Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I agree with some of the things that my friend the member for Gellibrand had to say. It is a time for leadership in this place. It is a time to unite Australians and to seek consensus, not division. I'd like to speak tonight in relation to the ongoing challenges associated with the recovery from the Black Summer bushfires. We must never forget that many Australians are still recovering from those tragic events of two summers ago, where much of the east coast of Australia was devastated by fires. In my electorate of Gippsland, hundreds of homes were lost. Lives were lost, property was lost, stock was lost. Over the past two years, a lot of really good work has been done by my community in partnership with local, state and federal government, but we still face many challenges as we work through the longer-term recovery issues.

But in good news, just yesterday the Black Summer Bushfire Recovery Grants Program was finally announced. I believe in giving credit where it's due, and, to be fair, I was quite outspoken in my criticism of the program when it was first announced. I make no apology for those criticisms because, at the time of the announcement of the Black Summer Bushfire Recovery Grants Program, there was a notional allocation applied to the East Gippsland region of just $4½ million. I found that notional allocation to be unacceptable, and I made my point very well known to the minister and to the National Recovery and Resilience Agency. But that's history. The concerns of my community were listened to by NRRA and by the government. They heard my community's concerns, and they worked to provide a bigger pool of funding for the most impacted communities.

I want to recognise in this place a couple of staff members in Senator McKenzie's office who worked with me on this program and assisted greatly in arguing for increased funding: Emma Geoghegan, who has now left the office, and Karina Menday, who has been working with me as we deal with some unintended consequences of the program we're trying to resolve for some of the unsuccessful bidders. I thank both those staff members for the constructive way they've worked with me. And for Senator McKenzie's staff: I salute you for that. I thank the minister for being able to argue the case within the ERC process to increase the funding for the Black Summer grants program from $280 million to $390 million.

The broader region of East Gippsland will receive about $30 million out of that program. That is fantastic news for my community. It's one of the most disadvantaged regions in Australia. It experiences low-socioeconomic indicators around household income and has experienced great challenges with the combined impacts of droughts, bushfires and coronavirus. That has had a really deleterious impact on the people of East Gippsland. The projects that were announced yesterday will go a long way to instilling additional hope and confidence in the community.

Some of the projects that were announced yesterday had been on the books of the community for many years and even predated the bushfires. I congratulate the East Gippsland Shire Council on some of their successful bids. The Bairnsdale Aerodrome project is getting $9.6 million. The aerodrome was a critical asset during the bushfire response, relief and recovery phases. It was used as a base for civilian aircraft and defence aircraft. The aerodrome needs significant upgrades. That $9.6 million will be well received.

The Mallacoota Surf Life Saving Club consisted of a caravan. It is a very humble club. That humble club's caravan was burnt to the ground during the bushfires. We worked very constructively in the immediate aftermath of the fires with the Minderoo Foundation. The Twiggy Forrest foundation supported my efforts to secure funding for that group. Partner surf lifesaving clubs in the region assisted with new equipment. We were able to replace the caravan with a new Jayco Basestation, which was very well received. I'm afraid that the humble Jayco Basestation will be surpassed by the $2.5 million multipurpose club that's going to be developed in partnership with the SES and Coast Guard. It's a great win for the surf lifesaving club.

Another really interesting project is the Snowy River railway trestle bridge. It's an old wooden bridge that has basically been demolished by neglect by the state government. Since the rail services were taken away from Orbost the bridge has been slowly crumbling. We secured $3 million from the state government quite recently to begin the restoration work. Yesterday I was pleased to see another $1 million going to that project. That will allow the trestle bridge to be used by pedestrians and cyclists as they traverse the East Gippsland Rail Trail, which we have also been successful in securing funding for. These are all good projects for the visitor economy and also very important for the liveability of my region and encouraging people to have more active lifestyles. I really do congratulate the community for working over a period of years to secure that funding.

Other projects will be well received: the Mallacoota Mudbrick Pavilion upgrade, $493,000; the Mallacoota bowls club, $85,000; and the Mallacoota Gun Club, $276,000. You might notice a pattern there. They are all in Mallacoota. Mallacoota is a sleepy little village on the coast of my region. It was the most directly impacted town during the Black Summer bushfires. There were 135 homes lost. In the days that followed we experienced the most incredible evacuation of civilians by the Australian Defence Force off the coast of Mallacoota. HMAS Choulesand MV Sycamore transferred I think 1,500 people and their dogs and cats and a few parrots as well. It was quite an amazing evacuation of people. The one road into Mallacoota was blocked and it remained blocked for I think about six weeks. That reflects the hardship that the town experienced and also the direct losses that the town experienced. The gun club was burnt down, the bowls club green was damaged and the pony club facilities were destroyed. All these things take money to replace.

Another interesting project that was funded yesterday is the East Gippsland Timber Milling Project. This is a project that I think we could look at rolling out across Australia in response to disasters in the future. A portable sawmill, with trained staff, is established on a person's property and the timber that has fallen on their own land is milled. It allows the farmers or other landholders to use that timber for re-establishing the fencing and stockyards or for even as feature timber in their own homes. It has been very well received in my community. That additional $520,000 will be greatly appreciated right across the region.

Another project that I'm particularly happy about is in the little town of Bend River. It's another town that has one road in and one road out. It suffered enormous economic losses when all the visitors had to leave during the Black Summer bushfires. The East Gippsland shire has been successful in securing $1 million for a path through the town, which again encourages Gippslanders and visitors to our region to have healthy active lifestyles. These are great wins for the community. Again, I recognise the NRRA, and the minister's office worked in a constructive way to increase the pool of funding and to ensure that some of the communities most directly impacted by the fires were supported.

Of course, in any of these types of programs, not every applicant is successful. The fundamental flaw in a program like this is that local MPs very often get absolutely no say in helping to establish some of the priorities. In this case, in my region, some of the most impacted little townships of Buchan, Sarsfield and Wairewa all missed out in their applications, and my challenge now as a local member is to try and work constructively with those community groups, to work with the minister's office, and to work with local and state government authorities to try and find ways to secure funding for their projects. Have no doubt that I won't be giving up on those communities, and I will be working to secure the funding they need to deliver the services the community expects after going through so much hardship. So the battle will continue in that regard.

Deputy Speaker Rick Wilson, I just want to reflect on the recovery process for a moment. You, yourself, have been through bushfires in recent times. Right through the recovery process, the lack of respect for local knowledge held by experienced MPs who have been through fires and floods and natural disasters in the past is a real problem for us in this nation. I fear the role of a local MP in these situations is undervalued. We have a bureaucratic approach, where both state and federal bureaucrats seem to think they know better than the people who've lived through these experiences with their communities in the past. I will be challenging NRRA and Bushfire Recovery Victoria to, in the future, demonstrate a greater understanding of the networks that local MPs often establish over a very long period of time and the appreciation they have of their communities and the challenges they will face in the recovery process. It bothers me enormously that every one of my concerns that I raised with the agencies in the immediate aftermath of the fires have come to fruition because we didn't take the action that could have been taken at an earlier time. We have to look at these issues and understand that there are people who have had direct life experience in the community or in MPs' offices who could be a great asset during the recovery process.

One of the things I will point out in relation to the issues for prevention, recovery and resilience in the face of tragedies like the Black Summer bushfires is that we all know in this country that we are going to have more fires. To have wildfire in Australia, you need three things. You need to have hot, windy days; you need a point of ignition; and you need fuel. This is not rocket science. We know that, every summer in Australia, we are going to have hot, windy days. We know that, every summer in Australia, we are going to have a point of ignition. It could be a lightning strike, an idiot with a match or just an accident. The only thing we can really have an impact on as humans is the fuel load. We have to do more, in partnership with our state government entities, to reduce the fuel load. Hazard reduction is failing miserably in this country and in the state of Victoria. We have to learn from the traditional owners of the land. Indigenous people had firestick technology they applied through thousands of years, and we ignore their learnings, their lessons, at our own peril. Hazard reduction is one thing we should be working much more constructively with the state governments to achieve if we are going to prevent or reduce the impact of these fires. If we had been doing the hazard reduction work, the damage to my community would have been significantly less.

What we saw during the Black Summer bushfires was that every fire started on public land, every fire was a natural lightning strike, and the damage was done on the public land-private land interface. That's where people lost their homes, lost their fences, lost their stock. We need to be working to secure critical asset protection through fuel reduction, mulching and removal of fuel from around the townships to make sure that people are protected in these dangerous conditions.

There is only one thing worse than three-word slogans, and that's four-word slogans: more boots, less suits. We need more boots and less suits—more boots on the ground doing the practical environmental work and less suits in the city making excuses for why things can't be done. So I call on the state government to work in a constructive way with my community and with the federal government to ensure that we are doing the preventative work on natural resource management right throughout the state, not just in response to a disaster but well ahead of the fire season—things like slashing roadsides.

The Princes Highway was closed for more than a month. That's simply not good enough in 2020. It was closed because there was too much vegetation on the roadside. The community was ecstatic after the event when the crews went through and actually cleared 30 metres on both sides. It makes the road safer, but it also improves lines of sight so they can see oncoming vehicles, and it reduces the chance of hitting things like kangaroos, wallabies and wombats, as well. So maintaining the roadsides in a safe manner and mulching the vegetation along the roadsides is something that my community is keen to pursue. We are the custodians of a vast natural estate in Gippsland, but we have very few staff on the ground, in agencies like Parks Victoria, DELWP and Regional Roads Victoria, to actually do that maintenance work in our communities. It's a huge job opportunity, for those of us who live in those rural and regional communities, to have trained staff in the area, doing that great work on our behalf.

While I'm talking about the resilience of the road network, I have to reflect on those communities which have one road in and one road out. It is incumbent upon us at the federal level, and also at the state level, to support those communities with critical asset protection so they can be safe in times of natural disaster. People are going to visit those towns. People live in those towns. We have to maintain safe access for them in times of natural disaster. I give credit to the state government during the last bushfire period, the Black Summer bushfires. The warnings that were issued in partnership with the ABC, as the emergency services broadcaster, were very clear and encouraged people to get out of those communities well ahead of the danger period. But we need to do more work in terms of critical asset protection, prevention, recovery and resilience work.

While I have the opportunity, can I also extend my community's incredible thanks to the Australian Defence Force for the role they played during those bushfires. Having the Army, Navy and Air Force working in partnership with the civilian agencies was something that I have never seen before in my community. But what I learnt from that is that the civilian agencies really don't have a great understanding of the capability of the Australian Defence Force. How the Bushmasters can access areas that the Toyota LandCruisers can't came as a bit of a surprise to some of the civilian agencies. So I think more training between civilian and defence agencies is important and something we should aim to do on a regular basis throughout our region.

Finally, I just want to thank Gippslanders for the way they've shown extraordinary resilience and stuck together in what has been a long recovery process. I'm proud to represent that community in this place, and I recognise there's still a lot of work to be done in terms of the recovery from the bushfires. The $30-odd million we announced the other day will be a great help, but it won't solve all our problems. We need to keep working together. You won't hear me in this place talking Australians down or talking Gippslanders down. We have to right now as a nation, as a parliament, show leadership, be as optimistic and as relentlessly positive as we possibly can, unite wherever possible and, please, seek consensus wherever we can, not division.

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