Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The coalition government's budget of broken promises and twisted priorities has signalled the end of support for Queensland flood reconstruction and the cutting of national flood mitigation works. This will increase costs to the Commonwealth government in future in relation to flood reconstruction. At the same time it puts pressure on the cost of living for households in Ipswich and Somerset in my electorate and in Queensland across the board.

Eighty-three million dollars has been scrapped from flood mitigation funding that would lower the pressure on insurance premiums for households in flood-prone areas. When in government, the former federal Labor government put $100 million for flood mitigation projects into last year's budget, and the National Insurance Affordability Initiative. Now, the Prime Minister has cut this to $17 million—$10 million for Ipswich and $7 million for a flood levee in Roma. That finding which he cut could have gone towards new projects around Australia, including for the Somerset region and Ipswich—further works in my electorate.

But this has been done without warning. This comes on top of the Abbott government's savage local government cuts, ripping nearly a billion dollars from their bottom line, meaning less funding for local roads and services, and future flood work. Certainly, when it comes to local government and flood reconstruction, this is a budget of wrong priorities which will make Queenslanders pay for his broken promises.