Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

It is with a very heavy heart that I rise to support the motion so eloquently moved by the Deputy Prime Minister. We live in a very beautiful country, but surely it has a terrible beauty and we have seen the full terror of that beauty in the last few days. To see it in such a beautiful part of Australia is so awesome. The towns of the Yarra Valley were carved out of the mountains to service the rush to the goldfields in the middle of the 19th century. These are beautiful towns that have become so loved by generations since because of their beauty and because of the friendliness and hospitality of their people. It is a rite of passage for Melburnians to drive from the suburbs of their great city into the Yarra Valley, to drive through those mighty forests of towering mountain ash, giant tree ferns and manna gums and on to the alpine regions. Marysville, Kinglake and Narbethong have served as the base for the Lake Mountain ski resort, where many Victorian children get their first taste of the snowfields, build their first snowman and throw their first carefree snowball. In autumn and spring they have offered the beauty of the Mystic Mountains and the glorious Cathedral Range, walks through quiet forest glades, the beauty of spectacular waterfalls and even occasionally the sight of a lyrebird. From the 1920s these towns have become popular tourist resort destinations and loved by people from all over Australia and all over the world.

But at the height of the Australian summer, amidst all of this natural beauty, this serenity, there is a looming menace, because on those hot February days, especially when the northerlies come down like a blast from a foundry and the forests begin to wilt, there is a real menace: truly nature at its most menacing, nature at its most terrible. Last Saturday was such a day. There were freakishly high temperatures and ferocious winds. It was a savage brute of a day, the like of which Victorians have never seen and would hope never to see again. That is the cruel paradox of the land in which we live. Never before have we witnessed fury such as this, havoc and devastation such as this, inflicted on any of our communities. Never before has there been a tragedy on a scale as great as this. This is the terrible side of the beauty of Australia.

Down in Whittlesea today Phil Edmunds and his wife were relieved that they had escaped with their lives. They lived at Kinglake. They had seen the fire 10 kilometres away. Five minutes later it was upon them. It was travelling at 120 kilometres an hour. When we were at Whittlesea today, survivor after survivor told Fran Bailey and me that the fires have been moving at 120 kilometres an hour. Who can outrun—how can you outrun—a menace like that? Phil—or ‘Smiley’, as he is known—escaped. His neighbours were one minute behind him. Later he saw their burnt out car. He does not know for sure whether or not they escaped alive. One minute—was that the difference between life and death, between life and a holocaust of fire and wind of 120 kilometres an hour? Smiley has lost all his possessions but I could see in his eyes, as in those of so many others today, a sense of amazement and wonder: ‘How did I make it and why did I make it when so many of my friends did not?’

We sat last night with Peter McWilliam, who is the president of Fran’s FEC. As are all FEC presidents, all branch presidents and all political parties, he is used to ringing up branch members. Last night he was calling to see who had lived and who had died. What a tally, what a job, what a terrible few days; the capricious brutality of this fire has swept everything before it.

There was another man there, too—a survivor. He and his family were immigrants to this country. They were there, too, reflecting on their survival. The husband said to me, ‘We think we are so smart, with all our science and our plans, and then Mother Nature comes along and stamps upon us.’ There too, sitting quietly against the wall, were two grandparents, their faces racked with a quiet anguish. Their youngest child, their son, lives in Kinglake with his own family. They have not been able to find him. The grandmother was sitting there, her hands in her lap, quietly knitting and unknitting her fingers, with an anxiety that spoke more powerfully of her terror than tears or words could ever do.

It is impossible to speak too highly of the courage and commitment of the firefighters, the police and the other emergency workers battling this terror. There are no words that are adequate to convey the praise, the admiration and the support that we owe these men and women. The Country Fire Authority’s volunteers have stood up in the face of the fiercest fires any of them have ever seen. One veteran of 45 years service as a volunteer fireman—he has seen them all—told us late last night that the intensity, the heat and, above all, the speed of the fires was without any precedent. But they were in good heart. Whether they were the men and women at Diamond Creek CFA brigade last night or at Whittlesea today, they were in good spirits. They were tired—they were exhausted. But they knew they had fought a good fight. They knew that there were hundreds of lives and properties that had survived this terrible fire because of their efforts. Some of the volunteers we met had lost their own homes. They had lost their own homes while they were defending the lives and the homes of other Australians. Truly, these men and women embody the very best of the Australian spirit of self-sacrifice in the service of others.

Being country people, many of the survivors are very keen, very acute observers of nature. One man from Humevale noted, and explained at great length, the different speed at which the fire had travelled when it went through ungrazed land at 120 kilometres an hour, like a speeding car, from when it struck land that had been grazed and moved, he said, at only a walking pace. We are only beginning to understand the nature of this horror. There was a quiet young officer from police forensics there today. He was talking of how people had died when the fireball had sucked all the oxygen out of the air and left them with nothing to breathe but fire itself.

This truly has been a tragedy that has brought out the most terrifying side of nature—the most terrible side of nature—but it has brought out the best in Australians, because confronting the adversity of nature at its fiercest has been part of our national story: Cyclone Tracy, Black Friday, the Maitland floods, Ash Wednesday. And, of course, today, as Victorians grapple with this firestorm, their fellow Australians in North Queensland face a flood. These are the extremes we face. We are the land, indeed, of ‘drought and flooding rains’ and the land that we love so much; in the words of Dorothea Mackellar, we love ‘her beauty and her terror’. We have always known it and we have always feared it and respected it, but we have always fought back.

Today we extend our heartfelt prayers to the families who have lost their loved ones, and our unstinting admiration to the men and women who have defended the lives of so many Australians in this terrible tragedy. And we cannot hold back anything that is required. The three words that should define our national response to this tragedy must be ‘Whatever it takes’: whatever it takes to put these people back on their feet, to enable them to rebuild their homes, to restock their farms, to recover their lives and to grow again, because they did not deserve this. Nobody deserves a tragedy like this. But they deserve our loyalty and support and they will get it. Soon enough, we will begin the task of recovery and rebuilding. That will demand resilience and resourcefulness. It will demand courage and tenacity and determination. And the communities in Victoria—all of them, right across the state—will require the solidarity and support of their fellow Australians, and they will get it.

But let there be no doubt about the people we have spoken of today, and the people we have visited today—the people of the Yarra Ranges. They are a very hardy lot. I cannot count the number of times I was told by people who had lost everything they owned that they would pick themselves up and start again. We already know of their will to fight, because we have seen it before. Think of this: you only need to make the trip back down through the Black Spur and across the Dandenong Ranges to the town of Cockatoo. Think of the town of Cockatoo. The people of Kinglake know that trip. When the Lakers play the Brookers as part of the annual fixture on the Yarra Valley Mountain District Football League, they make that trip, so they know that town well. On Ash Wednesday, 16 February 1983, Cockatoo was wiped out by fire: 300 homes destroyed, seven lives lost, in a small hillside town. But the people of Cockatoo were not beaten. Passionately, they rebuilt their houses. Out of the ashes, Cockatoo came back. By 1986, the population was over 2,000. By 1991, it was nearly 3,000. And today, more than a quarter of a century after the devastation, Cockatoo has more than doubled in size. With grit and fighting spirit, Cockatoo came back, bigger than ever. So, too, will Marysville, Kinglake and Narbethong, because nothing can wipe these places off the map. They live in the hearts of the brave people we met today, and so many others, and they must live and be rebuilt in our hearts too.

The opposition will give the government all the support that we can. We must do everything we can together, as a parliament and as a nation, to give these people whatever it takes to restore their communities and to build them stronger and safer in the years ahead. This is a terrible country in its terror and its fire. It is a beautiful country in its wonderful nature and gifts. As we deal with that terror, as we respond to the terror of Australia, so we forge the strength, the resilience, the courage and the determination that is Australian.

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