Thursday, 8 February 2024

Flood recovery

Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (17:18): (515) My adjournment this evening is for the Minister for Emergency Services, and the action I seek is for the minister to seek amendments to the current disaster recovery funding arrangements that operate between state and federal governments. Specifically, there have been occasions in the past, including after the October 2021 storms, where there were some very helpful grants provided to businesses and primary producers for clean-up activities. I think there were grants of about $20,000 or $25,000 available, which in that circumstance were very much necessary, when there had been a lot of damage done. On Boxing Day last year we had a significant downpour in Gippsland and very localised events, particularly in the area between Sale and about Toora, where we got 80 to 100 millilitres in an hour or so. That impacted on a number of areas, including Woodside and Welshpool, where there was some significant damage and basically the creek ran through the entire town. I was contacted by a couple of farmers in particular as well as local businessmen and indeed a couple of households that were flooded out, where they literally had the waters running through their house, about whether there would be any assistance from the state government for clean-up –

Tim Bull interjected.

Danny O’BRIEN: The member for Gippsland South just indicated there was the same issue at Buchan. I was liaising with the office of the Minister for Emergency Services, and I appreciate the feedback that I was able to get from them, because I wanted to see if some of that October 2021 assistance is available. What I was told was that under the disaster recovery funding arrangements there is a threshold of about 15 per cent, I think it was, for a given region, so 15 per cent of farmers in a given district need to be affected before there will be any state or federal government assistance.

Personally, I think that is not fair, basically, because you have got a situation where if there are 10 farmers whose creek has burst its bank, which happened in the Woodside area, for example – they lost fences, they lost stock and they had damage to their properties – they get nothing, because they do not reach the threshold. If there are 300 farmers, then there might be assistance triggered. Now, the point is that they are all impacted exactly the same. The fact there are 300 of them or 10 of them does not mean individually they are any worse off. So while I appreciate that governments have these thresholds for generally good reasons, I ask the minister to raise this with her colleagues at the state and the federal levels and to see if there can be more flexibility in these arrangements. We often jump in and provide assistance when there is a big event, but when there is a very localised event with exactly the same impacts on individuals, like the farmers and businesspeople in my electorate, there is an argument that they deserve help as well. So I ask the minister to take action on this issue.