ECHO News can confirm there is no current funding agreement for the establishment of a Perth Hills incident control centre.

Despite the federal government saying it is working with the state government to deliver an incident control centre in the Perth Hills there is no mention of the project in the disaster ready fund or the protecting our communities (disaster resilience) program.

On November 7 The Nationals Emergency Management spokeswoman Senator Perin Davey and Bullwinkel candidate Mia Davies said questions had been put to the Emergency Management Minister Jenny McAllister and National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) officials about the proposal.

This had revealed there was no awareness of the 2022 pledge to bolster emergency response capabilities made by Hasluck MHR Tania Lawrence and Burt MHR Matt Keogh.

Ms Davies said Labor had broken its election promise.

“As Perth Hills residents face another season without essential disaster infrastructure, this broken promise by Labor is unacceptable for a region still recovering from the 2021 Wooroloo bushfire, which devastated nearly 11,000ha and destroyed 86 homes,” Ms Davies said.

The Nationals first criticised Labor for failing to deliver the incident control centre, which Ms Lawrence and Mr Keogh jointly announced days before the 2022 federal election in Perth Hills incident control centre progress criticised.

In response Ms Lawrence said a federation funding agreement had been signed with the state government, and as part of this, the funding for the incident control centre was provided to the state government, as per her commitment ($3 million) at the 2022 election.

In Power back but incident control centre still waits Ms Lawrence said the $3m commitment included a $1.25m incident response and communication failover centre for the Shire of Mundaring, and $1.75m to increase mobile coverage in Herne Hill, Brigadoon and North Stoneville.

On November 11 in response to questions from Echo News, NEMA, which manages both the disaster ready fund and the protecting our communities (disaster resilience) program said the funding promised for a Perth Hills incident control centre did not come from the disaster ready fund and they needed more time to find out whether the funding came from another program.

On November 22 NEMA said the Commonwealth Government was working with the WA Government to deliver an incident control centre for Perth Hills communities.

“The facility allows for command, control and coordination activities of large-scale events to be facilitated effectively,’’ an agency spokesman said.

But a check of NEMA’s protecting our communities (disaster resilience) program page showed there were no current projects listed for the Perth Hills.

On November 28 NEMA said the Commonwealth had a federation funding agreement for the delivery of election commitments and that NEMA was working with the Department of Fire and Emergency Services to deliver the election commitment.

But as of December 4 there was still no mention of an agreement between the Commonwealth and the Western Australian governments for a Perth Hills incident control centre listed on the federation funding agreement page.