Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

The short answer is yes. Thank you, Senator, for the question. The good thing about answering the question quickly is that you can spend the next one minute and 50 seconds talking about other things—related things.

Senator Davey, I know that you have a genuine interest in the people of Lismore and the Northern Rivers. I think you've been there since your appointment as the shadow minister, as have I and, most recently, Senator Sheldon, the new Special Envoy for Disaster Recovery, appointed by the Prime Minister to ensure that communities who are experiencing disaster recovery are getting the support that they need.

In fact, Senator Sheldon was in Lismore just last week—on Friday, I believe it was—announcing additional support for the Northern Rivers in the form of around $50 million to support commercial landlords with grants. The importance of that, as Senator Sheldon so eloquently put it in the press conference that he undertook in Lismore, is that there are many small businesses who are located in commercial premises, and those small businesses are not able to reopen yet because the commercial landlords have not been able to afford to repair their properties. So that assistance, which is contributed to by the New South Wales government, will assist not just the landlords but the small businesses as well. Again, can I thank Senator Sheldon for the work that he's been doing there.

But the money that Senator Davey is talking about, of course, comes from the infamous Emergency Response Fund—remember that one? The Emergency Response Fund was set up by the government over three years ago with $4 billion in it. It accrued the former government over $800 million in interest, did not build a single disaster mitigation project, did not spend a cent on disaster recovery. It took the devastating floods we saw in the Northern Rivers and Queensland for any announcements to be made. And which government is going to deliver on them? The Albanese Labor government.