Ms CATHERINE KING (Ballarat) (09:44): I take note of the minister's statement and I want to thank him for providing the House with an update on the government's response to this unprecedented bushfire season. 1 would like to join with the minister in extending my deepest sympathies to the families that have lost loved ones during this bushfire season. I'd also like to extend my sympathies to people across Australia who've lost homes, businesses, crops or livestock through these bushfires. I'd like to express my sincere appreciation to the thousands of firefighters, both career and volunteer, who have spent months battling these fires. They've been supported by emergency services personnel, our Defence Force, local and state governments, not-for-profits, public servants and so many communities. This bushfire season has been unprecedented. The level of destruction witnessed across Australia has, frankly, shocked the world. Thirty-three people have lost their lives and over 3,000 homes have been destroyed. Over one billion animals have perished in the fires and over 12.6 million hectares of land has burned. The members opposite would like to badge this bushfire season as 'black summer'. But the truth is this bushfire season is stretching well beyond the confines of our summer, as we can expect for every bushfire season in the years to come. The level of destruction witnessed over the past six months is indeed unprecedented. But it was not unexpected. In fact, the government had been warned for many months that they must prepare for longer and more intensive bushfire seasons caused by climate change. In April, a group of former fire chiefs with hundreds of years of experience between them wrote to the Prime Minister requesting a meeting to discuss this year's bushfire season. They warned the government that they were not prepared for the catastrophic conditions Australia was likely to face. They reached out again in September as the bushfire season began in earnest. And twice they were ignored. Following the federal election in May, the Department of Home Affairs warned incoming ministers: The physical effects of climate change, population growth, and urbanisation mean that without effective action more Australians' livelihoods will be impacted by disasters into the future and the cost of those disasters will continue to grow. Coordinated national action to drive efforts to reduce these risks and improve national resilience is required. Despite this, no action was taken by the government to prepare for this bushfire season. In November last year, the Leader of the Opposition wrote to the Prime Minister requesting that he call an urgent COAG meeting to discuss Australia's natural disaster preparedness. The Leader of the Opposition requested that COAG discuss a compensation scheme for volunteer firefighters, expanding the capacity of Australia's National Aerial Firefighting Centre, and developing a new national strategy for disaster preparedness, among other things. But, instead of taking these constructive suggestions on board, the Prime Minister pushed them aside, claiming he would give due consideration to using COAG as forum to discuss Australia's national disaster preparedness, should the need arise. Once again, the government refused an opportunity to prepare for this bushfire season before it was too late. As the true devastation of this bushfire season began to dawn on the government, it became very clear that they did not have a plan. Instead of working to fix this, the Prime Minister went missing in action. When he returned, he sought to blame the states at every opportunity and he scrambled to catch up on what he should have prepared for months ago. When confronted with why the request for increased annual funding for aerial firefighting was allowed to sit in a corner collecting dust for 18 months, the Prime Minister claimed that he had provided the resources required, before turning around and then committing to annual funding for the centre. When asked why he was not doing anything to compensate volunteer firefighters, the Prime Minister claimed that it wasn't necessary and that volunteer firefighters wanted to be there, before turning around and announcing compensation for volunteer firefighters. When asked why he would not convene a COAG meeting to discuss natural disaster preparedness, the Prime Minister said he wasn't going to give in to knee-jerk responses, before turning around and announcing that disaster preparedness would be discussed at a COAG meeting in March. The government was one step behind the entire way because they had no plan. Because the Prime Minister entered the bushfire season with no plan, the recovery effort, though desperately needed, has been disappointing and confusing for people in bushfire affected areas—people like Rae Harvey, who lost her home in the bushfires and was living on her property with no running water, electricity or wi-fi. She had applied for the disaster relief payment twice and been rejected twice because she couldn't provide the bank account details for a government payment from 25 years ago. There were businesses like the Ulladulla Surf School, which had most of its summer bookings cancelled because of the bushfire season and was struggling to make ends meet. The owner, Mr Simon Twitchen, was excited to hear about the loan program for small businesses announced on 20 January. The Prime Minister's media release published the same day said that small-business support would be immediate. It took nearly a month for that funding to be made available. It's no wonder that only one loan across all of Australia has been approved for a small business, despite the huge need across communities to support them. The sad reality is that the Prime Minister has been more focused on trumpeting recovery announcements than getting the money actually out the door. People deserve much better than announcements; they deserve action. That's why this statement by the member for Maranoa is frankly a little galling. The minister has come into this chamber and announced that this will serve as his first ministerial statement on the national effort to reduce risk of disasters and to build resilience. But the member has been the minister for natural disaster and emergency management since May last year. This statement would have been useful before the bushfire crisis, where he could have outlined what the government was doing to prepare for natural disasters, particularly as we went into the worst bushfire season we have seen for a long time. Instead, it is another case of too little, too late. Unfortunately, what the minister has outlined in his statement today is another case of trumpeting announcements but delivering very, very little. Minister Littleproud mentions the National Disaster Risk Reduction Framework, an initiative famously pushed out of sight after the coalition won government. But the minister cannot outline what outcomes the framework has delivered, only what it will deliver. The minister mentions the $50 million set aside for disaster mitigation within the Emergency Response Fund, an amendment Labor fought to be included and delivered. The Emergency Response Fund was passed by the parliament in October, but five months on the minister can only talk about what funding will be available through the fund, not what the funding has delivered for communities. There will be a few lasting memories from this bushfire season. The red skies of Mallacoota as thousands of people fled to the beach will be one of them. The choking smoke blanketing our capital cities will be another, as will the images of our fireys standing ready against walls of flame. And people will remember what was absent: the Prime Minister, who went missing in action, who ignored all of the warning signs and refused to listen to the experts, who sat on crucial funding for firefighting services for years, who even now is leaving people waiting weeks and months for vital help clearing away debris and supporting their small businesses. As we have seen since before the bushfire season, the opposition stands ready to support the government and these communities so that they can get back on their feet. But we don't need more spin, more statements; we need more money getting out the door. I would hope that the next time the member for Maranoa makes this annual statement we will see actual proof of that.