Drought Assistance

Mr TELFER (Flinders) (15:08): My question is to the Treasurer. Has the state government committed any additional funding to drought-affected sectors and communities? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr TELFER: The Victorian government has recently announced a $13.5 million drought relief package for the sector.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Treasurer, Minister for Defence and Space Industries) (15:08): As I have made reference to in a number of my responses to these questions, yes, the government has committed additional funding to regional communities in order to assist their members in those communities to try to deal with the really significant impacts of these drought conditions. I have been at pains to describe that initial amount of funding as an initial response, trying to deploy additional funding in an immediate way which we thought was the most relevant and targeted benefit that we could provide to people suffering from the circumstances of these drought conditions.

What I am referring to is the $4.4 million that we committed only several weeks ago to the Family and Business Support program to make sure that we had Family and Business Support mentors and the Rural Financial Counselling Service so that particularly primary producers, but not just primary producers, could access one-to-one direct advice and support when they are concerned about all the various impacts that these drought conditions are having on them, whether it is impacts on their farm business and their ability to operate as a primary producer, or the impact it is having on them and their families, or them and their personal relationships and so on, that has been an immediate response on getting that support out to the community.

As I said, we are still working both through the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development and also with the commonwealth government as well as local representatives to understand what the needs are and how best we can respond to those needs. I don't want to give the house the impression that, yes, we have committed $4.4 million and that's it and that's all.

I think as we have demonstrated in the answer to the previous question from the member for Chaffey, we have not hesitated to respond very substantially to regional communities when they are put at significant risk from circumstances beyond their control. We did that with the flood and we are continuing to consider how best to do that in response to these drought conditions. I thank the member for Flinders again for raising this important question for the benefit of the house.