Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker Windsor. As this is the first time I have seen you in the chair, I wish you well and hope that you are enjoying yourself in that illustrious spot. I rise to speak about recent natural disasters, because over the summer I have had three natural disasters occur in the electorate of Wannon: three significant and major bushfires.

We started off with a large fire at Drik Drik down between Dartmoor and Nelson. This was a large bushfire which had to be brought under control using fixed-wing aircraft and CFA, DSC and SES crews. It was a major operation and everyone involved did a sensational job, first, to contain this fire in what was a large area. Much of the area where the fire was burning is inaccessible, yet through backburning everyone was able to mount a huge effort to ensure that the fire did not do significant damage. The major damage it did do was to get into a pine plantation where the bill will probably run into millions of dollars, which shows you the significance of being able to bring these types of fires under control quickly.

We also had the Chepstowe-Carngham fire occur in the electorate of Wannon. This was a completely different fire. This was in farmland. The fire occurred at a rapid rate of knots. It burnt 1,300 hectares of farmland. Nine houses, sadly, were destroyed and it left farms and native forests charred. It also led, as we have seen once again, to great community spirit. Once the fire was finished, once it was over, the community got together and worked out what they needed to do to help those who were impacted.

It was a telling reminder for me as I drove down to fly to Canberra yesterday. As I was driving by in over 30-degree heat in the middle of the day, there were local community members fixing the charred fences which they had removed. There they were on a public holiday Monday putting those fences back together, all volunteering their time to do it for a farmer who had had all the fences destroyed. It is what country communities are all about and it was just very, very humbling to see these people going about their work, chipping in for their local community.

The other fire—and this is a more recent fire that we have had in Wannon—is the one which occurred in the Grampians. Again, this was a significant bushfire. It could have caused extensive damage. It very nearly led to houses being burnt to the ground. It very nearly meant that we saw large portions of farmland destroyed. Once again, the CFA, DSE and the SES did a wonderful job in bringing this fire under control.

Some of the stories of how they did that are quite remarkable. At some stage the fire was sweeping down hills faster than the fire trucks could go. Usually, CFA members will tell you, fires travel quicker uphill than down hills, but in this case, given the steepness of some the country and the ferocity of the wind, this was not the case and the fire was actually moving at a rapid rate down the hills. This gave a new challenge to those that were fighting it.

The fire has been contained and, once again, the use of fixed-wing aircraft was very important in doing this. I must commend everyone involved in making sure that we had air crews to throw at fires as well as ground crews.

There is one important point would like to make about all these three fires. This is something that, as lawmakers, we will have to look at seriously. All of these three fires occurred in areas which are mobile black spots—that is, when the fires occurred, community members could not be informed of what was going on quickly by mobile phone and they could not communicate to the outside world what was occurring by mobile phone. One of the great technology uses we now have is the ability for CFA and DSE to alert communities through text to those areas which are potentially being threatened by bushfires. The trouble in these areas was there was no ability to do that because they were in mobile phone black spots. If we are to get serious about warning communities, if we are to get serious about making sure our emergency response services have all the tools available to them then we are going to have to look at mobile phone coverage. This is a real issue. I will just run through some of the areas in my electorate which are mobile phone black spots: Landsborough, Moonambel, Victoria Valley—where the Grampians fire was—Nareen, Tarrayoukyan, Carisbrooke, the outskirts of Marysborough—a town of 9,000 or 10,000 people, Bealiba, Marino, Digby, north of Casterton, Cape Bridgewater, significant areas around Balmoral and Harrow. These are all parts of my electorate which are still lacking proper mobile phone coverage.

As we look at this, we are going to have to ask ourselves: if we are going to have a proper emergency response to disasters, is there an obligation for us to look at mobile phone coverage? Is there an obligation for us to make sure that the government contributes to providing mobile phone coverage in areas where the commercial facts mean that the commercial providers will not do this? They will not do it without some sort of government assistance. I think down the track as we see mobile phone coverage spread and the importance of mobile phones not only as a provider of phone coverage but also as a provider of data and a provider of broadband services, we are going to need government to seriously ask these questions.

We have a universal service obligation for fixed line telecommunications. Do we now need to look at whether we would want a universal services obligation for the provision of mobile phone coverage? We probably do not have the finances to be able to do this at the moment but this is something that we are going to have to put on the agenda because these communities are missing out on this important technology. When it comes, in particular, to emergency services management, this tool is becoming more and more important. If there is a lesson from my electorate about the three natural disasters which occurred over this summer, it is that we need to look seriously at mobile phone coverage and whether the federal government is doing enough to play its part in warning these communities of the potential of natural disasters. We have to remember it can be a split-second thing which can save property and save lives. If we cannot get the message out to communities that there is the potential for a natural disaster to hit them quickly and rapidly, we put those communities a greater risk of being impacted severely by these natural disasters.

I will leave it there. On behalf of all the communities in Wannon I would like to place on the record my sincere thanks for the efforts of the CFA, both those who are paid and those who are volunteers, the DSC, the SES, the police and everyone else who was involved in making sure that these fires were contained and eventually put out. I would like to pass on my sincere sadness for those who had their homes burnt, who lost everything in the Chepstowe-Carngham fire. For those farmers who have had their livelihoods impacted on I would like to sincerely thank the VFF and the local branches, who organised to have fences repaired and have the damage done to farms fixed so that those farmers could get on, and, hopefully, once we get rain, see their livelihoods get back on an even keel. Natural disasters have occurred across our nation since time immemorial. They are going to continue to occur. But as we advance as a society we have to make sure we use every tool we can to deal with them.

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