Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of this amendment to the Emergency Response Fund Amendment (Disaster Ready Fund) Bill 2022, but I also bring to the debate the personal experience of the past fortnight as my electorate of Nicholls has been ravaged by an unprecedented flood emergency. The Emergency Response Fund was set up by the coalition government in 2019. It was funded by the uncommitted balance of the Education Investment Fund, which was then closed. It was an investment fund intended to grow over time and maximise the Commonwealth's capacity to support states and territories to respond to major natural disasters into the future.

As of December 2021, the ERF balance was $4.7 billion, comprising of $3.978 billion credited to the ERF when it was established and $750 million in net earnings. That earnings figure in reserve has grown even more since. Under the previous legislation, the government could access up to $50 million for pre-disaster resilience measures and up to $150 million for emergency response and recovery each financial year.

Following the devastating Lismore floods this February and March, the coalition government was criticised for spending only $50 million on mitigation projects of the $836 million in interest earned by the fund. Labor made an election commitment to revamp the fund to spend $200 million annually on disaster prevention and resilience. The disaster ready bill will repurpose the ERF, turning it into an ongoing source of funding for natural disaster resilience and risk reduction.

There is a place for risk reduction and mitigation, but the bill lacks any detail or definition of what constitutes these activities. The Disaster Ready Fund, as it will be known, will provide $200 million per financial year for natural disaster resilience and risk reduction initiatives, but there is no transparency about how the funds will be distributed or what constitutes a mitigation or disaster prevention project.

In the past week, I sat down at a kitchen table in the small region of Undera in the Nicholls electorate. Seated at the table were local farmers, some with a history on the land dating back many, many generations. They had seen floods through the generations and knew how to respond. They have a levee to protect their properties from the Goulburn River and they knew one week prior that it was in a fairly poor state in some sections. They set to work but between local and state authorities couldn't nail down who was responsible for the levee's maintenance. They took matters into their own hands, making repairs and purchasing sand to fill sandbags to reinforce the levee. They battled with the elements and time and ultimately many areas still flooded as the water rose over the levee and then undermined it. They now need urgent temporary repairs because the Goulburn River is still high and the risk of further flooding has yet not receded. At the time we sat around the kitchen table, they also needed to find hundreds of missing cows. They didn't know if they had perished or had dispersed into the regional park.

As I have travelled throughout my electorate, the sound of helicopters overhead has been fairly constant. The farmers wanted a quick flyover to locate their cattle so they could at least attempt to get feed to them. The ongoing emergency meant that that wasn't possible for them. I mention this because it reflects that in an emergency the immediate needs of flood victims are many and varied. Shelter, food and comfort are the most immediate, and in Seymour, Nagambie, Shepparton, Mooroopna, Rochester and currently Echuca, that help is available in my electorate. Emergency financial support is also important, and I thank the Minister for Emergency Services, Senator Murray Watt, for being engaged and responsive to my community needs.

We do not yet fully understand the scale of the impact, but it would be correct to assume that there is more to add in terms of assistance and much more to be done as the region shifts from emergency to clean-up and then to recovery. Only this afternoon, at 2.12 pm, the emergency SMS network was used to send a text to people in the flood zone, informing people queueing for flood relief payments at the Shepparton Showgrounds of lengthy delays and urging them to instead make their applications online. The demand for support is great. People's circumstances are dire, and the level of support needs to ramp up to match the demand.

The people of Nicholls are like many Australian communities: they are stoic, practical, empathetic and selfless. Across the flood-affected areas of my electorate, we have seen and heard of the countless acts of kindness during this crisis: neighbours helping neighbours, strangers helping strangers, a community spirit that is the very essence of what it is to live in rural and regional Australia, and as their local member I am so proud of them.

As the situation worsened and floodwaters approached thousands of people, the community got out there and helped to fill, distribute and lay sandbags in a last, desperate attempt at mitigation, which in many cases, sadly, was not enough. Others helped families to evacuate and gave them shelter on higher ground. Communities rallied to distribute food, water and other necessities whenever they could. In a part of Shepparton North which was isolated for four days, a lone stranger in a kayak paddled through the streets, delivering water and homemade sandwiches. Daniel Cleave, Kaiden Richards, Curt Arthur and Michael Hand used a tinnie to make supply drops around their estate in Shepparton. The food was supplied by members of a local boxing gym. Communities formed on social media shared their experiences and helped stranded and isolated people find out about their relatives and friends in other areas. Many residents evacuated to the safety of refuges, where again volunteers from the community did everything they could to provide comfort.

Day and night, people stranded in their flooded streets checked those around them. It was a familiar scene for people to gather on their front porches and shout up and down the street. They would establish who needed supplies or assistance, but it was also a way of lifting each other's spirits. As their accessible world shrank with the rising water, people stuck together and did whatever they could to support each other. This is what good communities do, what regional communities do.

That support is also evident as flood victims deal with the shocking reality of what these record floods have wrought on their communities. The clean-up and recovery tasks are massive, as unprecedented as the flooding itself. Again these strong and resilient communities will rise to the challenge. On the weekend, I joined one of many football and netball clubs helping to coordinate clean-up volunteers, but, having seen firsthand the scale of the damage, I say they can't do it alone.

In Rochester, an estimated 90 per cent of the homes and buildings have been flooded above floor level. Rochester, or Rochie as we call it in my electorate, has been through it before, and history records how they helped each other after the 2011 floods. But, with so many people impacted and dealing with their own calamity, the volunteer workforce is stretched. I stood in a flooded Rochester home with 83-year-old Lorraine Wilson, who was cleaning the mud off her cabinets of collectibles and treasured photographs of her late husband. She raised five children in that home, and one of them is named Leigh Wilson. He's been doing an amazing job rallying and supporting his community in Rochester.

After the Brisbane flood there was a mud army, and Rochester needs an army—our ADF—to speed up the initial clean-up and get the town on the road to recovery. The longer the sodden, smelly mess remains, the worse the impact on the community, which right now, frankly, feels a bit forgotten and neglected. They need help and they need hope.

Across my electorate business owners have been hit hard. Some have wept openly at their loss. They need support to clean up and re-establish. Despite the efforts of a gang of volunteers, the IGA supermarket in Rochester may not be fully operational before Christmas, and that's the only supermarket in that town. Outside of the towns there are stock losses. Milk has been dumped because the tankers couldn't pick it up. Healthy crops that should have produced a bumper harvest have been destroyed, and we do not yet know the full toll on mature fruit trees.

Our infrastructure has suffered greatly. Roads, bridges, footpaths, community buildings, schools and sports facilities have all been impacted. The cities, small towns and rural communities impacted by this flood want to clean up, rebuild and move on, but they can't do it alone. They need government assistance and a lot of it.

We will also need to turn our attention to the future and mitigation or disaster prevention projects. The coalition government established a fund to support such measures. As the second reading amendment notes, we are concerned that this measure from the new Labor government is seeking to remove an additional source of funding for natural disaster recovery at the very moment when many communities across south-east Australia, including communities across my electorate of Nicholls, are facing many months of work to clean up after these devastating floods.

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