Wednesday, 26 August 2026

 Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (10:34): I move:

That this house:

(1)   notes that documents recently released under freedom of information concerning the 2024–25 western Victoria business bushfire recovery grant program reveal that:

(a) $22.84 million was allocated;

(b) more than four months after applications opened, only 23 grants had been approved, totalling a paltry $115,000;

(c) $16.356 million remained in contingency, with the department recording the program’s ‘mixed reception’, ‘low demand and uptake’ and that it was ‘unlikely to access further contingency funding’;

(d) $784,000 was released in July 2025 ‘to support with the administration of the BBRG’;

(2)   in accordance with standing order 10.01, requires the Leader of the Government to table in the Council, by 12:00 noon on 10 September 2026, all documents held by the Minister for Small and Family Business, the Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions and the Department of Treasury and Finance that record or relate to:

(a) the modelling or advice used to determine the $22.84 million allocation, including anticipated eligible businesses, applications and expenditure;

(b) final program outcomes, including pre-application eligibility checker submissions and reasons for ineligibility, applications received, approved, refused or withdrawn, total grants paid, and funds unspent, lapsed or reprioritised;

(c) any review, evaluation, analysis or stakeholder feedback concerning uptake, eligibility or accessibility;

(d) the request and approval for the $784,000 administration funding, actual administrative expenditure and its apportionment between this grant and other recovery programs; and

(e) decisions to reprioritise unspent funding, including for the Porepunkah and Alpine region business support package.

To summarise this motion in a sentence, I would say: what happened to the $22.84 million the government allocated to helping western Victorian businesses recover from the 2024–25 bushfires? What happened to it? I am obviously very concerned about this specific question, but it is also a case study in this government’s way of operating more generally. After fires tore through the Grampians and Little Desert, the government did what they do very well: they made an announcement. On 11 March 2025 Victorians were told more than $24 million would provide crucial support to western Victorian businesses, including $5000 recovery grants for small businesses and eligible primary producers. That sounded substantial, urgent and like help was on its way, but the documents I have obtained under freedom of information tell a rather different story.

The business bushfire recovery grant (BBRG) opened on 13 May. By 19 September, more than four months later and less than eight weeks before it closed, the department told the minister:

Grant uptake to date has been low with only 23 grants approved (total grant payments $115,000).

The FOI records that $22.84 million has been allocated to the grant program. This is not opposition language. The department itself described the scheme’s mixed reception and its low demand and uptake and advised Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions was unlikely to access further contingency funding. We need to know why. There was certainly no shortage of need across Ararat, Hindmarsh, Horsham, Northern Grampians, Southern Grampians and West Wimmera. Businesses had lost trade, visitors, income and, in some cases, assets.

But the grant was extraordinarily difficult to assess. Under the ordinary criteria a business had to employ staff and be registered with WorkSafe Victoria. It had to demonstrate at least $10,000 in lost revenue over three consecutive months and show that loss amounted to at least 40 per cent of ordinary revenue. It then needed a qualified accountant, a tax agent and a BAS agent to certify that loss, all to obtain a $5000 grant. The government later drew on the experience of this very scheme when advising on another program, warning that grants were likely to get a mixed reception from stakeholders, particularly if few businesses meet the eligibility requirements.

That is why this motion seeks the data behind the preapplication eligibility checker. We want to know how many businesses tried to assess the scheme, how many were screened out before they could even apply and which criteria excluded them. We also want to know how the government arrived at $22.84 million in the first place. What modelling was done? How many eligible businesses did it expect? How many grants did it think would be paid? Once it became obvious that the money was not getting out the door, the FOI shows the government began to move it elsewhere. A September brief records that $1.7 million of the unused bushfire allocation was to be reprioritised to the Porepunkah and Alpine region business support package, so money announced with great fanfare for one disaster response could become available for another announcement because so little of the original scheme had actually been accessed. How many times can the same unspent dollar appear in different government press releases?

Then there is administration. In July the Treasurer approved the release of $784,000 from BBRG funding for support, with the administration of the BBRG. Two months later only $115,000 had been paid in grants. That seems an extraordinary figure, given the low grant payouts, and this makes the documents very important indeed. How much was spent administering the funding total? How much of that $784,000 – some, all or more – was to fund the administration? This house is entitled to know the actual administration cost and how that money was apportioned. This motion therefore seeks the final program outcomes, the eligibility data, the modelling behind the original allocation, the reviews, the stakeholder feedback, the actual administration expenditure and the documents showing what happened to money that was unspent, lapsed or prioritised. If the program ultimately performed better than my FOI documents indicate, the government can demonstrate that by producing the records.

 Jacinta ERMACORA (Western Victoria) (10:41): The 2024–25 fires were for some communities the second fires in two years, and they were focused in the Grampians and the Little Desert area. In the Grampians region the main impact was in the national park. About 80 per cent of the national park was burnt, and communities like Halls Gap, Pomonal, Moyston, Willaura and Dunkeld were all impacted. In the Little Desert area, fires burnt almost half of the national park and destroyed the Little Desert Nature Lodge. Dimboola was evacuated, with the fire coming within metres of that town. Again the tourism industry was affected, not only around the area of the fire and in Dimboola but right along the Glenelg Highway, as many tourists were put off.

The fires happened very early that first week of January, sort of around the Christmas–New Year period. It was one of those reporting periods that was very quiet in the mainstream media, and a lot of the businesses that I met with and visited pretty much straight afterwards said that a lot of the information reported was overestimated because of the gaps in the news reporting and that they felt their businesses were not being visited because of that. I want to acknowledge that this was the second year in a row for Pomonal. They had lost 44 houses the year before, so there were a lot of members of that community that were retraumatised after the previous year.

In this motion the Liberals have taken an interim figure from four months in a six-month application period and presented it as if it is the entire program’s result. It is a little bit like putting blinkers on and looking at only one thing rather than standing back and looking at the whole picture. It just really looks a bit more like pointscoring rather than focusing on the real issues. The communities that suffered from the bushfires in 2024–25 deserve better advocacy than that. I have met with many of those communities and seen the devastation they suffered firsthand, as have many of my colleagues on this side of the chamber. We have responded with practical support. The business bushfire recovery grant program was one targeted element of a broader $29 million recovery package. Every eligible business that applied and was approved received support, with 29 successful grants ultimately paid. This motion also ignores the free advisory service, financial counselling, mental health assistance, tourism support, hardship payments and income support provided alongside this specific program. The grant settings were agreed with the Commonwealth under national disaster recovery arrangements, supported by governments of all political persuasions. If the Liberals now oppose those nationally established arrangements, they should explain which eligibility accountability safeguards they would remove.

The Carroll Labor government will always account carefully for public money while ensuring help reaches people who are eligible and need it. We will continue working with western Victorian communities as they continue to recover. This motion feels a little bit more like short-term pointscoring rather than genuine concern for impacted communities. Labor will keep backing communities through the difficult work of rebuilding.

 Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (10:46): Well, it is motion 1584, and the theme of my contribution is: show us the money or show us where the money has gone. I want to put on record my concern around the fact that we have well and truly seen in Victoria – one of the most fire-prone regions in the world – a government over many years not perform the preparation to prevent bushfires in the first place, and I have gone on record many times in this place on that. We have seen the devastation that those bushfires can cause not only to forests and forest systems but to communities, to roads and to businesses. They can certainly close roads, they can close national parks and they can bring about the cancellation of events and accommodation. There is a loss of tourism and there is a loss of supply chain flowthrough to businesses, and indeed there can be a pervading sense that the whole entire region is lost and shut, and I know that was the case in the 2019–20 bushfires.

I want to draw attention in my contribution to the fact – and I thank Mrs McArthur for her very good investigative work on this – that almost, let us round it up, $23 million was offered by the government in grants, with big fanfare. How many grants have been taken up? We have heard that 23 grants have been taken up – only $115,000 in terms of grants – and around $16 million is still in contingency. And then we see the administrative facilitation of that smaller number of grants. How much money is being wasted there? We have heard this time and time again with many implementation phases of the Andrews–‍Allan–Carroll government.

I want to just paint a picture of the difference in some of the grant schemes. In the 2019–20 bushfires 900 businesses in East Gippsland were able to access grant funding. At the time the administration worked with the community to design those grants to serve this impacted community. They set the bar. They enabled a way for small businesses, who were incredibly impacted, and others to be able to facilitate 900 grants. Now, that sounds like a good outcome for this very devastated region. There were $10,000 small business bushfire support grants, as I said. Across Mallacoota, Buchan, Bruthen and East Gippsland there were fire evacuations, road closures and impact, and that has to be the story. There is already a blueprint that this government has for how to work with community to best serve the very pain and agony that that community has held. I know my colleague the member for Lowan has raised issues around the Grampians on this and the impact of removal of water on the caravan parks and the like and how much fight she had to have to get these 23 grants of $5000. Surely a government with a conscience, surely a government with integrity would actually find a way to facilitate and expedite that facilitation and not, as we are led to believe, reprioritise funding somewhere else. It may well definitely be needed in Porepunkah for that poor community, but do not announce the same funding twice for your media headlines.

I think it is very important that this house passes this motion to get to that nitty-gritty, to understand where that funding has gone, where it has not gone and why it has not gone there. What we will see again – and it will not be any shock to anybody who is not in government – is that sometime in the next few sitting weeks the clerks, God bless them, will stand up and say, ‘I’m sorry, the government has not had enough time. We can’t facilitate this. There is no show.’ There is no transparency in this government. At the end of the day, these are people hurting out in the regions, which need to be able to access this funding to encourage people to come back into the regions, for our tourism to flourish and to rebuild and regenerate after devastating bushfires.

 Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (10:51): I am pleased to rise to speak on Mrs McArthur’s documents motion. As is convention, the government does not oppose documents motions. I want to echo Ms Ermacora’s remarks about the obviously devastating impact that the fires in 2024–25 had in many communities across Western Victoria. We do know that Victoria does face severe bushfire conditions all too often, and often those conditions result in devastating fires. We just last week had the latest season preparedness report released at the 2026 Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council conference, and that report shows that once again there are extraordinarily difficult seasonal conditions confronting Victoria in the coming six months.

I want to just make a couple of remarks about this motion. After the disaster in 2024–25, consistent with the national disaster funding arrangements and agreed with the Commonwealth, a range of supports were made available. This was not the only support that was made available. It was one of the supports made available, the business bushfire recovery grant program. Those eligibility conditions are consistent with those national arrangements and are consistent with practice. The funding envelope that was identified was not a spending target. It was an expectation of what might be required. Businesses were invited to apply, businesses were contacted and applications were received. Of the 32 applications that were received over the six-month period following the fires, 29 applications were successful. I think what this demonstrates is that there is support for businesses available, there is engagement with local communities and applications are received and assessed. But if businesses are not eligible or they do not apply, the government cannot just hand the money over without compliance with the guidelines. I do not think anyone would suggest that governments should be handing out financial assistance to businesses or individuals that are not eligible.

One point I want to make about the contributions that both Mrs McArthur and Ms Bath made criticising funding going towards the administration of bushfire recovery programs: what it demonstrates is that they do not want to put resources into supporting communities affected by fire. They have said that unless the communities are big enough –

Melina Bath: On a point of order, Acting President, our standing orders state that we must speak truth, and this member is actually verballing the exact opposite of what Mrs McArthur and I said.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Michael Galea): It is a point of debate, not a point of order.

Ryan BATCHELOR: They have said that if it is a small fire and there are only a small number of people affected – if a small community is affected – they do not deserve support. That is the absolute consequence of the National Party’s and the Liberal Party’s position.

Melina Bath: On a point of order, Acting President, the member is not speaking truth, and I ask you to draw him back to the topic of debate.

Ryan BATCHELOR: Further to the point of order, Acting President, they are very sensitive to the fact that they do not like small communities, aren’t they?

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Michael Galea): Neither of those are points of order.

Ryan BATCHELOR: The Liberals cannot handle the fact that they do not support small communities affected by fires.

Bev McArthur: On a point of order, Acting President, $784,000 was used in administration, and $115,000 was paid out in grants. We just want the figures.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Michael Galea): Mrs McArthur, that is a point of debate, not a point of order. There is no point of order.

Motion agreed to.