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

Thanks, Senator McKenzie. I well remember our many discussions about these funds in past estimates hearings and on other occasions. You're right—and I've made this point in the Senate just this week—that one of the major consequences of the flooding that we're seeing at the moment is the massive damage to roads and infrastructure around a lot of rural and regional Australia. I've seen those roads, I've driven on those roads, and you probably have as well. Whether we're talking about roads that are cut off or bridges that are suffering from erosion or potholes, or rail impacts, there are massive impacts out there and it's going to be a very costly bill. I've had a number of discussions with mayors already as I've travelled around the country into these flood areas, and it's pretty much the No. 1 issue they are raising with me.

At this point in time, our intention is to fund those sorts of repairs through the DRFA arrangements, as your government often did in these situations. In some parts of the country we're still at a relatively early stage of assessing the exact impacts of these floods. There are some parts of the country where we still have flood waters in place at the moment and we may well be seeing more. I know for a fact that there are state governments and local governments who have already begun the work of repairs to infrastructure in some parts of the country. In other parts of the country, that hasn't been possible yet because of the conditions. I have personally told a number of mayors that they can absolutely rely on the federal government to deliver funding for those repairs and infrastructure in the way your government did, through those DRFA arrangements. If something additional to that is necessary through the general infrastructure program, then of course we would consider that, but at this point in time what we're trying to do is make those DRFA arrangements work.

I should also say that, even in the short time we have been in office, we have announced substantial amounts of funding for betterment of roads and infrastructure. That's something that mayors have been speaking to me about for many years—back to my days in the Queensland government. We need to be building back better, not just repairing things to the standard they were, so we've done a lot of that already in New South Wales. I feel like we may have committed to a similar program in Queensland as well, and where there's an opportunity to do that around the current floods, we'd look at doing that as well.