bushfires and to standing by bushfire affected communities to support them in their recovery.

In reference to the numbers that you have just put on the table in relation to the Bushfire Recovery Fund—and the funding that is made available on an annual basis to support bushfire mitigation into the future—that fund has a very specific purpose and some very specific conditions around it. One of those conditions is that all other sources of funding to support bushfire recovery have to be expended before that particular fund comes into effect, and the $200 million that is made available annually as a dividend from that fund is to support our recovery and our mitigation activities going into the future.

As you would be well aware, we have spent more than $1.2 billion in support of bushfire recovery. I'm quite happy to go through and table the areas in which that $1.2 billion has been spent. But you conflate a number of issues, Senator. There is a significant difference between the bushfire recovery expenditure that has already occurred to date—through a myriad of different programs that have been administered across many, many portfolios in government—and the fund that you referred to, which refers to the money that is put aside to assist Australia in putting in place mitigation factors into the future. As I said, that requires all other forms of funding to have been expended before that one is activated.