Ms JENNY AITCHISON (Maitland) (16:44): First, I place on the record my enormous thanks to everyone in the emergency services, especially the volunteers, who have worked so hard to help people in my community over recent weeks impacted by flooding and storm events. Whilst Maitland has not had the catastrophic flood events that we have seen in the Northern Rivers or in other parts of the State, it has had flooding that has had significant impacts on those people whose houses have been directly affected. What is of concern to me is that it appears that the Federal Government is prepared to let this go and ignore the impact on those individuals.
TEMPORARY SPEAKER (Mr Alex Greenwich): Order! Members will come to order.
Ms JENNY AITCHISON: People in my electorate have been writing to me and I have been making representations to the Minister for Emergency Services and Resilience, and now Minister for Flood Recovery, and to the Premier and the Minister for Agriculture about these people who have been put in terrible situations. Each one of the pieces of paper in my hands represents people who have suffered things like sewage coming through their houses; who have been isolated in their properties; who have been relying on flood boats and Surf Life Saving rescue to get to work, to medical appointments and to education; who have not been able to earn an income; who have had holes in their roof; who have had mould all over their walls; who have had substantial damage to their property.
A lot of farmers have been impacted, and I raised that with the Minister for Agriculture. He said there is no natural disaster declaration. But there was a massive amount of damage on the levee bank at Maitland, which is a State Government asset; it is under soil conservation. The trigger for a natural disaster event is $240,000 of damage to State-owned assets in a local government area. I was trying to make that point to the Minister—I note he is not in the Chamber currently—but his response was that there is no natural disaster declaration. Perhaps the Minister could have pushed for that. I give credit to the Minister for Emergency Services and Resilience, that after three representations calling for a natural disaster declaration—where I pointed out that the flood plan for Maitland that we are operating under is from 2013 and the plans are supposed to be reviewed every five years and the plan is relying on data from 2003 from Maitland City Council—they have updated their plan. But it is not in the State Plan.
For communities like Gillieston Heights where, in 2015, some 2,000 people were isolated for eight days—if we go back to 2003 only about 150 people lived in that area—the Government is working on out-of-date information. If everybody had forgotten that, I would say it is a really bad thing that we all forgot it. But I did not forget it. I wrote to the former Minister for Emergency Services in August 2020, saying to him that the flood plan is out of date and that he has now had seven years since it should have been reviewed to get it done. He has not done that and we have had a major flood event.
Mr Mark Coure: It is actually a council plan.
Ms JENNY AITCHISON: It is not the council plan; it is the State Government's. The council's plan is pretty much up to date—much more so than the State Government's. But this creates problems for our community. We had a flood event in November and this Government did nothing. I begged the Government to make a declaration because of the damage to the levee banks and the impact on our farmers who have had thousands of dollars of loss from that flood. Nothing was done. They were completely ignored. And now, in March, I have had to beg and beg and beg for my community. I have been advised that a Federal declaration is about to come out about individual assistance to those people who are living with sewage having flowed through their home, with their carpets ruined and their electrical white goods blown out. There is money there on the table that the Federal Government has, but it wants to make an announcement. The Government just needs to do it. It needs to get the money out the door.
The Acting Premier criticised Labor in question time today for asking for accountability. But our community is hurting and they are very distressed. We need to know that this money is getting out the door. We need to help those people; they have been through so much. Everyone in our State has been through so much over the past few years and when help is promised by the Government in a media release and it is not delivered, it is a massive betrayal and the Government should be ashamed. But, more importantly, just get the money out the door to the people who need it, please.
