Duncan Kerr (Denison, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I am not religious but the Bible has a passage that I think is apposite to our circumstance, which is that ‘to everything there is a season’. I think this is the season for us coming together as a community and sharing our respect for those who have acted in this crisis to protect the life, limb and property of those who are under threat, to grieve with those who have lost and to come together as a community as best we can to work through how we can, with good sense, move forward into the future.

I might say some words from my own perspective because I know that the wounds that will have been opened up will not close quickly. The member for O’Connor mentioned the 1961 event in Western Australia. I am, for my sins, old enough to remember the 1967 fires in my state of Tasmania. It was the first year I went to high school, Claremont High School, which had only three years of students as it had just opened. The school was closed at about noon because the skies had become blood red and it was plain that the whole of the city of Hobart was burning. We were not sure how the young kids from the primary school would get home, so many of the high school kids went down and walked the primary school kids home, some to homes that no longer existed by that time.

One of my friends from high school lost their father in that fire and I know that others, including a parliamentary colleague of mine in the lower house, lost their homes and all the photographs and possessions that go with family memory. In my own circumstance we were very fortunate. The fires reached down to the back fence and my grandfather put them out with a hose. The white fence down the back was scarred by those fires, and we were an awful long way from the nearest tall trees—at least 800 metres, perhaps more.

The fires raging down the valleys and the mountains above the city of Hobart created the firestorms, the rolling fireballs and the vacuums that we hear of. The member for O’Connor says it is a new thing that houses explode, but if you go back to the testimonies of those who experienced and lived through the 1967 fires you read that people saw houses literally explode in front of their eyes in those circumstances. Sixty-two people died there, and it affected many thousands of families. Many, many more people lost their homes, their property and their pets. Entire small towns were essentially wiped off the map, but the fires had their effect right across the whole of the community.

I suppose that explains the generosity of the Tasmanian community in responding to these events. It has become known that federal members are collecting clothing and footwear to be made available to those in Victoria who have lost their clothing and footwear as a result of these fires. I have seen some pictures on the Facebook pages that members operate, mine included, which show that our offices are being filled with generous donations of everything from blankets to clothes and footwear, reflecting the fact that everywhere across Australia the fires are being seen as an event that we have to respond to personally. I have had many messages from people indicating that they wish to give blood. I hope that intent continues not just during this week but into the weeks that come because the burn victims will continue to require transfusions for weeks, if not months and perhaps years, to come. I hope the first instinct that leads people to make these decisions continues over time so that instinctive generosity is followed through in a way which enables those who have suffered so horribly to have the supplies of blood products they will need.

Like everybody else, I want to share my sense of a sheer lack of understanding as to how people have the resilience and the courage to continue to exist through these experiences and to work and survive and go on when they have lost their children or their possessions or they have seen their friends and families lose theirs and yet they are out there still working and still contesting against these terrible events of nature.

I am hesitant about going into the next stage of discussion, which is about the royal commission and the like and to look at steps we would wish to take, as I think it is more appropriate for it to be left to a period afterwards. I really do hesitate. I have no doubt that the member for O’Connor has come to this debate with great passion. He has argued his case before and he is entitled to take the view that this is the time for him to advance a case as to how we should proceed into the future. But I really do not think it helps us as parliamentarians or the community to have intruding into this phase of our debate, when events and emotions are so raw, a context of blame whereby someone says something to the effect that those who stood in the way of the policy proposals that the member for O’Connor has advanced have blood on their hands and are effectively responsible for these events. There are significant issues that we will have to look at by way of how to respond to these events. There is no perfection in our parliament. There is no perfection in our states. We can always improve our learning. It may be that, through this process and the royal commission, we will develop new methodologies and approaches—and I am quite open to those possibilities—but I do think that we need to be wary of a debate where we seek to find within our society those to blame and victimise as if these great events are their responsibility.

We cannot completely engineer ourselves against grief and destruction in this country. Dorothea Mackellar, in her poem about Australia which we know from childhood, talks about the ‘beauty’ and the ‘terror’ of this great brown land of ours and speaks of fires, speaks of floods and speaks of all the natural catastrophes. We cannot engineer our way out of the crises that the people in Queensland are facing through flood. We cannot make certain that no-one will face that most horrible of events, facing a fire not prepared properly for it, because you cannot prepare properly for some of the great events of the kind that we have seen—the Tasmanian fires in 1967 or this terrible set of fires. There is no circumstance that some of those people could have been in that would have immunised them from the harms that befell them, their pets, their animals and their property.

If I can go back to the starting point, when I said that there is a season for all things, this is a season for us to recognise what so many outside of this parliament have seen in us. It was exemplified in the email that the Speaker sent around. They saw in the Leader of the Opposition, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Prime Minister and so many of the people who spoke on both sides of the House—they were marvellous speeches which actually showed us as humans—the capacity for compassion and understanding of each other in that rarest of circumstances, where we do not seek to attribute blame but simply to understand the grief and loss that each of us is facing as fellow members of a common community.

We can pass on to those other debates at a future time. In my view, that is the time and the season for that. I think that we have set up appropriate mechanisms to make certain that sensible debate can occur in that framework and that we can learn any lessons that we need to learn. But I do not think it is appropriate for me to engage with the member for O’Connor on behalf of those to whom he has attributed blame and to respond to his remarks. I do not think it would help this parliament and the regard and stature in which it is held by the community if suddenly, instead of the manner in which we have been debating these events, we start arguing amongst ourselves about those circumstances, and so I decline to do so. I decline to do so deliberately, but I also recognise that the member for O’Connor—and I think I should recognise this—no doubt believes that equally it is a time and a place to do what he has done. I think that, whatever else the member for O’Connor is, he comes to this debate with sincerity and passion. I just think that his judgment and timing is inappropriate and unhelpful; and therefore I do not want to engage in a debate which would then lead others to participate and distract us from what I think is our primary responsibility.

This morning in the Age there was a very interesting article by Andrew Macleod about how we can further move towards rebuilding. I would commend that article to our policymakers for examination. Andrew Macleod is a man who has played a large role in the United Nations and in international restoration efforts at many incidents, such as the earthquakes in Pakistan, and he currently has a leadership role in disaster relief and reconstruction in the Philippines. He occupies what is probably one of the highest roles in the international community now held by any Australian—the member for Fremantle, Ms Parke, having left her role with the United Nations. That article is worth looking at. It is worth us reflecting on what we have by way of common ideals within this debate. I appreciate that those who may listen to or read about this debate may see it as if it has, as a result of earlier contributions today, slightly moved from the rails that it was on. I hope that we all understand that there is no single way that some 150 parliamentarians will see the world but, in this instance, I think that about 148 of them see it in the same way and there are one or two who do not. I will be content to stand with the many on this issue and say that the many come together in great respect for those who are still facing the threat that the bushfires in Victoria represent. Fires are still burning as we speak, and we come together to acknowledge and to grieve for those who have suffered loss. I thank the House for its indulgence to permit these remarks. I know that every Tasmanian shares common sentiments, because Tasmania of all places experienced similar events in the living memory of those over the age of 45. For many of their children and grandchildren, those events are still vivid by way of others’ recollections.

See this speech in context