Tuesday, 16 August 2022

Gippsland East electorate bushfire recovery initiatives

Mr T BULL (Gippsland East) (19:05): (6478) My adjournment tonight is to the Minister for Environment and Climate Action, who oversees Parks Victoria. The information that I am seeking from the minister is to provide the Orbost and Marlo communities with an update on what is a debacle of works at Cape Conran, destroyed over 2½ years ago by fire and still not repaired. It gives me no pleasure to have to stand here and raise this issue yet again in the chamber.

Let us first of all go to the Cape Conran cabins. In mid-2020 Orbost chamber of commerce asked for these cabins, knowing their economic importance to the region, to be finished by Christmas 2020—over two years ago. Then in August 2020 the state government released a statement that was published in the Snowy River Mail that said the coastal park would be visitor-ready soon—in mid-2020, ‘visitor-ready soon’. The minister at the table, the Minister for Police, is having a bit of a chuckle there, but he might be able to tell me what the definition of ‘soon’ is, 2½ years later when it is not in place. What is worse is that we are now told that these cabins will not be ready until late 2023 or potentially 2024—three or four years later.

The second area is the East Cape Boardwalk. The local paper recently ran a picture of the East Cape Boardwalk six months ago and last week, and there is no change in the picture. This is a project where the minister answered a question that I raised in mid-2020 again, saying that the boardwalk would be finished by that summer. It was not. It was not even started. Then Parks Victoria said in the Snowy River Mail in mid-2021 that it would be completed by December. It was not. Now here we are heading towards December 2022, two years after the minister said it would be finished, and it is at a standstill.

This is the government that said after the fires, ‘We are going to walk through the recovery with you, and we will expedite the bushfire recovery’. Well, you are moving at the speed of a glacier. You have not helped; you have not supported these communities. I ask the minister to confirm both a specific and accurate time frame for the Cape Conran cabins and the Cape Conran boardwalk and any reasons for the hold-up so that the communities in that area can be made aware. We do not want any more airy-fairy answers. We want specific time frames and the truth behind these enormous delays.