Wednesday, 2 August 2023

Department of Treasury and Finance

Budget papers 2023–24

Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (17:34): I rise to speak on the state budget for this year, which raises of course all the funding for flood recovery, and in particular I want to talk about the town of Rochester. I was the guest speaker at the Rochester community breakfast on 20 July, and there were three key points that the Rochester community kept raising at that breakfast. One was the storage levels at Lake Eppalock, which I will come back to later because that was their main point. The second was housing and the need for housing in the town, and the third was their financial counselling, which is provided through Anglicare but whose funding is due to expire in November of this year.

Now, I have had a telephone conversation with the Minister for Consumer Affairs, and I have emailed him all of the details about this. I have not heard back yet, but I am hopeful that when he has been given the information he will see the need to continue financial counselling in this town. So far Anglicare, which is funded to provide two financial counsellors, has assisted 158 families. 114 of those cases are still ongoing. There were around 30 families – this was on 20 July of course – on a waiting list to be allocated a caseworker, seven of which had only come in in that past 24 hours, and the waiting time to actually be allocated a caseworker was nine weeks. As I said, they were only funded for two financial counsellors, which is causing these backlogs in work. But I know that from the work that the financial counsellors are doing nine families received a combined total of $500,000 in additional insurance payments due to the work of the financial counsellors, so I would urge the government to continue that work. Anglicare tell me that they really need to be funded for up to three years. They have provided financial counselling after all of the major bushfires and other events in this state for some time, and they say that that counselling is needed for three years.

Housing is a big issue in Rochester, not only for home owners but also for renters. Of course the government are providing caravans for those who are rebuilding on their own block, and while they are a solution, I would hate to be living in a caravan in the winter that we have just had – it is very, very cold. We need to see some of the money that has been allocated to the Commonwealth Games actually go to some of these really badly flood-affected communities like Rochester and Mooroopna to rebuild housing in those communities, because not only do we need the home owners to rebuild, we need a rental market as well and rental opportunities so that we can bring workers to this town.

The biggest issue that they raised at this meeting was the storage levels at Lake Eppalock. Of course Minister Shing had been in Rochester just the day before and had had a community meeting, and this is why it was the biggest issue at the community breakfast, because the town were very disappointed in that meeting. A newspaper article that talks about my visit, which is headed ‘Lovell brings home bacon at “hearty” breakfast’, actually says:

While Mrs Lovell’s presence was celebrated, the visit of Victorian Water Minister Harriet Shing a day earlier didn’t receive the same celebration – her inability to act on the Lake Eppalock storage status falling flat with those at the breakfast.

And it did fall flat. In fact the community really feel that there has been no listening to them, and Sharon Williams, who is a member of the Rochester Flood Mitigation Committee, said she came out of that meeting feeling gutted. She said the community felt they had been slapped down. They felt that Ms Shing had slapped down the delegation of residents, telling them that they live on a flood plain and they need to build resilience. Other members said to me she told them that they live on a flood plain and they should expect to be flooded. These are only things that I am repeating from what I have been told, but this is a huge issue in the town.

Lake Eppalock today is at 100.65 per cent. Last year at this time it was at 49.46 per cent. The residents are only asking that Lake Eppalock be dropped to 90 per cent just to provide some airspace in case there is another major flood event or another major rain event. As I said, this time last year it was at 49.46 per cent, and we still see the damage that was done in that community by that flood. This year, at 100.65 per cent, if we were to have a major rain event, Rochester would be washed away.