Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Minister for Emergency Management and National Recovery and Resilience) Share this | Hansard source

With a La Nina established in our region, we're certainly going to see higher than average rainfall across many parts of the country, and unfortunately that means more flooding in the east and cyclones to our north. We know floods are the most costly natural disaster and that's why flood mitigation is such a high-impact investment. We also know from the findings of the royal commission that flood mitigation is incredibly important. Building resilience saves recovery costs later on.

Today I was very proud to announce that applications are open for the second round of national flood mitigation. We are putting another $50 million of investment on the table for flood mitigation, bringing the total investment by our government to $100 million for the last two years, building on the strong demand that we saw across the country. The National Flood Mitigation Infrastructure Program will be funded from our Emergency Response Fund, which is a future focused, dedicated, sustainable investment fund.