Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It was a tough day, the day that we were preparing for the floods in central Victoria. The warnings had gone out—and that's one thing that I will say: I cannot recall a premier getting to their feet and giving the emergency services warning: 'This will be a major flood. Homes will be lost. Be prepared.'

Even in a town like Bendigo, where we have a network of creeks, we weren't prepared for the volume of water that came down. In the week leading up to it, the notice came out that Lake Eppalock, which is the major water storage in our electorate, was already full. And locals know that, once Lake Eppalock is full, those further downstream are in trouble; once Lake Eppalock is full, there's a lot of water around and it could flood.

It's rare for Victorians to get floods—I do want to say that loudly—although we are getting more and more of them. People keep talking about floods as being 'once in a hundred years' or 'once in 500 years' events. Well, we've had two once-in-a-hundred-year floods in a decade. So you start to ask yourself: Is this becoming the norm? And is our infrastructure fit for the weather events that we're expecting? I'll say a bit more about that later.

What I will do now is to say a big thank you and give a shout out to all of our SES units—the SES units of Bendigo, Marong, Heathcote, Kyneton and Castlemaine. I was actually due to catch up with the Castlemaine SES unit on the Wednesday before the big rain events of Thursday and Friday, and of course I rang them to say: 'You're probably really busy today; the last thing you'd need is me popping out.' They were in fact sandbagging. Thousands of sandbags went out to homes and businesses throughout my electorate, and businesses and communities and homeowners are crediting the SES, the early warnings and the sandbagging as being what saved them. Lots of yards and sheds were inundated; lots of roadways and community infrastructure were inundated. The rain and the water came down very quickly, but they disappeared so quickly that a lot of homes were saved. The SES believe that, pretty much, Elmore was saved because of the sandbagging efforts and because the rain and the water were moving so fast.

We have the Campaspe and the Loddon, two major river systems that feed into the Murray River, running through my electorate, and, when you hear of the volumes of water that were coming down across Kyneton and Castlemaine, you do feel for the communities who, to this day, are still in flood. We have a little bit of that guilt, in my electorate, from knowing that the water will leave us and flood communities further downstream.

I do feel for the member for Mallee. And I feel particularly for the member for Nicholls, whose electorate is entering its fourth week of flood.

We did sustain damage to a number of properties in my electorate in Heathcote and Marong. It's estimated that, in total, around 90 homes across Heathcote have sustained damage in some way. Some of them will need to be knocked down and rebuilt. For some of them, it's outdoor infrastructure and sheds.

There have been some amazing stories. The SES itself flooded because, when the Campaspe is full, the water comes back up the creeks. We just didn't have a way to get the water out quickly.

The community of Heathcote is quite resilient. It's about 40 minutes out of Bendigo, and it was actually cut off from Bendigo. In fact, every major highway into Bendigo was cut off during this event. All of them sustained major damage. The township of Heathcote was completely cut off; the bridge at Axedale was washed away. It's the image that many of us have seen—the first image of the impact of the floods. Such was the force of this water. The way in which it damaged major roads is just unbelievable. The residents of Heathcote were on their own. Nobody could get to them. They had to do it themselves, and they did.

The SES flooded, so they moved their entire operation to the CFA, where they ran their command centre to help people during the flood event. They are now continuing to help their community through the recovery. We had the ADF on the ground in Bendigo helping communities not just to set up the relief centre at the Showgrounds—there were 10 ADF members deployed quickly to set up the relief centre—but also to help with the clean-up effort in Heathcote, where we had those homes damaged. There were at least 20 ADF members on the ground on the big clean-up day they had to help remove rubbish.

A div ision having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 12:21 to 12:32

See this speech in context