Interview with Virginia Trioli, ABC Melbourne Mornings

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC MELBOURNE MORNINGS WITH VIRGINIA TRIOLI
TUESDAY, 18 OCTOBER 2022

SUBJECTS: Update on floods, financial support available; flood plains 

VIRGINIA TRIOLI, HOST: Well as I mentioned the Federal Government has confirmed this morning that they are contributing to that $150 million extra that the State Government was speaking about yesterday in emergency funding. Also, there are now 200 Australian Defence Force troops on the ground in Victoria. They’ve been helping with the immediate emergency response. According to the Government, they’re now going to move into the clean up, to assisting councils with the phenomenal job of getting rid of entire households full of furniture and carpet and everything else, an incredible job that has to be done right across the state even while we’re not out of the flood danger. And, also, that Defence Force heavy helicopters are on standby now to help with evacuations if needed in the coming days and also the resupplying of towns.

Senator Murray Watt is the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, and the Minister for Emergency Management, and he joins you now. Minister, good to talk to you. Good morning.

MURRAY WATT, MINISTER FOR EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT: G’day, Virginia. Good to talk to you, too.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Senator, the Government’s announced extended support to more flood affected areas. Talk me through that.

MURRAY WATT: Yeah, I’m pleased to announce, Virginia, that we have now activated one of the Australian Government’s Disaster Recovery Payments for nine extra council areas in Victoria. The Prime Minister over the weekend announced that payment would be made available in five Victorian LGAs and we’re now adding another nine. They are Benalla, Boroondara, Central Goldfields, Greater Bendigo, Loddon, Moonee Valley, Mount Alexander, Murrindindi and Yarra; and we are aware that there are a number of other council areas that are affected and we’re looking to activate those payments in extra areas over the next 24 hours or so.

In addition to that, of course, we have also made the Australian Government Disaster Recovery Allowance available in a range of affected council areas. The distinction between those payments is that the first one, that’s now in 14 Victorian council areas, is the $1,000 payment per eligible adult and $400 per eligible child. The Disaster Recovery Allowance, which is available in a wider range of council areas, is basically a 13 week payment at the JobSeeker level, particularly for people who’ve lost income as a result of the floods; for instance, if they haven’t been able to get to work because they’re cut off from their workplace or if their business has been impacted and has to close and so they are a sole trader losing income, those kinds of things. So those extra council areas, the payments will be available from 2pm today, going through the Services Australia website. But, yeah, we’re doing everything we possibly can to get these things activated as quickly as possible because we know there’s people who need money in their pockets right now.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: And Minister, you say that you’re potentially looking at some other areas well?

MURRAY WATT: Yeah, we are. Basically, the way we determine which councils get these payments is based on reports we receive from the Victorian Government about particularly the number of homes that have had flooding in the home. That’s really the main test for whether people qualify or not, so as we get additional reports that flooding has actually got inside people’s homes, that will trigger more of those sorts of payments. And the Disaster Recovery Allowance which, as I say, is the 13 week payment, that tends to be guided by areas where the Victorian Government has decided are a sort of disaster zone, and obviously, as this flooding extends into further areas of the state, then I would very much expect that those payments will be available more widely.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Minister, what’s the latest emergency warnings that you’re being told about this morning?

MURRAY WATT: Yeah so in Victoria, obviously, the situation continues to go on and, as you would be aware, Shepparton, the river has now peaked, so we’ve got to wait and see, I guess, what the level of damage is there. But we are expecting it to be extensive. There’s a lot of concerns obviously about Echuca which is now going through its second peak, hitting people who’ve already been hit, hit in last few days, and I guess the other concern is that as these floodwaters flow down the Murray and other rivers there’s going to be additional communities hit over the coming days.

But in total the information I got this morning from my briefing was that Victoria has 13 Active Emergency Warnings and 15 Watch and Act warnings. So, again, that number’s going to change as the day goes on and as we find extra communities impacted as well. So look it’s a really serious situation, still, spreading right across the north and the west of state, and we do need people to really stay in touch and listen to those warnings, especially evacuation orders when they’re issued.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: The Murray peak in Echuca that we were just talking about, potentially, of course, also elsewhere and, as you mentioned, downstream over the coming days - how big at this stage do you believe that that so described slow moving riverine flood emergency along the Murray will ultimately be?

MURRAY WATT: Look, I think it is going to be very damaging and very extensive. Obviously, there is already a huge amount of water in the Murray and other rivers that feed into it. And other thing I guess we’re conscious of is that we’re expecting more bad weather later in the week, potentially stretching as far as Queensland, right through New South Wales, Victoria and even Tasmania. So as many people have often observed, the ground in so much of the east coast of Australia is already just absolutely sodden, and I can’t rule out that communities that have already had flooding won’t have it again. We’ve certainly seen that in other parts of the country over the course of this year that and may well happen. I know it is beyond Victoria but, of course, what’s happening in the Murray will potentially have some impact in South Australia in coming days and even weeks as that water flows through the system as well.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Well exactly, yeah, which is sort of where I’m going to. I mean, the only silver lining might be the people in the Coorong will be happy that it’ll flush out the mouth, of course, and down to the sea and that’s always good for environment. But it means along the way, those riverine communities will be, as you say, very extensively damaged, but also then, potentially, more loss of summer crops along the Murray growing area?

MURRAY WATT: Yeah, again, I can’t rule that out and certainly I’ve obviously been out with the Prime Minister over the last few days in places like Bendigo, and I was in Seymour. We’re in Forbes in western New South Wales yesterday, which are all prime agricultural regions of our country, and meeting with farmers there. We’re already hearing the stories about people losing their crops, but also it’s about the ability of farmers to harvest their crops because tractors are getting bogged, there’s extensive damage to road networks, so that’s going to impact on people’s ability to get their products to market and, as I say, as this flooding spreads, it’s probably going to impact on other parts of the country. It’s a little early to know exactly the value, if you like, of the damage to our agricultural production but I’m obviously the Agriculture Minister as well so I got some advice from ABARES - our forecasting agency - yesterday and they’ve made the point that even in the council areas already affected by this flood across the whole country, those council areas account for nearly a quarter of Australia’s agricultural production value. So I’m not saying that we’ve lost a quarter of our agricultural production value, but what I’m saying is that the councils that are affected amount to nearly a quarter of what we produce and it’s reasonable to think that there’s going to be a fair bit of that impacted. 

So yeah, look this is definitely going to have an impact on farmers. It’s going to have an impact on consumers in terms of fruit and vegetable prices, and I know that’s really hard news for farmers who’ve done it really tough in recent years, and it’s obviously hard news for consumers as well.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: It’s desperately sad news to hear. Senator Murray Watt is with you, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and the Minister for Emergency Management, and there’s the portfolio that brings together all the issues that are under pressure right now.

The bumper crops are going under, which is another devastating aspect of what we’re talking about today. I know that barley and canola growers were looking forward to a tremendous summer. Will there be extra support for these farmers?

MURRAY WATT: We haven’t activated that at this point, but I certainly expect that will happen, and that’s traditionally what we’ve done with other states when these sorts of events have happened as well. What would typically happen is that we get those payments to individuals out the door initially, which is what we’ve obviously announced more of today, and as the days and weeks roll on, we look then at support for farmers, for small businesses, for community groups who’ve suffered losses, and a whole wide range of other industry support as well.

So we’ve begun having discussions with the Victorian Government about that. Of course, you can’t necessarily estimate the size of the damage and who exactly needs it until you know what the situation is, and in many of these areas the floodwaters haven’t yet peaked or are yet to recede. But, yeah, I think farmers listening to the program can feel confident that there is going to be support for them from both the Federal and State Government as we start the recovery process.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Minister, you’ve repeatedly in the past spoken about the need to confront the fact that we’ve allowed too much development on flood prone areas and, in fact, just the other week you were saying that Australia has to have a national conversation about reducing risks to lives and to property from increasingly frequent and severe natural disasters, including even Government funded buybacks of at risk homes. Is that now an even more live and urgent issue for you?

MURRAY WATT: Yes, I think it is Virginia. I guess the comments that I’ve made in the past have been particularly in relation to the floods that we saw in Queensland and New South Wales, and then going back a little bit further, the Black Summer bushfires, because just as we have too many homes that have been approved in flood prone areas, there’s a lot of development that has been approved very close to bushfire prone forest as well.

So I think, as I’ve said before – and the Prime Minister’s made this point as well – we do need to do something about planning and development in this country. We still continue to see too much development approved in disaster prone regions and then we all end up sharing the burden of the repair costs and, of course, it’s devastating for the people who lose their homes. So one of the challenges is that planning and development issues tend to fall to state and local governments rather than Federal, so we don’t have a huge number of levers with which to make some changes, but we want to use what we’ve got.

The other thing that we’re doing on this front, as you may be aware, I was also very critical of the former Government’s emergency response fund. That was that $4 billion fund that ended up earning them about $800 million in interest and was supposed to be used for disaster resilience and didn’t build a single project. So, what we did at the election was commit to revamp that fund and turn it into a permanent disaster mitigation and resilience fund, and we’ve got legislation in the Parliament to do that now.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: But the conversation you want to have then, really listening to what you’re saying there, Minister, is a conversation with the states - and the largely Labor states - about their planning policies – I mean, a conversation for all of us, but you’ll have to talk to them and they’ll have to come on board if we’re to avoid repeats of these situations.

MURRAY WATT: Yeah, absolutely. It will require the involvement of federal, state and local government, because each of us has a role in this issue. I’ve begun having discussions about some of the State Ministers about this point. And many of them acknowledge that there are issues that we need to do differently on this front. So, I think that the more that these events occur and the more that they end up happening in major large development areas, then I think it really raises the issue.

I mean, the point about buybacks - we’re currently in the process of literally signing contracts with the Queensland Government to buy back homes in Queensland in some of the areas that were affected by the floods earlier this year-

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: And do you think that could happen in Victoria, too?

MURRAY WATT: Potentially, I wouldn’t rule it out. We’d obviously need to have a discussion with the Victorian Government about that. But we’re also now in active negotiations with the New South Wales Government about a similar program there. I’m conscious that every time we approve one of these programs, you end up talking about hundreds of millions of dollars, so we’ve got to be careful with it. But on other side of the ledger, we end up often spending billions of dollars in repair costs, so I think that it is a conversation the country’s ready for and I’ve found State and Territory Ministers are very willing to have it as well.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Senator, I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

MURRAY WATT: No worries, Virginia.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Senator Murray Watt there who’s the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and the Minister for Emergency Management. But isn’t that an interesting turn and a conversation that the Minister says the country is ready to have, and that he’s alive to having right now – the potential for buybacks, Government funded buybacks, in some of those areas that are hit again and again by flooding.