MR LLEW O’BRIEN MP, FEDERAL MEMBER FOR WIDE BAY: It’s great to be here today at Nolan Meat, which is an iconic local business here in Gympie. I wish I was here under better circumstances, but we’re here in the recovery phase of one of the most significant floods, well one of the most significant floods, we’ve had in this century. It’s a real big thank you to Terry, Tony and Michael, the brothers, the Nolan boys, who have got the show running here. It’s been an incredible effort by their staff to get this up and running and become partially operational in the time that they, that they’ve had. So a huge, huge thank you to them.
Of course, it’s great to have the Prime Minister here today to have a look around, survey the effects of this major weather event and have a talk to important people. It’s the biggest local employer in town. It’s really important that the Prime Minister comes and looks and listens. I do want to say a big thank you to my hairdresser, and there’s a reason why I say that, and it’s not just to make this make this rough head look good before the Prime Minister comes to town. I want to say thanks to Tash and Sharon at Talking Heads because they had to move all of their equipment out of their salon for this flood. And last night, when I went in and I said, I better have a bit of a trim before my boss gets here, it was all laid out there, they were working, they were back into it. So I’d just say to everyone, everyone, if you’ve got a chance to support a local business who’s been affected by these weather events, please do it. Please do it. Don’t get on the internet and order your stuff from overseas or somewhere else. Buy locally, help the people who have, who have been through this major weather event. So look, it is really, really good to have both Bridget and the Prime Minister here, I’ll throw over to him now. Thanks very much for coming along, PM.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks Llew. Thank you very, very much and you’re looking sharp. Look, I want to thank you first Llew, Llew O’Brien is a fantastic local member here, working with his community. We were in touch last week and he was just going ‘no, we’re all good. We’re just focused on doing what we need to do. If I need something I’ll sing out.’ And we were in contact, I know he was talking to Bridget as well. I want to thank all the local members, all the local councillors and for the tremendous work they’ve been doing to get the community, getting them back on their feet.
But Terry and the Nolan brothers and everyone here at Nolan Meats, Bridget and I have been through some pretty, pretty devastated places over the course of these floods. But I’ll tell you what, coming here today, I just got a sense of great hope about the spirit of Australians and what can be done and to Terry and all of your team to think we are standing here right now. We’d be up to about here, I think. And having walked through all the elements of this plant and to see it all just going full-bore and there’s a bit more to come yet. There’s still some machinery that needs to be fixed and that’s getting fixed and they’re doing it. They’re doing that out of their own pocket. They’re getting on with it. And the other thing that has really impressed me while I’ve been here is the attention to the little things. I mean, to lift the spirits, the fact that all of these areas have been washed down, that the lawns have been mowed. These details are about lifting the spirits of a of a very strong workforce here at Nolan Meats. And what I see in Terry and the Nolan brothers, the whole team is just how much they care for their workforce and how important this plant is to the local community here in Gympie. This is a resurrection story we’re seeing right here, and it happened in absolute record time. And there are so many of those stories that we have to make a reality all around the country. And particularly where Bridget and I were there yesterday down in the Northern Rivers, which was so heavily and devastatingly impacted. But that impact here has been so very big and Gympie, there’s only been one flood bigger and you’ve got to go back to the 1800s to find that. So this is a massive flood. But people are getting back on their feet, and I do really want to congratulate the Nolan family for their commitment to this community. But most importantly, their commitment to their workers. As I walked around with them, they knew every name, they knew when they came here as an apprentice, they knew only trades they got, they knew what the last order was that they’ve been able to clinch, and, you know, that’s an amazing family business. And I said to Bridget, this is what as a government we’re trying to see realised and we’re backing in food and beverage manufacturing.
And I know I came here to talk about floods and the response. But what I’m seeing happening shows what can be done in manufacturing and food beverage manufacturing in a regional part of this country. And that’s why we’ve put $1.5 billion into supporting manufacturing businesses to ensure that they can realise the scale and achievement of what we’re doing right here in Gympie and particularly to do that and still be doing it after this devastating flood is incredible.
A few other matters. I can confirm that I spoke to the Premier of Queensland, this afternoon, as I said I would today. We went through a whole range of issues from the Olympics and infrastructure and of course, to issues around the flood response, and we both agree that there has been a tremendously cooperative spirit between the Queensland Government, local governments across Queensland that have been affected and the Federal Government. I’ve seen that on display on the ground here today, and we’re both very thankful for the partnership we’ve had with local government, local communities. We’re very thankful to the SES and the Defence Forces and the tremendous job that they’re done and the tremendous job they’re doing as the flood event moves into the recovery phase. We obviously talked about the state of emergency declaration. I consulted her on that today and I’ll be having a meeting with the Governor-General when I return to Canberra tonight. I’ll see him tomorrow and we’ll be, we’ll be advancing those issues having undertaken the necessary consultations with the Premiers of Queensland and New South Wales.
Also today, the New South Wales Premier announced a joint funding package that was particularly focused on that on housing support, which we’re in with them 50/50 on and supporting up to 25,000 households in those most devastated affected areas within New South Wales and those Northern Rivers areas. That’s on top of the more than $450 million we’ve already committed as part of a joint initiative there. Up here in Queensland that’s been around $550 million that we’ve both committed to as a QLD Government and as a Federal Government and that’s helping people get back on their feet. There’s a lot more to do though. There’s a lot more to do.
And tomorrow my Cabinet, our Cabinet, will be meeting back in Canberra and we’ll be looking at the response and the reactions we’ve had to that response and how we have to fine tune it further. We are still advancing important issues with the New South Wales Government, especially on issues around infrastructure, there’s major challenges in those Northern River sections on things like wastewater treatment plants and so on, which I know the State Government is working closely with the local government on, and there are other issues there that we need to address together. And so there’s a lot more to go. And I want to say to all of those communities that continue to be affected by these terrible floods, whether they be flood events that people have seen before, or they are the absolute catastrophic events. The only way I can describe what I saw in Northern Rivers yesterday, and I’m sure people in Gympie felt a bit like this as well over a week ago, it’s like an inland tsunami, an inland tsunami, just destroying everything in its wake and just leaving devastation in its wake. And so we will have to stand and will gladly with those communities as they go through the rebuilding process. We’ll be adding more and more to that economic infrastructure rebuilding effort as we learn more and more The councils that been supported through the state programmes have been extended, and what Premier in New South Wales said today and we’ve also supported those initiatives. So with that Bridge, there was a couple things you wanted to mention, or you’re good? You’re good. Okay.
JOURNALIST: The Queensland Premier said it’s too late for the disaster declaration in Queensland, should have been done a week ago.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, the Queensland Premier was, had every opportunity to write to me and ask me to do that a week ago. And she didn’t choose to do that. I think there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding about what the state of emergency declaration entails. It does not impact on the flow of funding and support, or Defence Force assistance or any of those things. That is all flowing, that is already flowing. It doesn’t require that. What it does is it assists the Commonwealth Government in managing the regulatory issues in a more streamlined way, which particularly becomes more relevant as you move through the recovery phase. So a state of emergency doesn’t mean there’s extra funds coming from the Commonwealth Government. Those funds are already flowing. Half a billion in payments have already been made directly to people both in New South Wales and Queensland. The ADF is already on the ground in their thousands, and so it was a good opportunity for me to talk through what this involves. And as a result, we’ve done those consultations and it will assist. But I agree with the Queensland Premier that the cooperation we have had has been outstanding. It’s been tremendous and will continue to be so, and this will further assist the Commonwealth Government in streamlining those issues.
JOURNALIST: Will Gympie and Maryborough get the catastrophe assistance that’s been in place now in New South Wales, parts of New South Wales?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, these things are being assessed. As I said yesterday, we moved firstly on those three areas in New South Wales, where we’re talking about a flood event that was two metres higher, actually more than two metres higher than any flood that had ever occurred, ever in recorded history. That is not what has occurred in many other parts of the country and even as we walk through today, I mean, if we were talking about that slide same flood event here, it would have been several metres higher than what occurred here. So while that’s why that’s why we put the billion dollars of funds, a billion dollars of funding support, including over half a billion here in Queensland, that’s the money that is supporting.
In addition, there is the funds through the Commonwealth disaster plan. So the normal flood response has been provided and has been done to the to the T, in terms of the request made to the Commonwealth by the Queensland Government, as has happened in New South Wales. What we’re talking about yesterday was a very specific area that has suffered a flood like none have seen in Australia’s history. This was a one in 500 year event officially declared, for that part of Australia. So we just want to be very clear. We’re dealing with some incredibly exceptional circumstances in those areas and the level of devastation there is like nothing I’ve seen. Okay. Thanks very much, everyone, and congratulations to the team here at Nolan Meats. You guys are an inspiration to all of us. Thank you very much.
