Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to support the Prime Minister’s motion and the words of previous speakers—words that I am sure are supported by all members in this House—in mourning the loss of people and property in floods, cyclones and fires since our parliament last met. In particular we extend our condolences to the families and friends of the almost 50 Australians who have died since this weather event began in late November. There has been flooding in every state and fires in Western Australia. The image that we have of our country at Christmas is essentially of sunny beaches and cool rainforests, of Australian Open tennis and of winning the Ashes. Not much of that happened this Christmas-New Year. Indeed, we are reminded that our country’s climate can also be very harsh, as Dorothea Mackellar pointed out in her immortal poem. Australia can be a country that also experiences brutal weather.

We have had 10 years of drought. Indeed, some people were beginning to wonder whether it would ever rain again. But like all El Nino events, it was eventually followed by La Nina, and that is what we have had this year. Just as the big drought events were broken in 1974 by flooding, in 1955 by flooding and in earlier years, this drought also has now been broken through extensive rainfall across all Australian states. The reality is that our rivers are full, our water supply systems are replenished, and that is certainly encouraging. But we are reminded that coming with this replenishment there has been a great deal of damage, heartbreak and trouble. These past few days have reminded us again of the greatness of being a part of the Australian people and how we work together with one another. We stand together. We try to repair the damage. We comfort one another and we look for ways to do things better in the future.

I spent four days visiting flood affected areas in central and southern New South Wales a couple of weeks before Christmas. That was just an introduction; the floods then moved to all other states. And as a reminder of the events of two years ago, we now have significant bushfires in Western Australia.

These events will leave us with many memories and images that will stay with us forever: the raging floodwaters through Toowoomba and Grantham, the epicentre of the horror of this event, I guess. The floodwaters that were resting in Rockhampton and other flood plain cities and towns across the nation, often for weeks before people could gain access to their homes. The pile of boats in Hinchinbrook Harbour certainly packed a powerful message. The banana production plantations trashed so soon after the last time the same plantations were destroyed. If there is an image of Australia it is that our two biggest banana production areas on the very extremities of our continent have both been destroyed in the space of a couple of weeks. There are the stories of people on buses reporting for work in the clean-up. There is the heart-wrenching story of the young lad who said, ‘Take my brother first,’ but the rescuers were not able to return in time. There were the homes flooded with people sitting on the roofs, the ruined possessions piled up waiting for someone to collect them and take them to the tip. All of those images will be with us for a long time. We stood with grieving families, people afraid for the future, people wanting to know what they could do to help or where they could go. We stood in the paddocks with farmers who had just lost the best crop they had ever seen after 10 years of drought. All of these things will certainly leave lasting memories for me.

There was also the destruction of our natural environment. We saw the pictures of the destruction around Mission Beach and in particular the Cassowary Coast, and it has been suggested that the environmental damage in that area may threaten the very future of the cassowary. All of those things are very important to us as Australians.

There are also the classic stories of communities that have endured more than their share. Think of the town of Theodore, the first town in Australia to be entirely evacuated because of the threat of the flood’s arrival. Then there was the town of Condamine, which went through it all twice. The people there were lifted out the first time in the middle of the night by Black Hawk helicopters, and then they had to go through it all again. There was destruction in Cardwell and Dunk Island, a place where many Australians have spent wonderful holidays. To see that place the way it is now demonstrates the huge power of these weather events.

In my electorate there is a little town called Woolooga. There are only three major buildings in the main street—the hotel, the shop and the hall. An unexpected raging torrent in the middle of the night went through the hotel, destroyed everything in the shop and took the hall off its foundations. This is the kind of impact that some towns have had to live with.

Just last week I was in Charlton, in Victoria, a little town of about 1,500 people, where the whole central business area went under water. Their hospital has been flooded, along with their aged persons complex and health centre. It could be a year, or maybe three years if they have to rebuild the hospital, before these facilities will be available for the community. Their aged people have had to go to other towns to continue to receive care. Their doctor has set up a temporary medical centre, but will he wait for another three years until all these things are rebuilt? This little town is not a wealthy town, and it needs this kind of community support. It can ill afford a tragedy of this nature. And its shopkeepers are trying to rebuild their premises and open up for business, even though it is obvious that the pain and hardship associated with this will be very difficult for them to bear.

While we were there a bus arrived from Melbourne, with a busload of workers from the National Bank who had come up to help the people of Charlton with the cleaning up. As I said when I was there, it would have been better if they had opened up their branch, which had been closed a little while ago. Nonetheless, these people were there to help. As I wandered around the streets of Charlton I noticed that all the landscaping in the streets had been refurbished. I was told that staff from Bunnings had come up and done this as a volunteer service to the community. So, we saw tragedy and hardship but we also saw Australians who were prepared to travel to help their fellow Australians in need.

There have been losses. Families have been broken up and people’s hopes and aspirations have been dashed. There is lost property. There are stories of remarkable survival. Wes Judd, the leader of the dairy industry in Queensland, found much of his dairy herd 40 kilometres downstream but still alive. There are stories of people who endured great difficulties, who were thought to be lost but then, like a miracle, were found safe and well.

As we have travelled around I have been somewhat shocked by the damage done to infrastructure, particularly roads. Many bridges survived, only to have their approaches washed away on both sides. The repair task is going to be enormous. The losses from the closure of the coalmines in Queensland will be significant economically. To get these businesses back into operation you have to not only get the water out of the mines but rebuild the railway lines, some of which have been completely trashed. These were the strongest and heaviest load-carrying lines in the state but they have been twisted like they were playthings.

I suspect that the losses in agriculture may end up being the greatest of all because they cannot be replaced. They are gone for all time. There is a loss of value in the wheat crop and in the horticultural industry. I have mentioned bananas, but there are countless other horticultural crops as well. There are those who were not able to plant their summer crops at all because of excess rainfall or inappropriate weather conditions and, of course, there has been the loss of livestock. A funny story was identified last night on Media Watch about a report that 30,000 pigs had been washed down a river. In fact, the story should have said there were ‘30 sows and pigs’ washed down the river. It was a humorous story, though I acknowledge it was not too good for the 30 pigs. But certainly there have been livestock losses quite extensively, and it is going to take a long time to rebuild.

Let me also say that many of the farmers who have been affected are still receiving exceptional circumstances aid following the drought. In many cases, that expires next month. I appeal to the government to look sympathetically at whether those benefits should be terminated at this time. Clearly their recovery period, which is supposed to be part of the EC arrangements, has not happened or has been seriously set back and they are going to need more help to rebuild. There will be some places as well whose EC declarations have recently expired, and we need to look again to them and what can be done.

Can I acknowledge some of the people who have played a wonderful role in ensuring that our response to these events has been as complete as it should have been. Many have mentioned the state emergency service personnel, the rescuers, those who endangered their own lives to protect the larger population. I also acknowledge the police. Can I mention the electricity authorities and the gas and water suppliers. They have had to go in and disconnect power and then go back, in quite dangerous situations, often with extreme winds blowing, to reconnect the electricity supplies. I acknowledge the council workers who had to go out in the middle of the night to close roads because of unexpected flooding. Many of the councils in my area ran out of signs because there were so many roads closed. They also had to go out and quickly fill the potholes so that when the roads were able to be reopened they were at least trafficable. The repairs were only temporary, and most of the pothole repairs have already broken up, but at least the roads were trafficable when we needed to get important supplies through.

I acknowledge the tradesmen, carpenters and electricians who have been there to help people in the rebuilding. Others have already mentioned the role of the Army and the military forces. You have no idea how cheered a town is when it sees a few soldiers come to town with a bit of equipment. They really do feel that people are interested and care for them. Even if those Army personnel were just helping with the clean-up and the repairs, they were especially appreciated and the sight of the defence forces—particularly when they bring a helicopter or some serious hardware of that nature—has certainly cheered whole communities.

I also acknowledge those employers who gave their employees time off so that they could care for their own houses and their own communities and those employees who went to work—even though they had their own homes to look after—because they knew that so much needed to be done for their fellow citizens. I mention the counsellors and the Centrelink staff who have really been run off their feet. I saw the pictures of three blocks of people queuing at Cairns, wanting to pick up their thousand-dollar payment. This is another area we need to look at a little further, in the future.

I also want to say a kind word about the banks—something I do not do too often. They seem to have been very willing to reassure their customers that they will stand behind them in these difficult times. Let me also acknowledge the ministers and others who have visited flood-affected areas for the interest that they have taken and the offers of help that they have given. That is appreciated, particularly when they are from the opposite side of politics. I acknowledge that this was an occasion when members of parliament needed to stand together so that members themselves could stand by their people and make sure the appropriate benefits were provided.

I notice the Queensland government is going to have an inquiry, and I think that is appropriate, into the aftermath of the flood. We need to also look at whether there are some things we can do better. As I travelled around flood-affected areas, there were frequent criticisms about the lack of warning coming from the Bureau of Meteorology and the fact that there are not enough warning stations in many of the rivers. I heard of one story where a river gauge was so surrounded by floodwaters that nobody could get in to read it. In other cases a lot of the equipment seemed to be damaged and not working. In my own electorate, in the river between my home and my electorate office, the readings were over 12 hours old—and in a rapidly rising river that is simply not good enough. Emerald was severely flooded. Over half of the rainfall gauges in the whole Central Highlands area were not recording rainfall at the time this flooding was occurring. So we need to look at why there were so many weather stations not working and why there were not more flood gauges.

There has also been criticism that the weather bureau’s forecasts were not very accurate. Usually they overestimated the size of the flood, and I guess that is a good thing, but there were some spectacular cases—particularly in the central Burnett—where the floodwaters were much higher than predicted and arrived many hours earlier than expected. That, of course, is a serious problem. At Mount Mowbullan, where there was a severe rainfall event that was credited with one of the Dalby floods and flooding in Kingaroy, the rainfall gauge has not been working for over a year. We do need to make sure that we deal with that sort of thing. In Swan Hill the people are still waiting for the flooding that was forecast more than two weeks ago. These are issues that we need to look at. Finally, I want to mention the flooding in Brisbane as an example. The weather bureau predicted a 5.4 metre flood. It came out at only 4.5 metres—that is a lot to be out by. I am glad they were out on the high side; otherwise tens of thousands more houses would have been flooded.

I want to mention the radio and television coverage of the floods. Particularly in Brisbane, that coverage was extensive. This was a holiday period and so a lot of journalists were away. I know a lot came back and we appreciate their role. But the local ABC, in particular, was caught short. I was interested to turn on my local ABC on a morning when I was desperate to get local flood information. The broadcast was coming from another town, many hundreds of kilometres away. The announcer came on saying: ‘Welcome. I am actually up here from New South Wales. Now I can’t pronounce the names of the towns, so ring me up and tell me.’ It was nice that he had come, but that could have been a problem—having someone giving advice about what action you should take who does not understand the local geography. Indeed, when we did get an ABC crew to my town, when the minister was visiting, the journalists were from Hobart and Victoria. It was nice to have the visitors but the lack of local knowledge is a bit of a problem when you are claiming to be ‘Your local ABC’. As far as the commercial radio is concerned, their programs are so aggregated these days that most of them do not have any local presence. Some managers came in to give occasional announcements and we were grateful for that but our warning system is not what it used to be in relation to relying on local radio.

I want to finish with a good news story, a really pleasant story from my electorate. There is a historical railway in my area, run by volunteers. They maintain the track, steam engines and a range of historic railway carriages, mainly for tourist purposes, between Gympie and Imbil. During the floods the roads were blocked, vehicles could not get through and people were stranded in the Mary Valley. The volunteers from the Gympie Mary Valley railway line fired up the steam engines and rail cars and ran regular food drops to the people of the Merry Valley. It brought back memories of the story of Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer. When the modern technology could not get through the volunteers were able to do so. At a time when Q-Rail was not able to run freight trains, for whatever reason—I do not quite understand—up the main line to deliver food to the major cities, the local historic railway was providing a service to the community.

That is the spirit of Australia. That is the thing we learned about our fellow citizens, again. This is a great country to live in. Our climate can be harsh. It is changeable. It is unexpected. But we need to work together. Even as the memories fade and the TV screens move to some other images, we cannot forget those who are struggling to rebuild following this flood event. There are thousands of them, thousands of our fellow Australians, who have a long road and path yet to follow before their lifestyles return to normal. As members of parliament, as representatives of those people, we must do what we can to make sure they have the resources and facilities to encourage them with that task and to rebuild their lives just as soon as they can.

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