Some in this place will recall me speaking in February 2020, at the end of the Black Summer fires, when communities like mine were reeling. At the time, there were urgent needs we called on the government to support. In addition, many of us recognised that longer-term investment was required not only to give hope to communities as they started the very long journey to recover but to make our vulnerable places better equipped to deal with the inevitable next bushfire.

When I stood in parliament calling for this sort of funding, never could I have imagined how the Mount Wilson Rural Fire Service brigade members could have made their joint federal-state grant of just under $700,000 go so far. Nor could I have imagined that the people who'd fought fire for many months and s