Portfolio — 31 March 2026

The Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories and Minister for Emergency Management, the Member for Eden-Monaro, used parliamentary time on 31 March to deliver a comprehensive account of the government's response to the 2025–26 high-risk weather season and to mark three local achievements in her home electorate.

The emergency management contribution was the substantive centrepiece of the day's record. The Minister catalogued a season of compounding disasters — Tropical Cyclone Fina, bushfires in New South Wales and Tasmania, monsoons in Queensland, a record heatwave across southern Australia, flooding in Queensland and the Northern Territory, and Tropical Cyclone Narelle — and set out the government's operational response to each [TA-260331-house-66782c600be9:s153].

Her account of the response was notably concrete: disaster recovery funding arrangements were activated across all affected areas, and the government announced 96 projects under round 3 of the $200 million Disaster Ready Fund, covering levee upgrades, flood mitigation, bushfire warning systems and cyclone shelters [TA-260331-house-66782c600be9:s153]. The government also established a national emergency stockpile — providing sandbags, emergency accommodation and electricity generation capacity — increased funding to the National Aerial Firefighting Fleet, and drew in cross-jurisdictional and international support from the ADF, RAAF Base Tindal, New Zealand and Canada [TA-260331-house-66782c600be9:s153].

The Minister personally visited affected communities across a wide geographic arc, including the Tiwi Islands, Darwin, Katherine, Daly River, Palumpa, Numbulwar, Jilkminggan and a string of Victorian communities including Euroa, Ruffy, Bendigo and Harcourt. The breadth of that list signals a ministerial posture of direct engagement rather than coordination from Canberra.

The procedural contribution, delivered separately, reinforced that local-presence theme through a different lens. The Minister used her Eden-Monaro statement to recognise three achievements within the electorate: the March opening of the Kennedy retirement village in Bombala — a bequest-funded project honouring the third-generation farming siblings Herb and Laura Kennedy — the Eden Local Aboriginal Land Council's bronze award in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Tourism Experiences category at the 2025 Australian Tourism Awards (following a gold at the New South Wales Tourism Awards), and the recognition of Bente Hart of Braidwood as the 2026 New South Wales Pharmacist of the Year by the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia for her rural medication safety and clinical governance work [TA-260331-house-66782c600be9:s090].

Taken together, the three recognitions touch aged care, Indigenous cultural tourism and rural health — three domains with standing policy significance in regional Australia and consistent with the minister's portfolio focus on community outcomes outside major urban centres.

The two streams converge on a single governing theme: the minister is projecting portfolio ownership through physical presence and named outcomes, whether in disaster-affected communities across the north and south-east or in her own electorate. The emergency management account is the more consequential record for policy tracking, given the scale of the season described and the specificity of the funding and operational commitments cited.