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

Thank you, Senator Davey. As I say, my personal view has been communicated very clearly to the National Emergency Management Agency that I think it is vital that we retain the regional presence of these recovery support officers, because that is where many of the disasters that we've seen over the last couple of years have occurred—they've been in our regions—and we want to ensure that we do have people on the ground.

As I say, there is work to be done by NEMA about how best to allocate its resources. One of the reasons they've been forced to do this is the funding cuts that were on track to happen as a result of the budget that we inherited from the former government. So I find it a little hard to listen to National Party senators who all of a sudden are very concerned about resourcing for the National Emergency Management Agency when one of their own was the minister who delivered a budget that was going to cut funding to the National Emergency Management Agency by 25 to 30 per cent. We support regional Australians and we support urban Australians going through disasters. We're not about cutting funding like you lot did. (Time expired)