Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I join with other members in thanking the member for Lyne for bringing the matter of disaster relief before the House. As the member for Maranoa said, it is good to see a bipartisan approach being taken to a particular issue. The member for Oxley discussed the concept of a sovereign fund or a natural disaster fund. I have been an advocate of that for probably 15 years—a long time before I came to this place. The member for Oxley made the point that government revenue is always there to fund this sort of assistance as the need comes along. I beg to differ with that because there have been, historically, different responses to similar circumstances depending on the economic or financial cycle of the government of the day and the politics of the electorate at the time. A whole range of variations affect responses to very similar incidents.

Over the years, through exceptional circumstances arrangements and various other arrangements that the Minister for Emergency Management spoke about earlier, we have attempted to get to some degree a level playing field. Nonetheless, there have been different responses at different times depending on economic and other circumstances, not the least of which are political circumstances. That creates an expectation that if you got it I should get it when I have a natural disaster. Like the member for Lyne, I did not support the Queensland flood levy. It is not that I do not support Queensland people getting some assistance—obviously I do. The question was why we needed a levy in that particular circumstance when it could have been taken out of consolidated revenue. Obviously, there were issues of a government heading towards a surplus and all sorts of other things that would have been exacerbated, such as the deficit et cetera. I think the member for Oxley actually proves the case that there are variations in responses that we get.

I believe that we should look seriously, and I am encouraged that some people would like to have this debate, at the concept of a national natural disaster fund of some sort that would have guidelines that would remove the complications that occur from time to time. On a number of occasions prior to the Queensland floods last year—quite an incredible event; there is no doubt about that and, obviously, parts of New South Wales and Victoria suffered under similar circumstances—I did some research into the cost to communities of natural disasters, although I am not saying the cost of the total road network and all of the infrastructure. These are communities that have been covered by insurance. I think it was the case that prior to Cyclone Larry in Queensland there had been one event that had a cost of over a billion dollars a year. That had been one such event in the previous 20 years. I can be corrected on this but some time back I had reason to engage with the Insurance Council of Australia to try to help get some numbers around that. If you look at it, you see that in most years disasters in Australia probably cost Australia somewhere between $200 million and $400 million a year. Obviously, other events since the floods last year or even taking last year's floods make that look like small cheese.

The point that I have made on a number of occasions when this debate has come up is that a dollar a week from all Australians raises a billion dollars in a year. I would have thought that in some sense or other, if a billion dollars is the number, even if that were the average disaster cost there would be a case—particularly given what has gone on in Queensland with the flood insurance arrangements as to whether the water was coming up or was coming down, which has ramifications for whether you are covered by insurance even though you thought you were—to have a serious look at some sort of national insurance scheme—and socialism comes out of the woodwork here!—that looks after these particular circumstances. If a dollar a week from every Australian raises a billion dollars in a year and if the average cost of disasters in the last 20 years has been $300 million or $400 million—30c or 40c a week—even if you double or treble that, it is fairly cheap insurance for those who are impacted by disasters. Within those numbers that I have just quoted was the Sydney hailstorm—absolute devastation—or the Wollongong mudslide. I was nowhere near Wollongong but I remember going in to bat for those people some years ago in the New South Wales parliament because a disaster had occurred, a mudslide that took away their homes, and the normal arrangements had not worked or had not applied. Take the Coffs Harbour catastrophe that occurred some years ago. All of those are brought into those numbers.

I urge the minister, if he has a spare staffer or two, to actually do a bit of research into this. While I can be corrected in terms of the numbers, I think the principle holds given that as a nation we do have natural disasters from time to time, whether they be fires in Victoria, Canberra or wherever, whereby people are impacted. Even though those people might have done the right thing in trying to protect their premises with levy banks and insurance taken out, all those sorts of things, and even though the goodwill of everybody would have been to try to address those particular issues, the magnitude of major disasters—not normal droughts or normal floods; we farm on a floodplain and we bought land on a floodplain because it floods; the floodplain is there because it floods—means that in those certain disastrous circumstances people do get severe abnormal exceptional impacts occurring to them. So I would encourage people to have a close look at that concept so that in the future we do not have to go through what we went through last year in terms of a special 'one-off maybe' levy for the people of Queensland, and the politics. The funds would always be there, triggered by certain criteria that could be developed as to fires, floods and exceptional climatic events.

Is climate change happening? I think we probably are moving into an area of extreme climatic events. We can get into arguments about whether it is getting hotter or colder, but I think one of the dangers that we really do need to look at is the extremity of these events: long dry spells and extraordinary rainfall events that we have not seen before. We cannot say that is all because of climate change, but I think the assessment of risk comes into this, and history may well prove that we may well have been able to do something about these extraordinary cyclonic and other activities, such as the drying out of the understorey and the major bushfires and other catastrophes, that are occurring.

My electorate has been impacted but I have taken most of my time talking about the member for Oxley's, given that diversionary tactic that he uses with great effect! My electorate has been impacted by floods in recent times as well. In particular, Gunnedah, a great community, has been, and the mayor sent me a photo of the racecourse only about half an hour ago. As many members have said, the emergency services' responses are always exceptional. I am not one of those members who wander around when they are working—I know some do but I do not agree with that—but I do pay great regard to the work that those people put in. I pay regard to the work that ABC Radio and the emergency response people do. Once again, in terms of budgets we should remember that in these cases we need community access to local information, and there is no doubt in my mind that ABC Radio has done that extraordinarily well in all our areas in the last few months. (Time expired)

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