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

It's great to be back. Thank you so much, Senator Davey, for the question. With La Nina, the floods that over the last three months have swept across our nation, particularly the east coast, have been catastrophic and devastating, with the loss of so many lives. We stand shoulder to shoulder with affected communities and individuals as they make their way through natural disasters, respond and recover, and build natural resilience into the future. We've got the $85 million Natural Hazards Research Australia money. We've got $40 million dedicated to strata resilience. For the North Queensland flood recovery, we were able to put $1.58 billion on the table. There is $2.8 billion which has been committed to the bushfire recovery and $600 million for preparing Australia to better respond to natural disasters in the future. There has been $13 billion from this government to assist impacted workers through the COVID response, through both the pandemic leave disaster payment and the COVID disaster payment. Our government has put in $12 billion, in conjunction with states and territories, to support these affected communities through natural disaster.

In fact, no government in our nation's history has stood with Australians in times of need like the Liberal-National government has. Through bushfires, cyclones, earthquakes, floods and COVID, this government has been providing boots on the ground and financial assistance to both individuals and communities to help them in their time of crisis. We're helping people recover with funding for clean-ups and financial assistance for small businesses and primary producers. In the last three months alone, we've activated assistance for natural disasters 20 times, with $50,000 grants for primary producers. (Time expired)