Michelle Landry (Capricornia, National Party, Assistant Minister for Children and Families) Share this | Hansard source

The recent bushfires in Yeppoon have devastated the community and are some of the worst natural disasters the area has seen in recent memory. On the afternoon of Saturday 9 November fire broke out on Old Byfield Road in Cobraball. In a matter of hours the fire spread quickly and immediately threatened lives and properties. I live in Yeppoon and I can remember vividly the smoke haze that fell onto the area. Evacuations were called in the evening and continued throughout the night and well into the next day. Overall, evacuations continued for over 48 hours.

The fire frontage totalled 17 kilometres by 13 kilometres—a truly massive and terrifying wall of fire. After the flames subsided enough to survey the damage, 15 homes and 56 structures were destroyed and approximately 12,000 hectares were affected or destroyed, including 8,500 hectares of grazing land. Some 19 localities in the Livingstone Shire Council were affected by the bushfire, including Barmaryee, Bungundarra, Cobraball, Adelaide Park, Farnborough, Inverness, Lake Mary and Woodbury. Twenty-seven structures and eight houses were severely to moderately damaged, along with 243 operations or businesses impacted within the immediate fire-damaged area. Around 274 hectares of horticulture and tropical fruit production were also lost to the flames, including the crops on Robert and Jocelyn Sikes' farm and Jack and Rae Cowie's farm. It's been amazing how the community have got behind our farmers and the people who have lost property and had major damage to the farms. Groups like Rotary have been out there helping cut down trees. It's been very impressive.

The area is no stranger to bushfires. We have seen five bushfire disasters in three years, including the Byfield and Shoalwater Bay fires in 2017, the Caves fire in 2018 and the Byfield fire in 2019. I hosted the Deputy Prime Minister, Michael McCormack, and the minister for emergency management, the member for Maranoa, David Littleproud, at Yeppoon last week to visit the farms. Both the Sikes family and the Cowie family estimate that the financial loss to their farms could be in the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of dollars. We witnessed the damage firsthand—damage that could have been minimised if the Queensland government had lifted restrictions to allow the farmers and the property owners to burn back adequately and safely.

Despite the damage the bushfire left behind, the stories of kindness and consideration that the community has shown one another are truly inspiring. Total strangers offered as much help as they could in the moment. This ranged from an extra pair of hands to fend off the flames near a home or a small and reassuring gesture like offering a cuppa and a friendly ear to listen. It is a testament to the community that we have in Yeppoon, and it's a community that I am very proud to be part of.

I want to thank and commend all the emergency personnel who fought the flames, often without sleep and without a break for days, and the local businesses and the farmers who stood side by side with the fireys. You saved lives, you saved properties and you saved homes. The community is in your debt, and we thank you for your sacrifice to keep people and properties safe.

While one of the worst bushfires the area has seen is now over, we still have a long road ahead with recovery efforts and the rebuilding of homes and properties. I'm happy to say that the Australian government has made available financial assistance to people affected by the bushfires in Livingstone Shire. Assistance has been provided through the activation of the Australian government Disaster Recovery Payment and the Disaster Recovery Allowance.

The Australian government Disaster Recovery Payment is a one-off non-means-tested payment of $1,000 for eligible adults and $400 for eligible children who have been adversely affected by the bushfires. The Disaster Recovery Allowance is also being made available to provide a short-term support payment to assist those who have lost their income as a direct result of the bushfires, which is income assistance for up to 13 weeks, equivalent to the maximum rate of Newstart allowance or youth allowance. The extension of the AGDRP and the DRA is over and above the support already being provided through the jointly funded Commonwealth state Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements. Both payments have been available since 13 November, and I encourage anyone who has been adversely affected to call the Department of Human Services and ask about their eligibility for assistance.

I am very disappointed that the Queensland government has rejected calls for a parliamentary inquiry into these bushfires. The member for Keppel, who's electorate encompasses Yeppoon, said that Queensland doesn't want politicians running an inquiry into bushfires. I think a lot of property owners and farmers in Yeppoon would disagree with that. Conducting important inquiries, such as this one into these devastating bushfires, is exactly why they are elected.

Nearly all of the property owners who I have spoken to have said that land clearing restrictions in place have made fires worse. Even when they have applied for special considerations to back-burn adequately and to do hazard reduction burns, they wait months and months for a response. The IGEM report, released earlier this year, said the Queensland government must reassess its native vegetation legislation. The Queensland government owes a parliamentary review to the farmers, the property owners and the volunteer firefighters who battled the blazes on the ground. While we cannot totally eliminate all of the risks presented by bushfires, considered and responsible steps need to be made to ensure our farmers, Queensland's true conservationists, can adequately burn back the areas that could potentially destroy their homes or properties if left unattended.

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