Major flood warnings in place across states as residents of south Ballina told it’s ‘too late to leave’ and they must seek higher ground immediately. Follow the day’s news live
Miller:
But you know, I do think that people want to talk about it now because I know from personal experience from Gympie having lived through floods there, that they still wonder why decades on, things haven’t been done to try to improve the situation.
In Lismore, it was reported last year, [they were] left off a commonwealth scheme as a priority location for natural disaster resilience funding, where they could have been open to a grant and they were all amazed by it.
So, I can absolutely assure you and your viewers that the emergency response fund is being used as it was legislated, as Labor supported it to be legislated.
$50m is being put forward annually for flood mitigation projects to support local councils and state governments who are responsible for flood levees and they’re very expensive and it’s why we’re happy to partner with them. And the funding for disasters has not been exhausted. And won’t be.
You were very defensive yesterday about criticism of the Government’s $3.9bn emergency response fund.
[Labor] Senator Murray Watt again raised it this morning, saying: what is the point of having this fund if it’s not being used to spend money at times like this?
The emergency response fund was set up as a future fund to be used when all other sources of funding have been exhausted.
And I can let you know for this disaster, we haven’t even instigated category C and D of the disaster funding arrangements with the state governments.