Wednesday, 3 May 2023

Northern Victoria Region water infrastructure

Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (17:47): (182) My adjournment matter is directed to the Minister for Water and concerns the management of levee banks in my electorate of Northern Victoria Region. The action that I seek is for the minister to provide definitive information as to which authority is responsible for the management and maintenance of every community levee bank in Northern Victoria and detail what plan she has to ensure these levee banks are repaired and upgraded to ensure they are at a standard to cope with future flood events of the magnitude of the October 2022 floods.

My electorate of Northern Victoria Region has been subject to many severe floods over the course of history, including the one-in-100-year flood event that occurred in October 2022. With the Murray River being the northern border of the electorate and with numerous other systems running through it, flood mitigation is vital in the lives of many of my constituents. Victoria’s levee bank system is a major flood mitigation strategy that protects many communities – including both private property and, importantly for the state government, state-owned infrastructure assets such as roads, hospitals, schools, public housing and many other state-owned assets – from the devastating impact of floods. While these vital levee banks protect many from the ravages of floods, questions always arise after an event as to which authority is responsible for the maintenance of the levee banks in Victoria.

I raised this very issue in this place after the 2016 floods on the Murray River and again on 9 December 2020 after receiving a briefing from the emergency management commissioner regarding emergency management concerns into the future. The briefing predicted that flooding rather than bushfires was expected to be our major natural disaster threat, particularly in Northern Victoria. Less than two years later many parts of Northern Victoria Region suffered one of the worst floods in living memory, and once again the condition of our levee banks came under scrutiny. Residents in Bunbartha and Kaarimba whose properties were not even in the flood zone flooded due to the Goulburn-Murray Water-owned levee banks at Loch Garry blowing out.

Recently I was contacted by a constituent who reported that during the floods he discovered four separate leaks in a levee bank close to his property. A levee bank designed to protect both private and state-owned infrastructure such as roads being the subject of four separate leaks during a flood event is completely unacceptable. It is not acceptable to place all of the onus on landholders for levee bank restoration, as the state is also a major beneficiary of the levee banks. The minister has an obligation to ensure that levee banks are consistently maintained, and the minister must detail who is responsible for each levee bank in Victoria and her plan to ensure that each is maintained to an acceptable standard.