Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Road Safety and Freight Transport) Share this | Hansard source

Ordinary people in my electorate doing extraordinary things: that's how I best describe the volunteer firefighters and the people who put their shoulder to the wheel to fight the fires, and some of them are still doing that today. We in the seat of Wright experienced our first fires back in September, so we in the seat of Wright have experienced every process, every part of the grievance and every part of the rebuilding that is still in front of those regions that have only just now experienced a fire.

I'll give you a sense of where we are. The Gold Coast hinterland has some of the most beautiful and pristine natural rainforests. They are normally immune to these types of fires. The moisture content normally acts as an inhibitor, and properties are traditionally safe. They weren't safe this time. The moisture levels were far lower than in previous fires. We are no stranger to bushfires. They predominantly start in national parks through acts of God, through lightning strikes. It happens. We know that aerial bombing to try to extinguish the isolated ignitions in very rugged terrain is only effective if you can get rural firefighters on the ground to do what they refer to as mopping up. You can bomb all day, but it's never going to be 100 per cent effective unless you can mop it up.

Unfortunately, our area was part of the 108 small fires from the Gold Coast hinterland through the back of Canungra, Lamington National Park, Mount Barney and upper northern New South Wales and around the Granite Belt into Stanthorpe and Warwick, which borders the seat of Maranoa. We know only too well that the aerial bombers and those people on the ground need to work collectively.

Old-timers who have fought fires in years before predicted this. They said that the fuel levels in the national parks were, as a result of policy positions years ago, much greater than they had been. Today is not the time to reflect on that. There will be inquiries where they'll be able to give evidence around fuel loads. They did talk about how they used to manage it in the past. They had cattle in the parks. They spoke about their preferred option to control burn in winter. The reason for control burning in winter is that you have a heavier dew and cooler days. They burn only in the afternoon so that, if it gets away, it can burn through the night. Their intent is to take only the top of the grass off. The intensity of this fire took not only the top of the grass off but the root systems of the grass beds out. There will be erosion from that and it will take many years to rebuild.

We all know what erosion can be done by unprecedented rainfall. When rain falls from the sky and takes the topsoil off in this country it can have devastating effects. In a fire you get the same type of erosion, but you don't get it from the rain; you get it when the inside of trees burn out and they fall to the ground. The larger ones, because of their weight, act as bulldozers as they come down the side of a hill and dislodge the rocks that have been there for centuries. The grass around them helped to support the upper foundation. So you end up with, for want of a better word, avalanches in a dry environment.

Our roads were cut for many weeks and the effect on businesses is still felt today. I speak of Aratula at the bottom of Cunninghams Gap, a small community that relies on traffic to come through their community. There's a pie shop; there's a pub; there are three service stations, a butcher and a couple of cafes. I find myself going out there regularly, trying to eat them back into economic prosperity! There are only so many pies I can consume to try to help that economy, but my shoulder is to the wheel! I try to help the economy that way.

Now to the Salvation Army. We had firefighters come from all around the country—because we were the first up. Then, everyone was fresh. Once our own internal firefighters had fought to the point of exhaustion, we had a second lot of cavalry come and offer assistance. We had two major central communication points because of the vastness of the front of the fire. One was at Canungra and the other one was at Boonah. At one stage there, I think we managed 77 fire fronts. You can imagine the number of units that would have taken and the support needed on the ground. So to watch the central command really take hold was nothing short of impressive, and not only for its military precision. As to the logistical movements that were happening at the front line, I come from a transport and logistical background and I felt, 'My God! These people are extremely special people.' Some of them were paid—as they should be. But today I want to acknowledge those people who gave their time freely.

Those people who gave their time freely fought in the front line or, if they couldn't do that, they may have sat behind at one of the 15 different rural fire facilities, sheds. They may have worked during the night to get failed motors or pumps on trucks recommissioned. They may have been so old that they didn't have the strength any more—the years did not allow them—to go and fight fires. But their commitment to their community was so great that they would go down and fill tanks all night, because that was something that their age would allow them to do—to stand there next to a water tanker so that someone could get another couple of hours sleep; they'd relieve them from their shift.

My staffer wrote, in his opening comment, 'In the ashes of the fire rose a phoenix of a community.' I thought that was the most powerful part of witnessing the absolutely devastating impact that these fires have had across the community. How it unites a community is something that I can't describe. It's the people who make a contribution who seek no accolade, who do it not because they want to grandstand or to seek the attention of a camera crew when they roll into town—the people who get out of bed and, if they've got six pieces of bread left in their cupboard, put together a couple of sandwiches, throw some gladwrap over them and send them down to the hall because they know someone's going to be looking for a feed. Their contribution should be equally commended, as with those who donned a yellow uniform and took to the front lines.

I said this is not the first fire we've had. And it won't be our last. But I know that from this fire, from this event, we will learn. We will learn, and we'll become more resilient and we will put greater infrastructure in place. We're already talking now on the million dollars that our shires have been given. In the higher country, we created these mobile bladders, roughly half the size of this internal part of this room, to be a place where water tankers would just shuttle water into. They were made out of plastic. Water tankers—mostly council tankers, and some private operators—would shuttle water into there, and then the yellow trucks would come back and get it out at that point so that they weren't losing valuable time going all the way into town to get water. Work is now afoot to make sure that we have permanent water infrastructure in place to fight the fires that will be in front of us in the years to come.

For the people who lost homes, livestock and sheds, I want to start with those who have lost everything. Words cannot describe how you must feel. I try and put myself in your position and think to myself, 'Oh, my God.' And then that feeling is only amplified if the question enters your head: what would've happened if I had lost a child in the fires? Fortunately, we didn't have that—God blessed us in that space. But there was a period of absolute fear when people were evacuated at two o'clock in the morning by a police officer with a torch, knocking on their door saying, 'Get out. Get out now. You've got half an hour.' This is what happened in the Binna Burra area.

They were evacuated in basically the clothes they were wearing. They were shuttled to an evacuation centre. Most in the early hours of the morning found solitude with friends and families elsewhere. But there was a period of time watching the news cycle, listening to the media, hearing of the devastation, hearing reports that houses had been lost and words like 'unprecedented fires' and 'catastrophic results', and not knowing whether or not your house was in that space. The fear and the unknown in the hearts and minds of the members of those local communities at that particular time, I can't imagine. But I saw it, and from that they grow and they become more resilient.

We lost in Binna Burra a place that some Australians may know called Binna Burra ecotourism lodge. It was an amazing property. I assume it was about 30 years old. It was in a pristine rainforest with a beautiful big driveway and A-frame log cabins. People would get married there. Conventions were held there. It was just an iconic property in our part of the country. When you look at the photos or you go onsite now, the only thing that remains is the bitumen circular driveway. Everything else was floored.

I opened my comments by saying that we had the disaster in September. We had more fires. We fought fires until November, but it would be disingenuous of me not to share with Australians and report to the House that more recently we have had landscape-transforming rain. We've had between five and eight inches across some of this country, and it seems a world away now when you see the photos. I know even at my own place: two feet of green paddock across acres and acres. The rain has brought with it prosperity. The rain has brought with it a sense of hope and a new beginning, a sense of rebuilding and future.

In our community we have the army warfare training centre. And I want to acknowledge—I don't want to dedicate this speech to personnel that have suffered, but I do want to make a particular point about Colonel Arran Hassell, who just was amazing in the community. While the rest of Australia was not on fire, he, as a community leader with resources, first went into action and he made the warfare training centre, Canungra army barracks, available to house the many hundreds of volunteer firefighters who travelled from South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales to make a contribution to fighting our many fires. He housed them and, in addition to that, he was just there when we needed helicopters, water trucks, information, comms. I didn't have a great understanding of what they did before that, but I and the community will be forever in their debt for the way they conducted themselves. On behalf of the community, I will make sure that his superiors are aware of the contribution they made.

The Binna Burra Lodge is being rebuilt. The community have put their arms around the Binna Burra foundation. They're currently working out of Beechmont, the old schoolmaster's house, which is a cafe. We will render them every assistance we can to rebuild, but, for those who have a philanthropic heart and want to make a contribution to the Binna Burra Lodge foundation as they rebuild: I think they were drastically underinsured, so there's going to be a massive shortfall there. The iconic nature of that property should be preserved for years to come.

I want to thank the Prime Minister—although he cost me a trip to Tokyo; I had wanted to go up to the rugby to watch the World Cup. He said: 'I'm coming up to your electorate. We're going to go for a look.' And we did that. That was very early in the piece. His presence on the ground was felt by all. It wasn't all positive. The majority of it was. It would be disingenuous for me not to say that after his visit a lady wrote to me and said: 'The Prime Minister should not have come and raised the awareness of the fires. He should have stayed at home, and the money should have been better utilised and sent up here for the rebuild.' I took that letter and circulated it to the chamber of commerce and other community groups, Rotary clubs, the fireys. It was a lone voice. The presence of the Prime Minister in a time of need—I think it was one of the original places where he thought, 'We need to get in and offer assistance here.' I think a lot of those programs came out of that initial meeting.

I want to acknowledge some of the people in our community that jumped up and down. One of them was the editor of a paper. Her name's Wendy Creighton from The Fassifern Guardian. That little local paper, which comes out weekly, is celebrating 125 years. She made a very salient point about the $300 reimbursement for primary producers—and most of my people who fought the fires were primary producers, defending their own blocks. To meet the eligibility criteria you had to prove that you had lost up to $300. The reality is—and Wendy made the point most saliently—that, as a result of the devastating drought, most of these people have not received income for the last three years. They haven't been able to sell cattle, so they weren't able to prove through any type of audit trail that they had lost that revenue. After consultation with David Littleproud's office—which has been, in the words of the Leader of the Opposition in his opening address, 'Exceptional to deal with and returned every call'—Mr Littleproud then implemented a $200 reimbursement for primary producers to assist them through this process, without them having to provide any proof that they'd lost revenue.

I spoke about Kaye Healing, the incident controller, in my opening comments. Thank you, Kaye; our community is so fortunate to have you. The corporate knowledge you have—basically, where every tree is in our many hundreds and hundreds of square kilometres of forest—is nothing short of impressive.

I'm going to finish by recommending something for those rebuilding our communities to consider. A lot of those who border onto national parks and have lost fences are disadvantaged. If I, Mr Deputy Speaker, have a property next to your property, and the fire takes out our fence, there's an obligation that I'll pay half for its reconstruction and you'll pay half. Unfortunately, if your neighbour happens to be a national park, there is no such obligation for the national park to make a contribution, thus amplifying the cost of reconstruction. I accept that that's a state government responsibility, but I will continue to feed that in, because I think it offers a disadvantage for those people who are eligible for some of the grants that are out there, which should be skewed a little bit more to those people who are trying to rebuild.

I have 20 different rural fire brigades in my electorate. I seek leave to table that rather than taking up too much more of the room's time.

Leave granted.

I'll finish where I started. In my electorate, I'm fortunate to represent ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

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