Bushfire Recovery Support

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (14:45): Further supplementary: can the Treasurer then assist the chamber by advising whether in fact in the past the commonwealth has provided disaster relief funding for state government assets in national parks?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (14:46): The honest answer is no I can't at this stage. I don't believe they have, but I clearly can't speak with authority going back decades as to whether there's a precedent going back to the 1980s, for example, during those particular Ash Wednesday bushfires that I referred to yesterday whether or not at that particular stage a commonwealth government provided assistance.

The Hon. I.K. Hunter: Ask about floods.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: I will seek further information, but I suspect I am not going to be able to add much more to the answer I have given. I suspect we are probably not aware of where that has occurred, in South Australia's circumstance anyway.

Clearly, if there is a precedent, that assists our argument and we will certainly use that argument in the current discussions. Even if there has been no precedent, I am not sure there has been a precedent where a government has actually put a lump of money on the table and said, 'Hey, here's $2 billion and we are going to use that and we will work with the states to do all that we can.' I think the circumstances in relation to that lump of money are different. In my experience I have not recalled previous governments, Labor or Liberal, at the national level placing a lump of money or a quantum on the table, saying, 'This is what we are budgeting for and this is what we will provide.' It has tended to be more a series of negotiations with state and federal governments about what assistance they might or might not provide.

From that viewpoint, even if there's no precedent, we are not going to be deterred by that. We will continue to have these discussions with the commonwealth to see what degree of flexibility we can get. If we can get assistance in the nature of the sorts of questions that the honourable member has raised, we would certainly be pursuing that.