Wednesday, 5 February 2025

 Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (17:19): I rise to speak on the Environment and Planning Committee’s report on the inquiry into the 2022 flood event in Victoria. This is an inquiry that was a bit of a marathon effort. This was an inquiry that an enormous amount of hours of preparation went into. There were 880 submissions put in by the people of Victoria who had been affected by the floods in October 2022; 608 of those submissions came from Northern Victoria, from my electorate, and 344 of them of course came from Rochester, the town that was most affected by the October 2022 floods. Of course, as I said, countless hours went in by people in the public to contribute to this inquiry, to write submissions, to participate in giving evidence and to make sure that we got a very good report and some very good recommendations that would lead to better management of floods in the future. There were countless hours of staff contributions that also went into that, and MP participation. Out of that came 90 findings and 73 recommendations.

We all know that flood recovery has been very slow, and I have a reminder of that each day as I drive home, because just at the top of my street there are three houses that have been demolished and not rebuilt and there are two houses still waiting to be refurbished after the flood. That is a daily reminder to me of just how slow flood recovery has been in this state. The government is also slow in responding to the flood inquiry. We tabled this report on 30 July last year, which means that the government’s requirement to respond within six months was up in January of this year. We have now sat two days this week and we still have not seen a response from the government on the inquiry into the 2022 flood event. That to me is an indication that the government have not given consideration to the people of my electorate who were so badly affected by the flood. The government have not given them the consideration that they deserve. They deserve a prompt response to this inquiry so that we can be better prepared for future flood events. The government heard very loud and clear when we were at the regional hearing in Echuca last year how nervous people are when it starts to rain. When we had heavy rains early in January 2024 and some localised flooding, particularly around the Goornong area, the people of Northern Victoria were extremely nervous. It really triggers them to hear that rain – that another flood is coming.

We also saw within this report and within the 73 recommendations two recommendations – 49 and 57 – that both recommended that the government fund the two independent search and rescue squads in this state, which are the Echuca and Moama Search and Rescue Squad and the Shepparton Search and Rescue Squad. Shepparton Search and Rescue Squad was actually the agency that had the highest number of call-outs during the floods – 980 requests for assistance. Our committee strongly recommended that the government should increase funding for these two organisations for operations and training. Yet when the government did announce earlier this year that they were going to establish an Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund to fund a number of agencies, including the Victorian SES, the Shepparton Search and Rescue Squad and the Echuca and Moama Search and Rescue Squad were left off the list of organisations that could actually benefit from funding from that fund, and that has been a source of tremendous regret in our community. Our community believe that these organisations do the job. They are essentially SES units, particularly the Shepparton Search and Rescue Squad – they do road rescue as well as the flood and rain event recoveries. They should be funded to do that work by the government and they should not have been left off the list of beneficiary organisations for the new Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund.