Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee, , 40:53 to 48:12
The committee reviews successful round four Disaster Ready Fund projects in Victoria, including flood mitigation in Moira Shire, community center rebuilding in Strathbogie, and levee construction in Bendigo and Rochester.
Topics: Infrastructure, Drought and disaster support
Speakers: Patrick Burford, Senator Lisa Darmanin, Mr Pat Hetherington, Dr Jill Charker, Senator Jana Stewart
I have some questions about round four disaster-ready projects for the mighty state of Victoria. Just wondering, so Moira, speaking of the importance of local government in recovery and resilience, Moira Shire Council secured funds for the Obama flood resilience project. I wondered if you could give us some detail around the project, you know, and also its importance and impacts for the community in that region.
Yeah, happy to, Senator. I'll ask my colleague First Assistant Coordinator General Pat Burford to provide the details of that for you. Thank you.
Thank you. Yes, uh, Patrick Burford, First Assistant Coordinator General with the programs division of NEMA. Thanks for your question, um Senator. So uh the DRF round four um has been completed in terms of the assessments. The Minister's in the process of uh making progressive announcements. So to date we've had um Victoria followed by Queensland and this morning ACT project, successful projects have been announced. Um the Victorian projects uh in total represents 17.72 million dollars of Commonwealth investment. Um part of the DRF also requires a co-investment from um delivery partners or proponents. That that resulted in an extra 19 million, bringing the total investment for Victorian resilience and readiness projects to 36.8. So um I've got a few examples. Um the particular one you asked about, Senator Moira Shire, BAMA flood. Sure. So the BAMA flood resilience project phase one is going to undertake flood mitigation works to replace the culvert seals and flap valves to ensure pen stock structures uh and install pen stock structures at multiple locations throughout Bahama. These upgrades reduce the water leakage through road culverts and ensure safer pumping of flood water from within the levy system. So this will strengthen the levy system to better protect the BAMA community from future uh flood events, and that's obviously protecting assets, but also improving access in and out of that area. Um the dollar value of that, there's uh 100,000 for that project with a co-contribution matched of 100,000, which is 200,000. So it's building on existing mitigations works. There's a few other examples if uh you'd like to hear them, Senator, on the on for Victorian projects?
Yeah, if you have a list, I'm interested in the Strathbogie um Shire Council around the Ruffey Community Centre. Do you have information on that one?
Um I'm not sure if we've got that one on me.
I understand it was around the new design of the um Ruffi Community Centre.
Um I will double check that one. Maybe Oh, we do have, sorry, thank you. Um so again, the 26th January bush fires destroyed Ruffy's recreation reserve and the Tablands Community Centre, so the community's main places for gathering, recreation and coming together after emergencies. So this project delivers community engagement, a master plan, a detailed design to rebuild these facilities. This will ensure that the centre is accessible, resilient to future disaster, and reduce the community's recovery burden by recovering a pathway to reconstructions. So that'll be a 163,000 dollars from the Commonwealth co-contributions 184, giving a total of $348,000 for that project.
Yeah. And did you you said there that um in terms of its kind of resilience into the future, the considerations around that concept of betterment that we were just hearing about included in that design work?
Yes, certainly. And so again, the design work and the investigation the you know, the discovery of this will ensure that that um that facility is going to be more resilient for the future and help the community recover and also handle during an event as well. So that'll be the important features. Um again, happy to take on notice other examples, but we do have other examples. The minister again announced it, the race court creek, racecourse creek flood leg levy and Bendigo. Again, a construction of a levy along Racecourse Creek. That's a significant investment of around six million uh dollars from the Commonwealth matched by about six point two million from the co-contributors, giving a total investment of twelve point two. So that's going to um uh uh reduce the flood risk to over 500 homes and 60 businesses in that Bendigo area.
Yeah, I was gonna ask about the Rochester Bendigo and Castle Main areas in terms of um the projects um that were successful in those areas. Um are there any any others outside of Racecourse Creek that you can take us through?
Yes, we've got the um for Rochester and Elmore District Health Services. So we're doing a um uh we we aren't doing it, we are funding a uh for the uh we'll construct a levy to protect the Rochester hospital for flood advance. This will mitigate flood impacts uh like those in in experienced in the 2022 flood, which caused the hospital to be evacuated, incur millions in damages and close it for two years. So the project outputs will include levy design, construction and integration of resilience measures. Uh that's that's gonna be funded to the tune of 1.7 million from the Commonwealth with match funding from state and territory of 1.9. So that'll be a 3.6 total for that project, Senator.
Thank you. Maybe just overall as my last question. Um the ones that I've asked about and you've talked about have really been about um flood mitigation and response to bushfire. Do you uh kind of have an overall comment in terms of the totality of projects across Victoria, whether they specifically look mostly at those types of natural disasters, or is it a mix, or can you give us a bit of a flavour about?
It certainly is a mix of the um total funding uh for the disaster ready. A portion was for infrastructure and another portion was for um uh things from uh planning, research into and flood modelling and community support, community support, all that type of thing, community knowledge and readiness, and so there's a range of projects, and we can certainly take our notice of full suite of those. We but by the way, just uh to be clear, we've published all the projects on the NEMA website as well for the um that'll be progressively added to as the further announcements take place.
That is excellent, thank you. I will direct my community to the website. Thank you. Lots more detail. Thanks.
Senator, I might just I might just add if I may to the end of that. Um the the sort of the infrastructure nature of some of this through our work in the hazards insurance space. It's important that we get the right mix of projects as well. The community resilience piece is absolutely critical. Um, the the sort of delivery of some of these larger infrastructure levy related projects are the sorts of things that the insurance sector looks at in terms of driving down premiums and providing greater availability of insurance. So that's one of the considerations that we have when we look at this as well.
Thank you. That's very helpful.
Thank you, Senator Dammin. Senator Payman.