Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to start by taking the opportunity to renew my condolences to the people of Japan, who are still suffering in the aftermath of this terrible earthquake and tsunami, the one-year anniversary of which we mark today in this debate.

The Australian and Japanese people have a strong bond that goes back many generations. Our governments have long shared a common bond and political, economic, trade and agricultural interests. I felt privileged that as a result of being in Japan during the earthquake and tsunami last year, but for me this bond now has a very personal dimension. I will never forget my experience during what was my first delegation overseas as a member of this place. As many here know, at the time of the great east Japan earthquake in March last year I, along with a number of my other parliamentary colleagues, were a part of a delegation that was caught on a very fast train somewhere between Kyoto and Tokyo, on what was to be the last day of our fact-finding study tour in Japan.

I understand that this was the most powerful earthquake to have ever hit Japan. It was quickly followed by a 10-metre tsunami wave that hit the Tohoku region in the northern part of the Island of Honshu. I say that it was a 10-metre tsunami, but as a result of the geology and geography of some of the river valleys in the northern part of Japan the wave was recorded at over 40 metres in some parts along the coastline. It is a natural phenomenon that we in this country are simply incapable of contemplating. In some parts of the region the wave dissipated some five kilometres inland.

The toll was horrendous. Over 19,000 people were killed or are missing. Another 6,000 were injured and more than one million buildings were destroyed or damaged. Vital infrastructure was wrecked. People in this country will have burnt into their memories the images of bridges and roads being washed away and the famous Shinkansen trains hanging off bridges as though they were part of the bridges, while other trains were washed away. Many other images have been burnt into our contemporary memory.

The image of the force of the tsunami was terrifying. We saw whole streets and buildings simply being washed away. What we saw of the scale of the devastation in the aftermath of the tsunami was really quite disturbing. In the words of Ambassador Sato in his commemorative ceremony at the Japanese Embassy yesterday, 'Hopes and dreams were washed away on that day.'

One year later we know a few of the stories of those who are still grieving their lost family members, homes, villages, schools and lives. Their loss and devastation is almost unimaginable to us here in this place. It is a terrible aspect of this disaster, which occurred at approximately a quarter to three, during school time. Over 500 school children were killed or lost, including 74 from a school of just 108, almost the entire school population. It is hard to imagine how life would ever feel normal again in a village or town in which nearly all of its children were taken away on one terrible afternoon through one terrible event. We know that hundreds of children will now face a future as orphans, without the love and care of their parents.

The scale and impact of this disaster will resonate for years and decades to come. This time last year we were in Tokyo to build political and cultural bonds between the future leaders of our respective countries. I was pleased yesterday to have the opportunity to once again renew these bonds by attending an event, with many of my parliamentary colleagues from all sides of the House, together with many from the Canberra and Australian communities, to show our mark of respect on the one-year anniversary.

During the visit of 12 months ago we met a number of political, community and business leaders during the five days we were in Tokyo. As I have marked before in this place one of the highlights of the trip was our visit to a place called Kobe. Whilst we were in Kobe, we visited the earthquake memorial, where we had—and it now seems ironic, with hindsight—the experience of going through a re-enactment of the terrible 1996 earthquake. That 1996 earthquake in Kobe killed nearly 6½ thousand people and flattened almost the entire city. We toured the research centre and had the benefit of seeing the work that the people of that town and that country had put into ensuring that their cities were, in the future, earthquake proof.

While we were there in Kobe at the earthquake museum, we were taken through a room that had, graphically displayed on the walls, prints of tidal waves, or tsunamis, that had hit the island over the past 300 years. A number of our colleagues looked up at the third floor of the building to see the 10-metre and 12-metre marks for the earthquake-driven tsunamis that hit the island in the 1700s. Little did we know that, within 24 hours of our visit to the museum, the island of Honshu would again experience the horror of tsunamis of that magnitude. We found it almost impossible to believe what it would be like to see a wave of water bearing down on us that was literally the size of several floors of a large apartment building. That is the height. The tsunami in the case of this disaster was several kilometres deep.

I have already said that, if you wanted to be in any city in the world when an earthquake like this struck, you would probably want to be in Tokyo because it is designed to withstand this sort of disaster and the people know exactly what to do when a disaster like this strikes. I and many of my parliamentary colleagues gained a new-found respect for the people of Japan and the people of Tokyo, who, with a military-like discipline, set about doing exactly what was needed to ensure that a city with a population larger than that of our country could withstand the immediate aftermath of the earthquake and its people could find their way home and then back again to work the next day, all the while taking care of each other and their families—and strangers who were not known to them.

Japan is located at the edge of the Pacific Plate, which moves around nine centimetres a year. It receives somewhere in the vicinity of 20 reasonably sized earthquakes each year. It knows its fair share of adversity, but the one thing that a number of speakers on this matter have commented on—and I have direct experience of it myself which gives me great hope—is the enormous resilience of the Japanese people. Over the last 12 months, they have started the work of cleaning up after the disaster. Over 22 million tonnes worth of wrecked homes, concrete, steel and other debris is being cleaned up and in many instances recycled to form the new seawalls, the new road bases and the new buildings of a rebuilt northern Japan. It is estimated that it will take over two to three years to clean up the carnage that was left behind after the earthquake and tsunami, but I have great confidence that, as the people of Japan rebuild, they will do it in a way that helps them to withstand disasters of this magnitude in the future.

They are also taking the opportunity, I note, to reconsider their energy security policy. One of the more widely publicised results of this terrible disaster was the impact that it had on the power facility of Fukushima, a city in the north of Japan which provides an enormous amount of power to the Japanese electricity grid. The fate of that power facility is well known. It is also well known, as other speakers on this matter have said, that there is great respect for the efforts of Australian disaster recovery workers in assisting in the clean-up in and around that town and elsewhere in Japan. We were one of a few nations to have the expertise to assist the Japanese people in those areas in that time of need. Japan is renewing and revisiting its energy security policy. As an energy rich country with some expertise in this area, I know that we will work closely with the Japanese people to ensure that as they recalibrate their energy future they have the raw materials that will continue to power their energy system into the future.

There were some lessons for me personally, and you always contemplate after an event and an experience such as this what it all means. For me there were some lessons in what really matters. When you see a community pulling itself back together again and dealing with the tragedy and horror, there are some images that really burned in my mind. It struck home to me when I saw people picking through the ruins of the towns and villages in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami. It was not their mobile phones, their PlayStations, their flat-screen televisions or their cars that they were looking for—it was their loved ones or memories of their loved ones, some memento of the life that had just been washed away that they were looking for. That brings home to each and every one of us to take more care and caution about the things that really do matter, and that is an enduring lesson I have taken away from this. It really does remind us about what matters in our lives.

I conclude by saying that we wish the people of Japan the very best in their efforts to pull their country and their community back together again. I know that we will stand shoulder to shoulder with them in that task. If there are any lessons to be learned from such a terrible disaster, there is the very human lesson in life about what really does matter. I am very pleased to be a part of this debate.

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