Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to join everyone else that has spoken on this motion on the national disasters over the past few months. I wish to offer my sincere thanks and admiration to the people of Australia who have been affected by these natural disasters, but also those that have not and have made a wonderful effort to help those in need.

It is interesting to have listened to the member for Murray's contribution, and it reminds me of the words of Dorothea Mackellar's poem My Country. It goes, in part:

I love a sunburnt country,

A land of sweeping plains,

Of ragged mountain ranges,

Of droughts and flooding rains.

I think, given the events of the past two or three months, that is very relevant. It is certainly a country that has had many extremes: from the bushfires in Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia to the drenching rains, the wild winds and the severe flooding unleashed on the eastern seaboard—not just once, but several times. Australians have definitely dealt with a range of natural challenges which have tested our resilience and resolve. For some people, the clean-up is a harsh reality, especially for those still rebuilding their lives following similar events in 2011. Once again, they have experienced the treacheries and trials of natural disasters and they have only recently been able to come up for air from the devastation that occurred previously. Many that we have spoken to have not yet even managed to complete renovations, repairs, replacements or relocations. They have yet again had to deal with the unpredictability of torrential summer rains. Following these recent events, particularly around Bundaberg and the Fraser Coast, people have still not been able to re-enter their homes or even to salvage what they can of their lifelong possessions. This in itself, I am assured, is most devastating.

We were fortunate once again in my electorate. Whilst there were widespread outages for our electricity et cetera, by and large we were spared the devastation of further up the coast and in the Logan, Albert and Coomera rivers. At last count, there were only some 15 houses that were inundated—some partially but some substantially—and the people in those places have lost almost all of their goods and possessions.

But through all of these fires, storms and floods, it is always heartening to watch that spirit of mateship—an unwritten Aussie code of conduct—that emanates across the country; whether it is Victorians heading to Tasmania or Tasmanians flying to Queensland to help out one disaster after another and to repay the favour of lending a hand to a mate when he is in dire straits. After recent floods in my electorate of Forde, which were some three inches or so below the 1991 flood—which was the last major flood that we had—I visited the Logan River Tree Farm, where they had at least 1½ metres of floodwaters through their mature tree nursery. When I visited, Ailsa Thompson and her staff were working frantically hand washing the leaves and stems of hundreds of trees with the few hoses they had. They were desperately trying to save seven years of hard work, which included the recovery from the 2011 floods.

My thanks go to the local council and the local fire station. After we contacted them and made them aware of the situation, they were able to make available a number of high-pressure water appliances to help make the job easier, particularly given that the trees were reasonably mature and on large concrete pads. Their main work was to clean the mud off those concrete pads to make access to the trees easier. My thanks also go to local councillor Jennie Breen for her effort in putting together a working bee, which was very well received by a number of people in our community, but there remains much work to be done.

As I said earlier, some 14 properties were affected by the floods and, in many cases, houses were also left without power for up to five days. One major piece of infrastructure that, fortunately, on this occasion was not damaged beyond repair—although it was significantly damaged in 2011—was the John Muntz Causeway at Upper Coomera. Fortunately, we have been able to reopen that piece of road, but it is operating on only one lane, as it has been since 2011. Thankfully, the federal government, out of the natural disaster relief funding, is contributing along with the state government to the replacement of that causeway. The result will be significantly better than what is currently there.

I remember the 1974 floods at my home in Waterford. It was interesting to see the current floods and note how much bigger the 1974 floods were than those we had recently. Thankfully, this year's flood level stayed well below the '74 levels; otherwise there would have been far more devastation. I saw a house that, on this occasion, had a small amount of water go through it, but I remember the effort involved in cleaning that up in 1974, when it was under about three metres of water that covered the roof.

I would like to commend the local councils, both the Gold Coast City Council and the Logan City Council, on the work that they did in trying to notify residents in at-risk areas. Also, as the water receded, they returned to each of these homes to assess the flood impact and offer clean-up assistance to affected homes. As with any of these things, some people were missed along the way, but this has been a great experience for the council to try to improve its processes. My thanks go to the SES, the local state MPs, the councillors and community groups, who were all out in force assisting affected people. I would also like to thank everybody on the Gold Coast weather website, which continued to put up information for people on what was happening around the neighbourhood, and also the people who started the Logan region weather and information page on Facebook. These same people also started a drop-in centre at Park Ridge for people who needed assistance. When people in the community are working together to help provide information to everyone else in the community and let them know what is happening locally, it makes dealing with these events so much easier for everybody involved.

The damage that has occurred during these natural disasters around the country has been phenomenal. Our thoughts go out to those people who have lost income, livelihoods and valuables, not only in my electorate but around the country. We thank the federal government for its support of those people in difficult times and also the various state governments, because they have their own disaster relief arrangements as well.

For those in my electorate of Forde, whilst Logan and the Gold Coast were not declared natural disaster areas for individuals, we have written to the Attorney-General on behalf of people and businesses affected for consideration on an individual basis. We do thank the government for the fact that a number of those people have already been assisted. We must not to forget them just because we are a month or two down the track. These people will take a long time to recover from what they have been through. I encourage people to continue to get behind those who have been through these disasters and assist them in rebuilding their lives.

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