Tuesday, 14 October 2025

 Tim McCURDY (Ovens Valley) (13:05): The Porepunkah community is beginning to settle back after what has been a very, very difficult 50 days, and I want to put on record that the businesses in Porepunkah are very grateful that the Victorian government supported my calls for a business grant. In the small township of Porepunkah they were given the grant with basically no questions asked. That is how it should be, and I am very grateful for that. I do want to say, however, that only 5 kilometres down the road in Bright, a much larger centre that has about 10 times the amount of businesses than Porepunkah, businesses in Bright and Wandiligong and other surrounding areas have been also caught up in this economic disaster, but most are struggling to qualify under the Allan Labor government’s tough criteria to qualify. My information suggests that only 14 per cent of businesses outside of Porepunkah but still in the local area have qualified for the $5000 grant. If this is correct, I am very disappointed. As I have said all along, when a government agency, in this case VicPol, tells tourists to stay away from a tourist destination for an extended period of time – and for good reason, we know why – it is the Victorian government’s responsibility to support these communities. A $5000 grant to these businesses is a drop in the ocean compared to the reported $100 million spent to catch the fugitive, which I support and agree with 100 per cent for this manhunt. I urge the government to be fair and to ease the criteria immediately so that many more businesses will become eligible. I will be monitoring the amount of businesses that qualify and be able to feed that information back through Parliament in the coming months, and I urge the government to be fair and reasonable and broaden the criteria so small businesses will qualify for the grant.