Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Emergency Management and the Minister representing the Attorney-General, Senator Watt. Can the minister explain why funding certainty is important for essential government functions like emergency management and national security and what happens when governments don't plan for the future by providing that certainty?

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

Thank you very much, Senator Green. As a Cairns based senator, I know you have provided a lot of support to regional communities experiencing floods and other disasters in your time here. In the ten months that I've been Minister for Emergency Management, I've obviously seen a lot of floods. Every time I visit a different flood or storm impacted community, I hear the same stories over and over again. People keep saying, 'It's always flooded in the past, but never like this,' or they say, 'This exceeds anything we've ever seen before,' or, 'This isn't normal.' This pattern was evident all the way back in 2019 with the Black Summer bushfires when we saw unprecedented fires in Queensland rainforests, the entirety of Kangaroo Island under a bushfire warning and fires across New South Wales and Victoria burning for months.

It's been blatantly obvious for a very long time that long-term investment in disaster funding and taking action on climate change has been required. While those of us on this side of the chamber have acknowledged the impacts of climate change for some years, those opposite are still living in the dark ages. These ideological beliefs and climate wars have hamstrung their ability to prepare for natural disasters. The fact is that for nearly a decade the coalition failed to make our country more resilient to the impacts of natural disasters.

Despite all the evidence over all those years, they seemed to think that the disasters would stop. In fact, they even came up with a precise date that they thought the natural disasters would stop, and that was 30 June this year. I say that because it's on that date that nearly 25 per cent of the funding for our national disaster agencies runs out. That's right. The former government, under Senator Birmingham and Senator McKenzie, didn't fund their national natural disaster agencies past the end of this financial year. According to the forward estimates, if the coalition had won the election, our national disaster agencies could not have continued operating. (Time expired)

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Green, first supplementary?

Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

GREEN () (): Minister, how is this funding uncertainty impacting on the Commonwealth's ability to support states and territories in responding to the increasing number of natural hazards?

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

Let me repeat. Under the former government, 25 per cent of the funding for our national disaster agencies runs out on 30 June this year. Despite all of the floods, all of the bushfires and all of the cyclones, they just said: 'It's going to be okay. It's going to stop raining on 30 June 2023, and we won't need that funding beyond that.'

What does that funding uncertainty mean? What it means is that if it's not fixed by our government, our network of recovery support officers around the country is impaired, along with our ability to provide payments to disaster impacted communities and any national planning to build national resilience. They're the things that would have occurred had the coalition won the last election. It's almost as if the coalition thought that these events would just stop, everything would be fine, the sun would come out and we'd get precisely the right amount of rainfall in precisely the right areas and we'd never have to worry about natural disasters. This is the economic vandalism we inherited. We're fixing up the mess. (Time expired)

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Green, second supplementary?

Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Minister, how could former governments have better prepared for the increasing number and intensity of natural hazards?

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

Maybe as a starting point the former government, when it was preparing its budget just before the election, could have thought: 'We've being having a lot of floods lately. We've being having a few bushfires lately. A few cyclones. Maybe we need to make sure that our national natural disaster agency has the funding to continue its operations.' But, no, their budget—Senator Birmingham's and Senator McKenzie's budget for the emergency management department—was actually going to cut 25 per cent of the funding for that agency from 30 June this year.

Since our election 10 months ago, the Albanese government has shown that no matter what state or territory you live in, when a natural disaster strikes we will be there with you and we will provide the funding that is needed to respond properly to natural disasters. That's why we've been fixing the neglect of the past decade. We're overhauling the Emergency Response Fund, the $5 billion fund that never built a single project. With our Disaster Ready Fund, we're overhauling disaster funding arrangements. We are fixing the mess that we have been left in so many portfolios, including disaster management. (Time expired)