David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party, Minister for Agriculture, Drought and Emergency Management) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Herbert for his question, and acknowledge the fact that, representing North Queensland, he understands better than most the impacts of natural disasters—but so too do many in this House—over the last couple of years and the challenges we face. Whether it be floods, cyclones or bushfires, we as a nation have had to pull together. We heard those harrowing stories replayed during the royal commission into natural disasters. I am pleased to say that, just on six months since that report was handed to the government, we have as a federal government completed eight of the 14 recommendations to the federal government.

Last week we announced, in response to one of those recommendations, the bringing together of the recovery agencies of the bushfire with the drought and flood agencies into one national recovery agency, making sure that the nearly $11 billion put for drought, the nearly $3.3 billion for floods and the $2 billion for fires are rolled out in a coordinated way with a new and enhanced Emergency Management Australia.

We have also established Climate Services Australia, bringing together and collecting the data from 10 agencies. Whether that be from the Bureau of Meteorology, Geoscience Australia, the CSIRO or the Australian Bureau of Statistics, what we want to do is be able to give those in emergency management across the country real-time data to be able to make decisions. What that does in a practical way for someone in North Queensland is: if there is a cyclone about to hit their community, we will be able to tell those state authorities the number of households that will be impacted, the age of those households and the number of inhabitants, so they can make pre-emptive decisions about the resources that are going to be required to be there to help them in the immediacy of that natural disaster.

We are also looking at mitigation works. I am proud to say that, yesterday, with the first of the $50 million under the ERF, I announced 22 projects across the country for mitigation works in flooding. We will be reopening that ERF program, now that we've got it up and going, for another $50 million. We also announced, as part of the mitigation works last week, further funding of $600 million. There's $200 million to support households. That builds on the household program that we already run in Queensland. We're allowing households to get grants from between $5,000 and $30,000 to do renovations to their home to make them fit for purpose—to make them cyclone proof, to make them flood proof—and to be able to have those undertakings on their own property and to also reduce their insurance premium. In North Queensland alone, we have seen a reduction of up to $310 in their insurance premium. Then we looked at community mitigation works. There is $400 million to complement the $50 million in ERF to ensure that we don't just look at flood but we also look at fire and every other disaster that may be mitigated with capital works.

We are asking the states to come with us. This is a dual responsibility. This government, along with the states, will stand shoulder to shoulder with Australians here and into the future. (Time expired)