Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

On the evening of Monday, 20 April, my community of Newcastle and surrounding areas were hit by an especially wild and savage storm. Hours later, we were hit by another, just as fierce and just as destructive. These were storms of a ferocity that has not been seen in Newcastle since the infamous 2007 storm that saw flooding throughout the city and the bulk cargo carrier the MV Pasha Bulker washed ashore on Nobbys Beach. Veteran rescue helicopter crewman Graham Nickisson, who spent more than 30 years in the air above the Hunter, said that he had never seen weather or such expanses of floodwater like he saw last month.

Tragically, lives were lost. My sympathies go out to the friends, families and loved ones of those who lost their lives during the April storms. This truly was a devastating weather event. Some homes in my electorate were without power for seven days. Most others lost power, and sometimes water, for at least another day or two. More than 120 schools across the region were forced to close. Phone outages continued to today in some areas, and the clean-up of fallen trees and debris will continue for months. The bill for damage to infrastructure and homes will run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Thankfully, the Newcastle community is a strong community, and when it comes to natural disasters we have, unfortunately, had a lot of practice. We are resilient. We support each other at times of greatest need. We knock on neighbours doors to see how they are coping. We share scarce resources at times of need. We open our homes, our cafes, our shops and our offices to those without power to charge their phones and tablets. We clean up neighbours' yards or even the yards of people we have never met before. We share our food with old friends and new and with those who have no access to a hot meal or drink themselves. We are a community that comes together as one in times of greatest need.

I would like to take this opportunity to give thanks to a number of organisations and individuals who worked tirelessly to keep our community going during this time of our greatest need. Thanks most definitely go to the SES volunteers, who attended more than 8,500 calls for assistance in the Hunter region, and the Ausgrid teams and their contractors who helped restore power to homes, businesses and facilities in our community—selfless men and women who worked through horrendous conditions and, in some circumstances, put themselves at risk to help those most in need.

The teams in our news outlets, like the Newcastle Herald and 1233 ABC Newcastle radio, who worked around the clock to keep the community informed throughout the disaster, deserve to be thanked and congratulated for their dedication to our community. In particular, I note the enormous contribution of the ABC as our emergency broadcaster. You were the lifeline for so many in our community, day after day. You kept our community safe and informed.

I acknowledge my local schools and their extended school communities, who themselves were devastated by the storms, and who not only cleaned up their own grounds to ensure continuity of education and safety for their students but also opened their doors to help with the storage and distribution of food in order to feed the community. Woodberry Public School and many other schools provided a central access point and a place to relay information to residents who were isolated by floodwaters.

I would like to take this opportunity to also thank the Thornton Rural Fire Brigade. I was fortunate to attend the opening of their new facility just 18 months ago. Regrettably, that new facility was absolutely inundated by floodwaters during the storm. While those men and women were out helping others in our community, they lost most of the equipment in their own facility back at Thornton. All of their private cars that they use to travel to and from their volunteer work were under water when they returned to the station. So I pay a huge tribute to those men and women who, despite their own suffering, continued to work, day after day, to ensure the safety of others in our community. I want to publicly acknowledge their efforts.

I would like to thank the Lord Mayor of Newcastle, Nuatali Nelmes, for her civic leadership and service throughout the disaster and acknowledge the council staff, who continue to clean up after the destruction left behind in all our public parks, streets and playgrounds. It was indeed the hard work and dedication of our council workers that enabled Newcastle to proceed with our annual Anzac commemoration services across the city, just five days after the storms that had uprooted massive old trees and savaged all the parks and places where we would normally have those commemoration services.

I would also like to note the savage destruction of the Hunter Region Botanic Gardens and the tremendous losses of precious plant species and biodiversity in our region. It is especially sad that places like the botanic gardens suffered irreversible damage. I would urge anybody in our community that has capacity to assist with the restoration of the botanic gardens to do so.

I would also like to welcome the appointment and acknowledge the tremendous work of the recently retired Brigadier Darren Naumann in his new role as the regional recovery coordinator. I note it was a very brief retirement period. I had the opportunity to work with the brigadier, through my role with the Public Works Committee here in parliament, on a number of projects. Although I wish our coming together again had been in better circumstances, it was tremendous to welcome him to the Newcastle community. I know that he, in his role as the regional recovery coordinator, will do a tremendous job. We met just days after his appointment, and I very much appreciated the time he took to listen to me and my community's concerns and to keep information flowing back to our communities.

I thank the Deputy Prime Minister, who was at the time the Acting Prime Minister, who was very early to contact me and offer support for the Newcastle community. I also thank the Minister for Human Services, the Minister for Justice, who was just in the chamber, and state government ministers, who responded to my many questions at whatever time of day and night and the immediate concerns of the community and provided vital contacts at times of need in the immediate aftermath of the storm. I thank the Centrelink teams, who were mobilised to go out into our community and worked weekends to make sure that residents were able to access the support they needed at times of emergency. I would also like to thank the insurers, whose policyholders were affected by the storms. I met very early on with Suncorp after the storm had hit and they assured me that they would be doing everything they could to progress the claims of their policyholders. Suncorp group of insurers include GIO, AAMI and APIA. I expect all of the insurance companies in my region to be very good corporate citizens and to indeed process these claims as promptly as possible—I will certainly be a strong advocate on behalf of my community if that is not the case.

My thanks also go to the Insurance Council of Australia, who activated a special emergency hotline at the time to assist customers with their insurance policy questions. I thank Legal Aid New South Wales and their team of lawyers, who provided extra assistance to the flood victims, despite being stretched to their limits and indeed with uncertainty about their own funding situation at the time. They have certainly done a tremendous job. I also acknowledge the valued community services organisations that provided assistance to affected residents. There was tremendous work by the Samaritans, who had to bring forward their winter appeal to respond to our immediate needs; Wesley Mission, St Vinnies and all the other service providers in the region. I want to thank the employers who were indeed flexible with their workforce and allowed employees to stay at home, to be safe, to keep off the roads. They also had to deal with the fact schools were closed and people had their children at home.

There are many lessons to be learned from the recent storm experiences. Indeed, I have joined with my Hunter Labor colleagues to bring to the attention of the Minister for Social Services some of the difficulties we have had around the eligibility criteria for the disaster payments and some of the pressures faced with the emergency relief cuts. In closing, it is regretful that we have had to go through yet another natural disaster, but our community remains strong and resilient as always.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 11 : 28 to 11 : 43

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