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

I thank Senator Davey for her question and for her ongoing advocacy for regional New South Wales. I'm sure everyone in this place will agree that the flooding and severe weather we're seeing in New South Wales at the moment is very, very concerning. That's why our government is already providing assistance to New South Wales through the Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements. It's the primary way we can provide support to states and territories that are affected by disasters.

This year we've put in a new streamlined process for activating DRFA assistance so that we, as a Commonwealth, can respond more quickly following severe disasters. We've been working very closely with New South Wales to ensure that we deliver the support needed where it's needed and, for that reason, we've extended that funding from the original seven local government areas identified by New South Wales, earlier this month, to another 13 local government areas last Friday. We stand ready to extend that support again should New South Wales need further assistance.

The support currently being provided covers the critical early needs of a community following a disaster: support for people suffering through hardship and distress, financial assistance for small businesses and primary producers and funding to clean up and repair damaged essential public assets.

The DRFA continues to be the most effective and immediate way that our government can support Australians affected by disasters, helping them to get back on their feet and to keep them safe. In the last decade we've provided over $12 billion in funding to states and territories through this mechanism. In the last few weeks alone, in addition to the support we've provided to New South Wales, we've also worked closely with other states and territories to get assistance to Australians on the ground, to Queensland, which also experienced flooding earlier this month across five local government areas, and to South Australia across 24 LGAs—I'd like to shout out to Rowan Ramsey, from the other place, for his strong advocacy for the farmers there—and to Victoria, for prolonged power outage payments. (Time expired)

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Minister for Emergency Management and National Recovery and Resilience) Share this | Link to 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.