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

cKENZIE (—) (): Thank you very much, Senator. We live in the country of droughts and flooding rains. The next natural disaster is simply around the corner. In this country, we spend 97 per cent of our money and effort on responding to a natural disaster and only three per cent in preparing for the next one. Our government is fundamentally flipping the response of the federal government in this country to get ahead of that. The Labor government is playing games and politicking with the Emergency Response Fund. It is being used and spent in exactly the way it was designed—in fact, in exactly the way the Labor Party voted for it to be used and spent. The fundamental issue they seem to forget is that this is a future fund. That side of politics has not seen a future fund they cannot wait to raid, that they cannot wait to spend in the here and now. They're salivating to get their hands on it, instead of actually ensuring this money is put away to prepare for catastrophic disasters in our nation's future. (Time expired)