Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Macquarie for bringing forward this motion. A number of us in this House have forged a very common bond through bushfires and floods. This is the second time in the past six months that my electorate has been through devastating floods, the first ones up north and most recently the ones down the southern end in the Port Macquarie-Hastings area. Mr Acting Deputy Speaker Gillespie, I acknowledge that you are in the same position as there were perhaps more devastating floods at the top end of your electorate. It is important that we acknowledge not only the volunteers but how difficult it is for our farmers. Having been through the drought, then the fires, then the floods and coronavirus, and then floods again, we do lose perspective sometimes. I was at an evacuation centre—I won't say which one—and I was talking to an older farmer, a man in his eighties. He said he'd lost 33 head of cattle. Obviously, to a farmer, they're like children. He said to me, 'Pat, the rifle in the corner was looking pretty good over the last couple of days.' That really hit home. How tough. This big, still strapping tall man, crying over losing his 33 head of cattle and also half a kilometre of embankment on his property. So I sat down with him and had a long chat, and I made sure that the people from the mental health team came over and chatted with him, and I've followed him up since. But we do lose perspective on how tough life is as a farmer.

I went around the electorate, and this indeed was one of the worst floods in 100 years. I was talking to Phil Morton up at Rollands Plains, and he showed me a stretch of about 600 or 700 metres in diameter, and you could see 2½ to three metres in the trees where the debris was. He said: 'Pat, a wave came down there, 700 metres wide and three metres high.' It lifted the silo—I don't know how many tonnes that is—and shifted it downstream. It was just incredible. I'd like to acknowledge all the locals of Rollands Plains, Telegraph Point and North Shore, where they just got in and cleaned up and did such a wonderful job.

I will mention Dinesh Thakrani, who is the owner and operator of the Telegraph Point Service Station. He said that the water came so quickly in the front door that he had to go to the back room and smash his way through the fibro wall with a fire extinguisher to get out. He was telling the story and it was just remarkable. But two days later he had the store back open and was helping the locals to get through the recovery effort.

There are so many people that we should thank, not just the locals but also the thousand extra boots that ended up in the electorate through the ADF and extra SES. The clean-up happened almost instantly. Whilst I'm not a huge fan of insurance companies at times, I have to commend them. There have only been a couple of complaints that they haven't followed through with their payments. The assessors were on the ground very, very quickly. Those assessments were made and people are receiving their payments. So I do thank the insurance companies for doing the right thing.

I attended the disaster centre every day when I was up there. Commander Shane Cribb ran a seamless, faultless command centre there. All of the agencies—SES, RFS and indeed Surf Life Saving—did just a fantastic job. Matt Field from my office was out in a rubber duck making rescues for two days. So hats off to Surf Life Saving; Marine Rescue; the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment; the Department of Communities and Justice; Fire and Rescue; New South Wales Ambulance; Transport for New South Wales; and Public Works—fantastic job. Thank you for all your efforts.

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