JIHAD DIB: Well, good afternoon and thanks for being here. In the first instance, I want to wish everybody a happy Easter. I hope you’re having a wonderful day with your family and with your friends and with loved ones and, and a special thank you also to the essential workers out there today, making sure that we can enjoy our day. Thank you very much for the work that you do.

I just like to make a couple of comments about two different issues. The first one being of course, the floods and the pods announcement and then secondly, about the public transport mishaps again, particularly with the ferries.

In the first instance, today’s announcement of up to 2000 pods of course, is a welcomed announcement. I’ve been in the region, the Northern Rivers region, and I’ve seen firsthand what it’s like. We know that one month ago, we became well aware that over 5000 homes were absolutely seriously impacted by the floods. And of that nearly 3000 homes have become uninhabitable. What we’ve got though, is a situation where the government made an announcement a month ago, they said there was going to be a commitment. And now a month later so today there’s an announcement that there’ll be some funding put into pods for local communities. And whilst of course welcome that. It does worry me the fact that we’ve waited so long, it doesn’t give certainty to the local communities. Communities, they don’t want another announcement don’t want another promise. They just want things to happen. In the time that I’ve spent there with the local communities all they just want is for things to take place. They want to know where they’re going to be staying. They want to know how long they’re going to be staying there for and they want to know when the rebuild is going to take place. Now we saw an extraordinary situation over the last week and a half or so, where people who were put into the emergency accommodation were asked to leave to make way for holidaymakers. Now that tells me that the government is well and truly dropped the ball on things that are really important to our local community. So the pods of course we welcome them, but we want some certainty. The questions that we have around the fact that is the money announced today an additional form of money or is it money that is taken from what was announced a month and a half ago? Will the pods be procured locally? And will they be manufactured locally and here’s a great opportunity to be able to build and assemble those pods in the local area means that there are people in the local community you can have some employment, the builders, the carpenters, the welders and I think that’s a great economic stimulus. It also helps create a sense of community. And the other one of course is when do we expect these to take place all we know is that there’s going to be close to 2000 pods. They’re going be set up in little communities. But we don’t know when we don’t know how many for each section. And we also don’t know when communities are meant to be living in there. So of course, all of our support and respect goes to the communities of northern New South Wales. They’re experiencing extraordinary situations, and they’ve been absolutely phenomenal, but they have been let down. And so hopefully this might be the turnaround that is so desperately needed. The community wants certainty. They want a guarantee and they want an assurance that the rebuild is taking place, but most significantly, that they’ve got a safety in terms of shelter as soon as possible.

I think  I might make a few comments about the fairies if it’s okay as well. Well, this weekend, I think is the weekend that the government had the opportunity to get things right when it comes to public transport, and unfortunately they didn’t. Much has been made about the free public transport. And of course a beautiful Easter weekend families wanted to get out and about but we have seen over and over again another bundle from this government and we saw it yesterday with the ferries. We’re seeing it with the lines again today. It’s just simply not good enough for this government to make an announcement but never to be able to get things right. You know, fare free days are really fantastic. But what would actually be much better is a public transport system that’s reliable public transport system that works and public transport system that can move the state. Now we know that part of the reason has been, you know a lack of staffing. Well then it’s begs the question, what has the government done in terms of making sure that we’ve got adequate staff, adequate operators who can make sure that our public transport system runs. The people of New South Wales want to use public transport system. They want a great public transport system, but where they’ve been let down at the moment by is a government that just doesn’t seem to be able to get it together. The people in New South Wales deserve much better than this. Much better than someone who will say, hey, we’re gonna give you from free public transport come down, enjoy the sights, but then you’re forced to line up for two hours. It’s just simply not good.