Trish Cook (Bullwinkel, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Emergency Management. How has this higher risk weather season impacted communities across Australia, and how has the Albanese Labor government responded?

Kristy McBain (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Cook for her question and acknowledge the impact the bushfires have had on her own electorate. This higher risk weather season started with Tropical Cyclone Fina, which impacted the Top End as well as the northern Kimberley coast in Western Australia. I met with communities impacted by Fina on the Tiwi Islands and in Darwin, seeing the damage firsthand and meeting with officials at the incident control centre in Darwin.

Following Fina, Australia experienced bushfires in New South Wales and Tasmania. I spoke with locals impacted in Kariong and Dolphin Sands about what they had experienced and met with local fire crews. December saw the start of storm season with monsoons impacting North and north-west Queensland, and we saw significant livestock losses, road closures and towns cut off. I want to give a shout-out to the crew at the Julia Creek Tyre Centre who hosted not only a number of people in this place but also a number of community events. The Cloncurry Airport was significantly damaged, and I joined the Prime Minister and the Treasurer at the airport where we announced funding for its repair. Of course, we then had a record heatwave across southern Australia, which brought devastating impacts to Western Australia and Victoria in January.

Our paid and volunteer fire crews did an absolutely amazing job in what were relentless conditions, battling fires for a number of weeks, supported by crews from across the country, as well as New Zealand and Canada. I saw firsthand the community spirit in towns like Alexandra, Euroa, Ruffy, Bendigo and Harcourt. In Harcourt and Ruffy, people gathered at makeshift relief centres where locals were supporting each other, running barbecues, providing ice drinks, nonperishables—real Aussie mateship on display.

More flooding then followed in Queensland and in the Northern Territory, followed by Tropical Cyclone Narelle. We saw communities in Katherine, Daly River, Palumpa, Numbulwar and Jilkminggan evacuated. I give a shout-out to the ADF, including RAAF Base Tindal, for volunteering their own time to support local communities before a formal request was lodged for clean-up support. Disaster recovery funding arrangements have been activated in all of these areas, as well as a number of Australian government payments to support communities.

I want to thank all the members in this place and the other place who have been supporting local communities over this season. Our government is working year-round to prepare communities in the face of natural disasters. We recently announced 96 projects in round 3 of our $200 million Disaster Ready Fund. It included projects such as levee upgrades, flood mitigation works, bushfire warning systems and cyclone shelters. We've established the national emergency stockpile so that we can provide supplies from sandbags to emergency accommodation and electricity generation. We've increased funding to the National Aerial Firefighting Fleet. It's been a really tough, high-risk weather season for communities, but, across all levels of government, we'll continue to help communities recover. (Time expired)