De-Anne Kelly (Dawson, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary Trade) Share this | Hansard source

When Cyclone Larry, a category 5 event, pounded the North Queensland coast, it was probably the worst natural disaster in Queensland since 1918. Some have said it was the worst in Australia. I guess we will leave it to others to work out where it rates, but there is no doubt that it has really torn the heart out of the communities in Babinda, Innisfail and the surrounding areas. There were winds of up to 290 kilometres per hour. While it was going on, I rang up friends in Babinda and on the tablelands and they said that the winds were utterly unbelievable. It was like a cyclonic train outside their house, and at that time they were in the eye of the storm and waiting for the winds to come from the other direction.

I went up there last Wednesday, stopping at Babinda and then driving down to Innisfail. I saw roofs torn from homes and buildings, power poles snapped over and all of the cane lying flat—as you would be only too familiar with, Mr Deputy Speaker Causley. Whole paddocks of banana crops were cut off at about five feet. They looked like someone had gone across them with a whipper snipper and laid them over. There is a great deal of devastation. But with the level of devastation—some 60 per cent of homes in Innisfail and 80 per cent in Babinda are damaged, severely damaged or completely blown away—it is an absolute mercy that there was no loss of life. Although one gentleman apparently passed away from a heart attack in a caravan, there was no loss of life due to injury. You could see pieces of corrugated iron twisted up in the powerlines. How were people able to crawl across their yards? I met one young woman who, with her three-month-old baby, had crawled across the yard to the neighbour’s house when part of her house was blown away. It is an absolute blessing that no-one was severely injured or killed.

The residents of Innisfail, Babinda, Silkwood, Kurrimine and other areas are certainly in urgent need of our assistance. As we know, people in Kurrimine went without food for days and slept on wet mattresses. People that I met, and as we have heard from the member for Kennedy, are living with two or three families in two-bedroom units or have moved in with neighbours.

I would like to detail the assistance package announced by the Commonwealth. There are ex gratia payments to people whose family home was destroyed or uninhabitable for at least two weeks. This relief amounts to $1,000 per eligible adult and $400 per eligible child. That should give a little breathing space for people to pay for alternative accommodation while perhaps repairs and clean-up are occurring at their home. There is a further $1 million to the Cyclone Larry Relief Fund. The Queensland government has matched that donation with an additional $1 million. For farmers and small businesses there is a one-off income support program equivalent to the Newstart allowance for six months. There is also a one-off grant of $10,000, which is tax free, for small and home-based businesses, including farmers and tourism operators. Farmers and small businesses will also have access to concessional loans to re-establish their enterprises. Those loans are up to $200,000 under natural disaster relief arrangements. As the Prime Minister announced today, the federal government has already made an initial advance of $40 million to Queensland to assist under these natural disaster relief arrangements.

I would like to talk about the situation on the ground. I really do acknowledge the very hard work that has been done by civil servants, by our defence personnel, Centrelink, Ergon Energy, the Red Cross, the Queensland State Emergency Service and certainly by the local member for Kennedy, Mr Katter. When I was there he was meeting people in the queues and helping people. Many of the townspeople I spoke to said that he had been the only politician to visit them. There is no doubt that with heart and soul and with energy Mr Katter is there with his people.

These terrible situations bring out the best in many good people. I would like to highlight some of the issues that we are not generally aware of which result from a catastrophe like this. For instance, when I went down the street in Innisfail there was no water, no sewerage and no power. You do not realise the ramifications of that until you are actually there. On the day I was there water was back on and people were therefore able to get water to flush down their toilets. Imagine three days without being able to flush toilets in a house with maybe three families living in it—quite a taxing situation. Lack of power has enormous ramifications. As Mr Katter, the member for Kennedy, said, people literally had no money in their pockets when the cyclone hit. Nobody could access an ATM. The banks that I visited had holes in the roof, were damaged and there were armed guards. Even if people had been able to go into the banks, because no electronic system was operating, they could not access their accounts. So there was no cash, no money.

Local shopkeepers were incredibly generous. Because there was no power, the food in the little coffee shops and hamburger shops was gradually defrosting and would have perished. So shopkeepers put on street kitchens. Many of them just emptied their refrigerators and freezers and put on a big cook-up—street kitchens. I would like to acknowledge Jeff and Gilda Baines from Jagad’s, Len and Anita Oliveri and many others who set up street kitchens and fed up to 2,000 people a day. I know that the member for Kennedy would have seen many of these good shopkeepers. Because they were losing all of their stock, they were giving it away and helping people—at enormous personal cost to themselves. They had little kids coming up to them for a glass of chocolate milk or something, people who evidently had not eaten that day.

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