Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to acknowledge all the other speakers on this motion about how these storms have affected so many people along our eastern seaboard. I will concentrate my contribution on the effects on the electorate that I represent, Hughes. In my electorate, we have the Georges River, which is prone to flooding and has a long history of flooding going back over 100 years. Unfortunately, with these latest storms, the banks of the river burst and several streets were ordered to evacuate. They were Rickard Road; Arthur Street; Riverside Drive between Arthur Street and Newbridge Road; Newbridge Road between Rickard Road and Governor Macquarie Drive; and Davey Robertson Drive. Milperra Road, Governor Macquarie Drive and Henry Lawson Drive were also cut off. Across the electorate, the State Emergency Service did a fantastic job, responding to 3,678 calls.

But there are lessons we should learn from this latest bout of flooding. The first lesson is that claims by some that there is a long-term drying trend in south-east Australia are simply debunked by the evidence. You only have to look at the charts of the Bureau of Meteorology to clearly see, as Dorothea Mackellar said over 100 years ago, that we live in a land 'of drought and flooding rains'—and that will continue for years to come. Claims of more extreme weather are also simply not supported by the evidence. We should look at and learn from our history.

One of the worst floods we had in my electorate was back in 1956. I have here a news article from The Sydney Morning Herald of 7 February 1956 just to show how bad these floods can actually be in our area. It says:

The biggest storm in living memory has left 8000 people homeless. Damage to homes and properties is estimated at many millions of pounds.

From Wednesday night, when the deluge began, until 8 pm yesterday, 12.14 inches of rain fell in the metropolitan area. The places worst hit by floods were the Liverpool and Fairfield districts, Milperra, parts of Bankstown, Richmond, Panania and Penrith.

Police and local government officials estimate the damage in Liverpool and Fairfield municipalities alone at £4 million. At least 5000 people in these shires are homeless, and more than 1000 houses are flooded.

In the outer suburbs of Sydney about 3000 people were evacuated from their homes. All low-lying areas beyond Bankstown are under feet of water.

The article goes on to say:

The Mayors of Liverpool and Fairfield said that in the two shires over 300 miles of roadways had either washed away or been severely damaged. They believed at least 150 miles would have to be rebuilt and the rest extensively repaired.

It continues:

Council officials said police, army, civilian workers and council officials had rescued more than 500 people since last night.

Many of them had been in grave danger of drowning when rescued off rooftops and flooded verandas, fence posts, trees and tops of cars and were taken by army 'ducks' and boats.

That was the 1956 flood—far worse than what we had recently. But our records in Liverpool actually go further back than that, to the 1800s. We can see that the worst flood in our area, even though the one in 1956 seems quite horrific, was back in 1873, when the waters were two metres higher as measured at the weir at Liverpool. We had flooding two metres higher in 1873.

We need to be aware that these floods of the past will occur again. So we have to make those preparations. We should be making sure we have measures in place now so that, whether it is next year, in 10 years time, in 20 years time or in 50 years time, when those floods come again we are prepared for them—because, as sure as night follows day, as Dorothea Mackellar said, we live in a land 'of droughts and flooding rains'. As a government we need to make sure that we are prepared for that.

Just quickly, in the remaining seconds before we adjourn, I say a special thankyou to the State Emergency Service workers who did such a wonderful job responding to those many calls from throughout my electorate—as I said previously, over 3,000 separate calls. We take our hats off to them and thank them.

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