Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

Today I rise to extend my thanks to the hundreds of professional emergency personnel and countless volunteers who have come to the aid of communities across the south and south-west of Western Australia, which have recently been ravaged by unstoppable and fatal bushfires. I particularly offer my condolences to those who have suffered loss as a result of these fires.

Burning for 17 days, the devastating Waroona-Yarloop fire basically razed the small town of Yarloop, claiming the lives of two elderly residents, destroying important community heritage and impacting more than 400 agricultural properties and national parks across almost 70,000 hectares. Last November, four people in Esperance lost their lives during another massive set of bushfires that scorched more than 300,000 hectares of mostly agricultural land where farmers had been eagerly anticipating the harvest of a bumper wheat crop.

In the face of these catastrophes, emergency personnel worked tirelessly to alert and protect affected communities. Even while embers and smoke still filled the skies, the wider community sprang into action to help evacuate people and animals from the path of the fires. At the holiday community of Preston Beach, where there is only one road in and out, local sea-rescue teams and recreational boaters plucked stricken families from the beach and ferried them to safety. I know that the equestrian community, which is so prominent in the south-west, rallied to help people transport their horses to safety. Around 400 livestock, mostly cattle, are reported to have perished, but the farming community's livestock removal effort as the fire approached, and the donation of feed, saved the lives of many more creatures. Staff and volunteers at the Waroona vet clinic continue to work around the clock caring for both the injured domestic and the injured native animals that have been rescued. It is often a very sad fact that bushfires bring terrible consequences for our native, farm and domestic animals.

Whether for human or horse, dog, kangaroo or cow, these disasters—as so many before them also have done—reveal the ultimate strength of our communities: the compassion and volunteerism and the unquestioning camaraderie that spontaneously emerges in the face of such danger. Residents in neighbouring shires and towns in the south-west offered free emergency accommodation to complete strangers. The organisers of the Southbound Music Festival, which was cancelled due to the Waroona-Yarloop emergency, quickly established a relief fund based on ticket refund donations and organised a fundraising concert in Perth to help with the expense of recovery.

The emergency phase of these fires may now have passed, but the relief and recovery effort continues. It is truly humbling to witness the extent and broad range of specialist support that is being offered to the recovery and rebuilding effort. Musicians in my electorate of Fremantle are lending their talents to a fire appeal concert this weekend. Others have given their time to help reinstate more than 25 kilometres of irrigation to a melaleuca oil plantation near the town of Harvey. This Friday, volunteers working through BlazeAid, an organisation set up in the wake of the 2009 Black Saturday fires in Victoria to expedite the urgent re-fencing needs in agricultural communities struck by fire, will set up camp on Waroona Oval to assist with replacing the countless miles of essential agricultural fencing lost during the blaze. Nearly three months on BlazeAid continues to run a volunteer camp at Grass Patch to assist those who need help restoring fences lost during the Esperance fires. People have done, and will again in the future, all that they physically can to stop these fires or hold back flood waters to minimise the loss to life and property.

The south-west corner of Australia is amongst the most biodiverse places on the planet. Since the mid-1970s this unique place has seen a steady decline in rainfall—the rate of which is accelerating—and increasing temperatures. The country is tinder dry and entire forests are in a state of collapse. Last year was the hottest year since recording began. Fire has been an ever-present threat in our country but, as we have witnessed across the south-west, as we saw in Victoria in 2009 and again recently and as we are seeing in Tasmania right now, it is clear that the ferocity and sheer magnitude of bushfire events are on the rise.

Taking effective action on climate change to minimise its devastating impacts should be the key concern of our time. Ignorance and delay only imperil our future and offend the type of community can-do spirit of the people who have battled to survive horrific natural disasters.

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