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

Just before I respond to your questions, Senator McKenzie, I want to say that your questions have obviously been about Victoria, but I have now had similar discussions with emergency management ministers in a number of states—not just in Victoria—about repairs to infrastructure and betterment opportunities. As I said, we have approved funding for betterment definitely in New South Wales and I'm pretty sure in Queensland as well, but that's in relation to events that took place several months ago, so no criticism should be levelled at the Victorian or any state government about what's happening right now. As you would know, sometimes those betterment discussions happen a little bit further along after the event.

I think I understand your question to mean, 'Will we use what will be the Disaster Ready Fund to invest in physical infrastructure?' I would certainly expect that a sizeable portion would be used for that purpose. You may not have heard me say we're in the process of consulting on guidelines for the fund now. I've invited the shadow minister and Senator Brockman and I'd be happy to invite you to be part of those discussions about what we should use these funds for.

The examples I've always given in the public about how this fund would be used have tended to be physical infrastructure like flood levees, drainage improvements and cyclone shelters—things like that. But that doesn't rule out potentially using them for social services, community resilience and those kinds of things as well. You would know, I'm sure, that there are many communities out there, including local governments, that want to prepare community resilience plans. That's a really worthwhile thing to do. We're waiting until we have that consultation occur to finalise exactly how it could be spent, but I would certainly expect to see a substantial portion of this used to clear the long backlog of local government mitigation projects that exists.