Part 8/10:
In response, Green Senator Sarah Hansen-Young has called for urgent changes to the legal criteria governing disaster declarations. She advocates for Parliament to amend the rules during the upcoming sittings so that environmental crises of this scale can be classified as natural disasters, unlocking vital federal funding.
Hansen-Young emphasized that such a declaration would enable the federal government to cover up to 75% of assistance costs for affected individuals and communities, including hardship payments, concessional loans, interest subsidies for small businesses and primary producers, and community recovery funds.