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

On in day in 2009 in Victoria, Australia's deadliest bushfire disaster began. There were 173 lives lost in the Black Saturday bushfires along with more than 2,000 homes destroyed and $1 billion in recovery costs. That was bad enough. Through the lens of time, we know natural hazards will keep climbing in frequently and intensity. In just a couple of weeks, we it will mark a year since the beginning of one of our most catastrophic flooding disasters. The eastern Australian floods were estimated by the Insurance Council of Australia to have cost $5.65 billion. They had a particularly devastating impact on the New South Wales Northern Rivers region, when five died in a rolling crisis on 28 February.

You'd think a bipartisan approach would have been the best approach as the months of flooding went on, and yet, when the former Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, looked at what needed to be done, he was having none of it. In the Northern Rivers and elsewhere, he decided some residents were more deserving than others and allocated relief funding accordingly. It was favouritism. That is disgusting. Now it turns out that his approach mirrored the way the New South Wales coalition government approached its own Black Summer bushfires disaster of 2019-20. A New South Wales Auditor-General's report found that former deputy premier John Barilaro rorted a $541.8 million bushfire grants scheme so that some Labor electorates would miss out, despite being in dire need.

There is a much better way to deal with disaster. The Albanese government will treat and tread the better path, not just for ones who vote for us but for all Australians, on behalf—