Acting Prime Minister visits our team in New South Wales

The Australian Acting Prime Minister, The Hon Richard Marles, visited our incident management team in Parkes, New South Wales, yesterday.

The team is in NSW to help with the extreme flooding that is being experienced across the state. They said Mr Marles was ‘extremely grateful for our support’. He was also interested to hear about the pounamu (mauri stone) the team took with them. 

The 4kg stone, which is around the size of a fist, has travelled since 2018 on most international deployments, going to Canada and plenty of places in Australia.

Since they arrived on Monday, the team has managed numerous operations, logistics and resource requests as a result of the surrounding towns of Forbes and Condobolin experiencing significant flooding and further evacuation orders being issued.  

They have also managed to get support from local people to help with incident management functions over the next few days and build a more functional and larger IMT, and have established a relationship with a local mining company that understands emergency services.

The Parkes Mayor, Ken Keith, was interviewed by Today FM who said the arrival of our team was a ‘godsend’.

From left to right: Parkes Mayor Ken Keith, Local Federal Member Michael McCormack, Acting PM The Hon Richard Marles, Fire and Emergency Deputy Incident Controller Gareth Hughes.