Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Attorney-General (Senator Cash) and the Minister for Emergency Management and National Recovery and Resilience (Senator McKenzie) to questions without notice asked by Senators Sheldon, McAllister and Watt today relating to the Government's response to the recent floods in Queensland and New South Wales.

I begin by acknowledging that the people of northern New South Wales and South-East Queensland again today face a very dire flooding situation. I think all of us are shaking our heads at the fact that, particularly in northern New South Wales, the very same communities that were badly affected by floods only a month ago are facing evacuation orders again because of the flooding that is occurring there right now. We have seen over the last few weeks some extremely unusual weather systems and highly unusual levels of rain, and it is tragic that people are being put through this situation yet again when they are still in the process of cleaning up from the last floods, let alone beginning the job of rebuilding. I'm sure I speak for everyone here today when I pass on our very best wishes and solidarity, particularly to the people of northern New South Wales but also to the people of South-East Queensland, as these floods progress. We do hope that people remain safe and listen to all of the warnings that are issued by authorities.

Today in question time we asked a series of questions to Ministers Cash and McKenzie about the way the government handled last month's floods. As I look back on it, it's very sad that throughout those floods and in the weeks afterwards we saw all the worst qualities of the Morrison government and this Prime Minister on display. We saw people being abandoned in their hour of need by their federal government. The government and the Prime Minister were completely missing in action as the flood waters rose, as they receded and as the clean-up began. And, true to form, we saw the politicisation of grant payments by a government during a natural disaster. We've become used to this government rorting every possible funding program it can get its hands on, whether it be car parks or sports rorts—every kind of rort under the sun—but to see a government politicise the allocation of grant funding in a natural disaster by basing it on colour coded spreadsheets is a new low even for this government.

I know we've heard members of the government object to Labor describing this as politicisation. I can hear Senator McDonald doing it now. Well, if Senator McDonald and her colleagues don't like listening to Labor politicians describe this government's behaviour as politicisation, perhaps they'd care to listen to some of the people from their own side of politics, such as New South Wales upper house member Catherine Cusack, who announced that after a distinguished career in the New South Wales parliament she was going to resign because of what she called the Prime Minister's 'unethical approach' to distributing flood funding. What she was referring to was the fact that the communities in the Nationals-held electorate of Page—which did suffer extremely bad flood damage—were receiving higher levels of disaster assistance than the communities who were equally affected a little bit further up the road in the Labor-held electorate of Richmond. A New South Wales Liberal MP described the Prime Minister's approach as unethical, and that was backed in by the National Party state member for the seat of Tweed, Mr Geoff Provest, who labelled the Prime Minister's behaviour 'disgusting' and 'deplorable'. He went on to say that he 'would struggle to vote for' the Prime Minister.

Park to one side whatever anyone from Labor might be saying about the way this government has handled these floods. Let's just listen to some of the local members, who are actually from the coalition. More importantly, let's listen to people who are on the ground. I can tell you, having been in Lismore through the floods—and I know Senator McDonald didn't think I should be there—and in Queensland floods for over a week, that people in Lismore did feel abandoned. The question that I was asked most often by people who were suffering from the floods in Lismore was simple. It was: 'Where is the government?' During the floods, in the immediate aftermath of the floods and in the clean-up from the floods, there has barely been a member of this government or an official of this government present lending a hand to people who had suffered terrible damage or had lost loved ones. They were exhausted, yet they were left there on their own to clean up by this government. Of course, we've seen this before.

It is a disgrace, Senator McCarthy. We've seen this before. This is a Prime Minister who went missing in action after the bushfires, who didn't bother ordering vaccines or rapid antigen tests and who is only discovering that cost of living is a problem in the run-up to an election. (Time expired)