Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise in this debate to support the condolence motion that is before us, and to offer my sincere condolences to those families who are grieving the loss of loved ones in the floods and natural disasters which have beset this country.

Over the summer, Australia experienced the biggest natural disaster in our history. It has claimed the lives of 35 people since 30 November and nine people are still missing in Queensland. I associate myself with the heartfelt, emotional and passionate response from the Prime Minister yesterday in this House in relation to that loss of lives and the circumstances that she related.

The loss, of course, does not just stop with the loss of lives. There has been huge loss of property, and in the loss of property is the loss of a big part of people’s lives. There has also been loss of stock, of crops and of businesses. In my role as minister for regional Australia, I have seen up close the enormity of the damage that this disaster has wreaked upon the nation. I have also been struck by the remarkable resilience that is out there in these communities. I have seen the strength of the Australian character and the great qualities of mateship and of pulling together. I have seen the great work of the Army, the police and the coordination—particularly in Queensland—by them. I have seen the work of the emergency services. What has also struck me is that whilst we mourn the loss of lives we also have to pay great tribute to the many lives saved by the efficiency, the professionalism, the dedication and the bravery under very adverse circumstances of those who are our emergency service workers, our defence forces and our police.

I also pay tribute to the people from the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, Lifeline, St John’s Ambulance and all of the church groups who were responsible for running the evacuation centres and for identifying, registering and servicing the people who used them. I had the opportunity to visit them both in Brisbane and in Ipswich at the height of their occupancy and saw the fantastic work that was being done, the accolades from the people who were in them and the great professionalism and stoicism that those who worked in there showed. They are a wonderful group of people, and another dimension of the great coming together of the nation.

I also want to congratulate the thousands of volunteers that turned up for the clean-ups. I was in Brisbane on the day in which the first call for volunteers occurred. To see them lined up at the bus stops heading out with their buckets, shovels and brooms was, again, another demonstration. All of it has shown Australia at its best—working together and determining not to let adversity get the better of us.

I think that the motion that is before the House recognises the loss and it recognises that courage. But the other dimension that it recognises is the determination that we must commit to help rebuild—to rebuild the shattered communities, to rebuild shattered towns and ultimately to rebuild shattered lives. I think we all accept that this is going to take time, but I think we have to commit to reinforcing that same sense of cohesion, of working together and of pulling together. We need to see the same sense of cohesion that was there in the emergency, in the evacuation and in the clean-up reflected in the commitment to rebuild.

The effects of the floods have been felt in every state in Australia over the past three months. Obviously, Queensland has borne the brunt of it. Until last weekend it was said that 75 per cent of Queensland had been affected by the floods, but after Cyclone Yasi I think another 25 per cent of the state was hit. This is a massive impact on Queensland. But there has also been significant flooding in northern New South Wales and Victoria—it was the second time around for Victoria—particularly off the tail of Cyclone Yasi. There has been an impact in Tasmania and South Australia. And the great irony is that Western Australia, which still has not recovered from the drought and is experiencing bushfires at the moment, was not spared from the floods. I happened to be in the Gascoyne midwest region a day before the cyclone hit Carnarvon.

I have visited regions in most of the states that have been affected. I have gone to the towns of Gatton, Emerald, Bundaberg, Grafton, Maryborough, Cairns, Kerang and Wycheproof. I have inspected the damage. I have convened meetings of the mayors of those towns and I have also invited the surrounding towns because much of the impacted infrastructure connects the regions. In the context of trying to bring a sense of a strategic approach to it I have convened a meeting of the mayors and I have invited the regional development bodies from the regions to be there with us to understand the issues, to establish the connections and to identify the framework for building the input to the massive task of rebuilding.

I have also in all of those visits involved the local member where appropriate. I see that the member for Hinkler is in the House, and he was at one such meeting. I reiterate the words that I think the Leader of the Opposition said yesterday about the great work that local members have put into their communities and being with them. You yourself Mr Deputy Speaker were mentioned by the Leader of the Opposition yesterday. This is where we have to demonstrate our commitment to cohesion, putting politics aside and saying that together we are going to be there as part of the rebuild. I thank the members for that and I look forward to working with them and with the mayors. I have kept in touch not only with the mayors I have visited but also by phone with the mayors I have not yet been able to visit. I thanked them for their information about where things are at and I invited them to let me know if they need assistance in cutting through any of the red tape. More importantly, I said that we need honest assessments about the level of damage and we need their input to the process of the strategic rebuild.

Interestingly enough I visited the Lockyer Valley on 5 January and had a meeting with the mayors there. The member for Wright was with us, as was Shayne Neumann from our side of politics. The important thing that struck me then was the damage that had been done up until 5 January. Here was a community that was starting to get back on its feet and talking about what needed to be done, and then in the following week the deluge hit. It impacted on Toowoomba and it caused the most devastating damage of the lot in one single incident at Grantham, a valley that was hit again.

Last Friday I met with the mayors of Kerang, Swan Hill and Wycheproof and seven other mayors from the surrounding shires. The interesting thing about all of these Victorian towns is that they are now experiencing massive flooding after enduring 10 years of drought that had a huge impact upon them. The interesting thing in the discussion there was that even the farmers who have lost so much could see a positive in the flooding that had occurred. They spoke about how they are proposing to rebuild and they are looking to cooperate with us and they are, of course, seeking government assistance. They spoke of how the aquifers have been recharged and how they plan to build better and develop more productive farms.

Like so many others in this House who have visited, spoken and connected I believe we need to ensure that there is a commitment from this parliament to rebuild. Under the natural disaster relief and recovery arrangements, which are a partnership between the Commonwealth and the states, there is a requirement for the states to identify the extent of the disaster and notify accordingly, and then the formulas that have been negotiated in the past kick in. Under those arrangements we have seen immediate relief given. Hardship grants are available to individuals and families for their most basic needs. There are payments for homes that have been damaged or destroyed. There are grants to help small businesses and farmers to clean up. There are concessional interest loans to small businesses and farmers to help them get through the difficult times ahead.

It was interesting for me to reflect on this historically. It was my late father who as the then Treasurer in the 1970s negotiated one of the first cost-sharing arrangements with the states for dealing with disasters—and that underpinned the dollar for dollar for dollar formula—and when I was Minister For Primary Industries I negotiated, as part of the national drought policy at the time, a national policy for natural disasters. Indeed, it was that agreement that established the formulas and the conditions that underpin the current arrangements that were carried on by subsequent governments.

I also reflected on the fact that in the Hawke-Keating government we also had a flood mitigation policy program. Again, it was a shared arrangement, something that the Commonwealth had tended to stay away from, because it had taken the view, rightly, that planning was an issue for states and local governments. That it is, but it was also the case that if the argument had been that we should require them alone to pay not much would have happened. Many levees were built as a result of that program—levees in New South Wales, in particular. I particularly remember campaigning for the one in Lismore, a campaign we kept persisting with when we lost office in 1996. But when I was in Grafton, where there had been repair and improvement to the levee system after its last flood, I saw that this effectively saved the town. It copped massive flooding, but it saved the town.

It is important for us to understand, in the rebuilding exercise, the importance of looking again at these policy solutions and the way in which we commit the resources, because there is not much point—and this was reinforced in many of the discussions that I had—in simply replacing essential infrastructure if it is going to be vulnerable again. Before we get to the concept of betterment, I say we do need a strategic approach out of these calamities. I think that each state must prepare a flood recovery work plan that identifies the specific projects and their priority projects. It is important for that to happen. It must involve value for money. They must be projects that stack up. There is also a fundamental realisation that this rebuild is going to take time. It cannot be done overnight. There are going to be capacity constraints, quite apart from the fact that it is going to take some time to assess the damage. Even if you wanted to get into some of these places, the ground is so sodden that you cannot get works in there.

I remember, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, when you came to me before all of these floods with a delegation of members. You talked about the rains that had restricted the capacity of roads within your constituencies to get through. That problem has been worsened, but you know the problem better than most. Even if you had the will and the resources, physically it is simply not possible to do it overnight. So it does have to involve value for money. The commitment to recognise the time is also an issue that is accepted by the mayors with whom I have been speaking. It is also the case that to solve this issue and to get the strategy right it has to involve local input. The local input needs to be strategic across local government borders. The argument that it is their patch alone has gone out the door, from the discussions I have had. The fact that there have been groupings of mayors come together to talk about the things that are common to them—those things that have crossed the borders—is a great thing in itself, but it is a real opportunity to start breaking down some of these barriers, because they are only artificial; they are not the reality on the ground.

In that context, as I said earlier at these meetings to the RDAs, the regional development bodies, for the relevant areas—whose task it is to develop something of the strategic vision—the opportunity is there to do it. I want the local governments through the RDAs to give greater thought to how we adapt and prioritise commitments—not just to make the claim under the NDRRA payments but to see how it can be enhanced, to look at it creatively and differently, by focusing on the reprioritisation of other programs. It is a partnership that needs to involve all levels of government, but it also has to involve the private and the not-for-profit sectors.

The insurance sector is also important, and I too pay tribute to the work of the Assistant Treasurer, Bill Shorten, in his constant discussions with the insurers. The insurance industry needs to understand, assess and factor in the enormous contribution that is being made by the Army and the volunteers in the clean-up effort. This has been a significant support for work that insurers might otherwise have had to expend upon and they do need to factor that in when they contribute to the clean-up. The role of the insurers goes even further. They need to work with us in identifying appropriate flood mitigation works to influence future planning and building codes.

The issue that I mentioned before has struck me most in my discussions—the importance of flood mitigation and flood-proofing. Again, I pose the question: what is the point of replacing vital infrastructure if it remains vulnerable? This is where the principle of betterment under the NDRRA needs to be carefully considered. A great example of a creative response to a previous flood is the opening of a new bridge at Einasleigh in the savannah country of Far North Queensland, a bridge that I opened on 20 January in the wet season. I think they said I am the only minister that has ever visited the gulf and savannah country in the wet season. I was there with the mayor, Warren Devlin, and many of the mayors from surrounding areas because it connected six shires. I was there with the member for Kennedy. It was an example of a flood-proofing response to a flood that occurred in 2009. They went beyond the NDRRA payments and looked to the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program, RLCIP. We found a creative way to build a flood-proof bridge. Interestingly, when we were there to open it, the floodwaters were over the previous bridge. In other words, in another circumstance, the crossing would have been cut.

We have found a creative way towards betterment through existing programs, and that is the challenge that I have been putting out to local government and the RDAs: ‘Be creative in the ways in which you address this problem. Don’t just mail the claim under the NDRRA and look to Commonwealth programs; look to state programs, look to forward programs in local government. Let’s see if we can’t get a better approach.’ That lesson of the Einasleigh bridge, in my view, needs to be applied to the rebuild. There are other Commonwealth programs, there are other state programs and there are local government opportunities in terms of their forward commitments. That is an issue that creative thinking needs to be going into. In relation to betterment, we should be looking at this concept from the point of view of not only replacing government infrastructure but also how to encourage the private sector, small business and primary producers to embrace better flood mitigation practices. That is how we build more resilient, self-reliant communities in the future. That is the legacy we should be aiming for out of this tragedy.

I think there is another lesson out of this, and that is the need for better warning systems, the need to keep improving the warning systems. It has been shown that, where adequate warnings were given, the loss of life was either nonexistent or negligible. The big tragedy in Grantham and in Toowoomba was very costly in terms of lives, and essentially they had very little warning. In fact, when we were up in, I think, Bundaberg—the member for Hinkler nods—the advice that was given was not timely enough. They have accepted the flooding of the river in the past and been able to deal with it in a number of hours. Not getting that warning quickly enough was a significant factor in the loss. With the technology these days, it must be possible to localise the information better, to get on websites information that better identifies the pace of the rise of rivers and other information. As a nation we need to look at more effective ways to identify and disseminate that information. It is also the case that some of the areas were very effective in their evacuation and their contact of people in potential danger. We need to draw on those lessons and develop best-practice methods. We have to develop a national approach that educates on warning and evacuation techniques.

Today our purpose is very clear. We as a parliament reflect very sadly on the huge loss of life. We extend our sympathy to the victims, obviously, and their families. We must, as a legacy to them if nothing else, rise to the task of the rebuild. We owe them. And we owe it to all the people who have contributed in such a cohesive way to demonstrate that same cohesion as a national parliament, to rebuild the smashed communities and shattered lives. This House will have the opportunity in legislation coming before it later this week to have that tested very early. I hope it rises to the occasion. I look forward to working with many of the honourable members in this chamber whose communities who have been affected and playing a part in their rebuild and their futures.

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