Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On budget night, I received a phone call of the kind that many in this House may have received—and this was before the budget had even been delivered. It was from a concerned family member. His wife had just returned home. She works at the Australian Emergency Management Institute at Mount Macedon in my electorate, and they had just been informed that their facility would be closed as a result of federal government funding cuts. It is a call that no MP likes to take and it is a call that no MP should have to take, where people who work hard in their electorate are facing funding cuts because of a federal government decision. And it is a dumb decision. Why on earth would you cut funding to the Australian Emergency Management Institute, the very facility where the top people across governments, across communities, get together to make sure that we are ready to respond in the case of an emergency?

In country Victoria, we know only too well that we need to be ready—ready when there is a bushfire, ready when there are floods. And where our top people go to make sure that they are ready, to make sure that they have the skills and expertise, is to the Australian Emergency Management Institute. This is a dumb decision by the government. They should meet with the people involved in the institute and they should change their minds on this decision. There are 45 jobs at risk, 60 including contractors. The government should change their minds on the Australian Emergency Management Institute.