Wednesday, 19 February 2025

 Gaelle BROAD (Northern Victoria) (18:28): (1432) My adjournment is for the Minister for Water. Many Victorian communities are dismayed at the Allan Labor government’s refusal to support levee maintenance in their response to the recommendations of the inquiry into the 2022 flood event in Victoria. Their response is just ‘Let’s have another review,’ which is frustrating and dangerous to local communities. Given that levees provide an estimated 80 per cent of flood mitigation protection, these communities are requesting that as basic flood mitigation works these levees be immediately restored to their original integrity and then maintained through a legislated inspection and maintenance program. The relevant catchment management authority or any other designated authority would properly fund and manage such projects. This is an absolutely reasonable request as another inquiry could be years away, thereby leaving those communities exposed in the next flood.

Flood-impacted levees need urgent attention, and where there is a community benefit rural levees need to be upgraded to today’s design standards through shared state and federal government funding. These levees have been physically and electronically assessed during the 2022 floods, so now is the time to refurbish them while the information is current, and with most of our rivers at low levels now is the optimum time to proceed.

The stress and anxiety of local residents as they observed, patrolled and struggled to manage the rising river levels against the poorly maintained levees is difficult to put into words. Attention to these levees now would also remove the huge cost of government services during flood events, such as the state emergency services, fire services, flood rescue, police and the Australian Defence Force personnel, who did a fantastic job of sandbagging the low areas of the degraded levees. Will the Allan Labor government do the right thing and immediately refurbish these levees as a positive flood prevention program rather than simply sitting on their hands and fobbing off those exposed communities with another inquiry?