Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Emergency Management) Share this | Hansard source

The National Emergency Management Agency was created by our government, and I think it has shown why a well-coordinated and properly resourced agency is so important in keeping Australians safe. Whether that is running the national situation room, delivering hundreds of thousands of sandbags to Queensland councils or working to maintain and establish supply chains, that capability has been widely recognised as changing our ability to support the states in managing natural disasters.

That refusal by the shadow emergency management minister to rule out job cuts to NEMA is disturbing, but of course that has her boss's fingerprints all over it. Mr Dutton is a person who has described Labor's investments in Public Service capability as wasteful spending, and he is committed to cutting 36,000 public servants.