Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to offer my condolences to the people of Japan for the death, destruction and suffering that has afflicted their country. I have never been to Japan and I do not think I really know any Japanese people very well, but, when you look at the pictures and the vision that we have seen of the devastation and carnage that resulted from the tsunami that swept in after the earthquake, it is easy to feel empathy, sorrow and sadness for the loss that they have endured. A 9.0 earthquake on the Richter scale, close off the east coast of the country, on 11 March—that is, apparently, within the top five earthquakes that have been registered since seismological records began—was then followed by 10-metre waves. As the previous speaker said, it has been reported that there were 14-metre waves.

The frailty and vulnerability of human life is very clear in those circumstances. You can be as strong a swimmer as you like but, when something that big and powerful comes in, no-one is strong enough to resist that. You have to be in the right place at the right time to survive something like that. It is certainly the case that with that epicentre off the Oshika Peninsula, just 24.4 kilometres off the east coast, there was always going to be a lot of destruction.

Most of the damage was in Miyagi prefecture and Sendai, a city of one million-plus and the capital of the prefecture. Sendai is known as the ‘City of Trees’. It is a pretty place and a well-regarded place compared to a lot of other cities. While I understand that the centre of the city itself did not do too badly—again, because Japanese building codes are quite decent in the centre of cities—the outlying areas have certainly endured massive devastation. It was reported that the tsunami rolled as far inland as eight kilometres. It is not like at the beach—it is not blue waves and crystal clear water. When these waves hit, as the Indian Ocean tsunami proved, they take everything with them. Houses were turned into matchsticks; the cars and even the ships were pushed inland. It is impossible for an individual to endure unless they were just not in its path.

When people are talking about figures of 8,000 confirmed deaths and maybe as many as 20,000 deaths, it is very easy to see how you could get those sorts of numbers. In Miyagi prefecture, villages—whether it was those fishing villages or villages where the farming fields were just around them or even vegetable gardens around the houses themselves—were completely washed away. There is really nothing left in a lot of these places other than the foundations of the more sturdy houses that had been built in the area.

Looking at the photos of Sendai airport the ABC has provided—on the ABC website you can see the before and after shots of these places and how they have been devastated—next to the airport there is a small canal and you can see that on the east side of the canal there were a lot of houses. Across the bridge towards the airport you can see the refuse and the rubble of all those houses that have been pushed towards and left on the bridge while the rest of it has been washed away through the canal. The car park of the airport—a major airport—is completely covered in refuse and silt. The tarmac and the apron are covered in sand and silt. At the same time, as has been said, the power has been out.

In Arahama in Sendai, where the houses were, nothing remains but matchsticks. Farms have been reduced to soggy saltwater logged morasses. The village of Fujitsuka in Sendai, where there were houses with neat vegetable crops in the yards, was literally steamrolled by the tsunami wave. When you look at these you can see there is always going to be that vulnerability of these small villages and small farming communities. Those houses have been there for a long time. It is the way of these rural areas that they are not as well developed and not as strongly built as in the cities. A normal earthquake would shake these houses and a few things would fall and that would really be about it. But when, as we have seen, there was a magnitude 9.0 Richter scale earthquake followed by a tsunami across the low flats along the coast, it is no wonder there was great and terrible destruction. Those who were in its path had no chance whatsoever. There has been a tragic loss of life and a terrible destruction of houses.

Loss of electricity has also hampered all forms of recovery effort, but, ultimately, overall recovery over a great period of time will be hugely difficult because a whole swathe of the best farming land on the east coast within the prefecture and surrounding areas has been destroyed. It will take a long time for recovery. As we know, with a country so densely populated as Japan, farming land, food-producing land, is at a premium. You can understand that it will be an extremely hard road for Japan to recover. As has been said by a number of speakers, the economic circumstances of Japan are not as strong as they were 10 or 20 years ago. It will be a difficult road for Japan to recover.

We know the Japanese are tough people and we know that they are determined. We know that they can work hard and that they know that working hard will deliver rewards. In the fullness of time, with the right planning and the right recovery effort, Japan will rise again and the farmland in those areas can be recovered and villages can be rebuilt. Unfortunately, the loss of life cannot be replaced. It is important that on these occasions we take time to think. The Japanese people have families like us, and our children and our lives could be subjected to the same sort of devastation. When we think about our families we also think very carefully about what has happened in Japan. Certainly, our thoughts, our prayers and our hopes for a good recovery are with the Japanese people. We wish them well.

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