House debates

Thursday, 27 October 2022

Statements by Members

Wannon Electorate: Floods, Victoria: Infrastructure

1:31 pm

Photo of Dan TehanDan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | | Hansard source

I rise today to praise the efforts of all the volunteers and the professional services who have helped deal with the floods in Wannon. Led by the SES, they have done an absolutely magnificent job. The SES have coordinated the CFA, local councils and other community members to make sure that communities have been kept safe. In particular, I would like to thank them for their efforts in Lexton, Lake Goldsmith and Skipton. They are the communities in my electorate that have been hit the hardest by the floods, yet those communities have come together and shown their resilience and are now doing the hard, hard work to make sure that they recover from these floods.

I also plead with the Albanese Labor Government to understand how the local road network has been smashed by this flooding and by the heavy rains that have come before it and have come afterwards. If there's anything that you can do for these local communities, it's to invest in the local road network. Rather than give $2.2 billion to Dan Andrews's pet rail project, deliver that money for the regional and rural road network in Victoria.