SUSAN TEMPLEMAN, MEMBER FOR MACQUARIE: After the devastation of the fires have wreaked across our beautiful environment, we have seen that today and we have driven through some really horribly burnt areas of the Blue Mountains World Heritage National Park. But, we have also seen and talked to the terrific men and women of the Australian Defence Force both at the RAAF base in Richmond and… inaudible… And we have seen the great work that has been done in conjunction with Blue Mountain’s Council by the ADF on the ground, clearing up the mess that the fire has left and making safe so many of those very dangerous trees. So we are here in Katoomba to talk about small business and what needs to happen. It is not just enough to live in a beautiful environment, we need people to come and visit this place and see that our cafes, our shops, our lookouts, our walks, many of them are open and able to be used. So, I am very pleased to have Richard here and I will hand over.

RICHARD MARLES, DEPUTY LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Thank you, it is great to be here in Katoomba and fantastic to be here with Susan Templeman who is such a wonderful local member and has represented this community through the most difficult of times. One thing which is really clear going around today is that this is a place which is now open for business, and its business that this community absolutely needs. And if there is a message, it is that tourists need to come back and go to these wonderful cafes, visit these wonderfully beautiful towns throughout the Blue Mountains; that is doing a service to the recovery of these communities. It was great as well to visit RAAF base Richmond, as well as visiting Reservists in their role, in terms of making roads safe. The role that the ADF has played, not just in the last few weeks but in fact over the last couple of months, where bushfires have been very much front and centre in the work of the ADF, makes you feel proud to be Australian. They do our nation a wonderful service and in fighting the fires, and supporting the aerial campaign in relation to the fires and providing refuge to a whole lot of accommodation for a whole lot of visiting firefighters from around the country, the ADF has done fantastic work. Visiting the bushfire affected areas here in the Blue Mountains is an astonishing thing to see. It is hard to comprehend the scale of it unless you see it. And one of the things that really struck me was that normally you visit the Australian bush and you'll hear the noise of birds and animals but it was eerily silent as we walk through the affected areas here. And we just can see the scale of the ecological impact of these fires and we very much hope that these will regenerate as quickly as possible.
I would like to deal with one other issue of the day.
 
There are revelations that have come in today's press about the Auditor-General's report into a $100 million worth of sports grants being misused by the Morrison Government in an attempt to see them save their skin at last year's election. This is astonishing. What's clear is that most of the recommendations of Sports Australia were ignored in the decisions that were made by Scott Morrison and his Government. Scott Morrison was not making decisions about community sport; he was making decisions about saving the Liberal Party. He owes- Scott Morrison owes an explanation to the hundreds of sporting clubs around Australia today about why he ignored their interests in favour of saving his own political skin. What this demonstrates is that Scott Morrison is not a Prime Minister for all Australians, he's just a Liberal Party hack. And not only is he loose with the truth, we now know he bends the rules for his and purposes. This is an absolute disgrace. Scott Morrison owes the nation an explanation.