Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a great honour to be appointed Special Envoy for Disaster Recovery. Whether it's floods, bushfires or storms, when natural disasters hit Australians look to us to work collaboratively and urgently with state and local governments in their hour of greatest need. Australians all believe that we should be rebuilding their lives and communities, and building them back better and more resilient.

I've started receiving briefings, and listening to stakeholders from recently impacted disaster regions. There is a lot of optimism about what a change of government will mean for disaster recovery, but there is also a lot of frustration and scepticism, given these communities' experience with the former government—a former government which withheld disaster relief funding and which, after being pressured to finally provide support, excluded communities in Labor-held seats. This is disgusting. There was our former prime minister, who snuck off to Hawaii during the Black Summer bushfires and the now opposition leader, who made jokes about our Pacific neighbours suffering from rising sea levels.

This is the former government that appointed the former National President of the Liberal Party, Shane Stone, as our disaster recovery agency chief, despite having no experience in disaster recovery. Mr Stone's main contribution to the role was to insult flood victims, suggesting it was their own fault for living in areas prone to flooding. There's a lot of work to be done—