Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

As you know, the address-in-reply is a follow-on from the Governor-General's address when parliament resumes after an election. People start by acknowledging the election campaign, their own team and thanking people as part of that process. I know we've moved a few months on from that.

Before I talk about what I normally would say in my address-in-reply, I want to talk about the event that happened in my community six weeks before the election was called. My community, especially the Lismore region and lower Richmond area, the villages of Coraki, Woodburn, Broadwood and Wardell, was hit by a devastating flood, which was bigger than anything we'd ever seen.

We as a river-flat community know floods. We know how to deal with floods. We've seen lots of floods. To give you some reality on the peaks and what we're used to, the two previously recorded floods in Lismore were 12½ metres. The water overtops the levee at about 10½ metres, so you know the water's going to come into the CBD and flood certain areas there. Everyone has their flood plan, whereby they will lift stuff above 12½ metres to be out of the flood area. Most of the houses in north and south Lismore as well, because of historical floods, are built above the 12½ metre level, so they know that while water will go under their houses et cetera they'll be okay.

When they went to bed that night it was very wet, and everyone was very nervous. The BOM was saying that the flood would peak at 11½ metres. So you had people going to bed saying, 'Okay, it's wet; it's going to flood, and we'll wake up tomorrow and have a clean-up to do.' But they were confident that they were safe. That was at about 11 at night. It was dark. That's stating the obvious. At about one or two o'clock in the morning the BOM revised its peak to 13½ metres and then to 14½ metres. That meant that, during the hours of the night that it was pouring with rain, water started to go into people's houses—and people didn't know it would do that. There were around 2,000 houses, so that's thousands of people whose lives were in danger.

Water came into the houses, filling them. People had to clamber onto rooftops and into roof cavities to save their lives. The emergency services weren't expecting this either. The SES had moved people up from Newcastle and other areas to look after the event. There were things that had been done, but there were things that had not been done for this event—no-one knew this was going to happen and no-one had prepared for it. I was up at three or four o'clock in the morning, when I saw the river height adjustment. I saw young people, mainly 18- to 35-year-old men, almost instinctively get into any water vessel they could find, whether it be kayaks, jetskis, boats or tinnies. They just went out and started saving their neighbours' lives—literally saving their lives, with great danger. This wasn't water that was rising slowly; this was a torrential river that was at a great rate of knots, so it was very dangerous for them. Four people died that day, and it was a miracle that only four people died through this event.

I myself was getting calls or texts from people saying: 'Kevin, I live at 10 Such-and-such Street. I'm on my roof. I need help.' So I was just sending all these text messages, with their addresses, through to the SES and to the other emergency responders and the first response teams, as were a lot of other people getting those messages. So that was—stating the obvious—a very traumatic night. The water then continued downriver, and the stories for Coraki, Woodburn, Broadwater and Wardell were similar. Again, the tinnie army, as they were dubbed, went out and literally saved our families' and our friends' lives that night and that day, and they will never be able to be thanked enough.

We then had the situation where a lot of people were piling almost ad hoc into evacuation centres. There were a couple that opened up in Lismore straightaway—one at the university—and then centres opened in the towns downriver. Again, this was still a crisis situation. We were blocked off—even the major towns of Lismore and Casino were. I mention Casino. They too had hundreds of houses that went underwater, and it's almost not acknowledged, because there were so many other things that happened in the region.

So all these major towns were locked off by floodwater for many, many days, so food was becoming an issue. I had a phone call from a friend of mine who was in the Coraki evacuation centre on about Tuesday—no food. There were 200 or 300 people at this evacuation centre, and they had no food. She said, 'Kevin, I think a riot's going to break out.' So we were all just doing everything we could, with phone calls and getting the private networks that we had around, to make sure that the community survived and had the basics to get through this, as quickly as we could.

I do want to acknowledge the Prime Minister at the time, as well as the Premier, the Deputy Premier, the Deputy Prime Minister and the emergency management ministers. At five o'clock on the Monday morning, when I realised what was going on, I contacted the head of the SES and the head of the 41st Battalion in Lismore, and I said, 'Tell me what the situation is and tell me what you need.' I immediately set up some chat groups and just said, 'We need aerial support from the ADF by lunchtime or people are going to be drowned in their homes,' and that happened by that lunchtime. Then, of course, the ADF arrived as soon as they could on the Thursday, once the floodwaters subsided.

This was, again, a devastation that we'd never seen. What happened then, once the water did subside, was that people were going back into their houses or their shops. This wasn't just a normal flood where people would wash stuff out. The water was 2½ metres higher than had ever been seen before in our region. It had taken out insulation. It had taken out roofs. It had just destroyed places, including people's homes. Many, many people had only the clothes on their backs. Thousands of people were like that. For days and weeks, I was at the evacuation centres every day, and for quite a while there were literally hundreds of people sleeping in a hall. You might have a family of four there and literally a drug addict there and another family, all just sleeping with each other in a big sports facility such as a basketball court. That created its own challenges. Again, because we were isolated, the community on its own did this. As I said, the ADF couldn't get through till the Thursday. We were cut off from petrol—even the petrol tankers—and the grocery stores were running out of food as well. So it was an amazing effort by the community.

Then, obviously, after the water subsided the ADF arrived and the recovery began. I forget how much rubbish there was, but it was hundreds of tonnes. It took six or seven weeks for the rubbish to be collected from the street. So what was happening was that people were literally just throwing their contents off their balconies or verandahs; the ones who had built on stilts were just throwing it out of windows. It took six to eight weeks to collect just from the roadside. People then had nothing in their house. They had nothing except for the clothes on their back, and they were minimal. They went to their houses and literally threw everything out. There were thousands of people with nothing in their houses. Then the recovery began.

It's going to be a slow recovery. After the event I spoke to a lot of people who have been associated with events like this and they said, 'Kevin, this will take time.' I can see that. We're now eight months on. I think this is going to be a five-year recovery. Thousands of people are still living in caravans or camping in their houses because it is taking many months for the insurance claim process or to get building supplies and/or builders to repair this. To date very few people are back in their houses at the same standard they were eight months ago.

Over 1,000 CBD businesses have been damaged. If you walk the streets of Lismore, Woodburn, Wardell, Broadwater and Coraki, you see that, out of every 10 businesses, only two or three have recovered to an extent to be open. Many still aren't open. This is a big journey we're taking together. We'll get there. We are a very resilient community. It's going to be a multi-year journey.

We are also waiting for CSIRO to do a flood mitigation study for the whole of the catchment. It has never been done before. That is a $10 million study. They will come back with engineering solutions for flood mitigation. We will have to implement whatever recommendations they make because every government—whether local, state or federal—has to make sure that their people are safe and feel safe in their houses or businesses. That's where the community was at at that time.

Mr Deputy Speaker, being an MP yourself, you know that in those times as an MP and public leader you are exceptionally busy. There are lots of demands. There were more than usual as we were trying to design grant schemes. Some grant schemes just rolled off the shelf, which was fine, but others had to be designed, given the nature of the event.

Five or six weeks after this event, while we were still under such stress and trauma, the election was on. I'll just talk about my staff. One staff member's husband lost his business and another staff member's mother's house got flooded. Everyone was either directly or vicariously traumatised by this, including my staff. Five or six weeks after this the election was called. We were under immense pressure. Our office was flooded as well. We were in temporary accommodation. I literally said to one of my staff members, 'You go and look after the election because we're too busy.' We just had to maintain doing the job we had to do, given the state our community was in.

At a time like that we really couldn't focus a lot on the election. We had one staff member devoted to that while we were doing our job for our community, who were undergoing a very stressful situation. I'm very grateful that, in the election, my community re-elected me with an increased margin. It was a very humbling experience, given the conditions and what was going on for our community.

Obviously the Lismore local government area, the lower Richmond local government area and Casino need to go forward. For the duration of this parliament, the next three years, my focus as the MP—and I've worked with the new government; I acknowledge the new government have announced a number of programs since they were elected—is on the recovery. It's about getting people back into their homes. It's about getting people back into their businesses. We will do that. During the election we said that we'd take one day at a time and we will get back into our homes and businesses.

I am very positive. I think our journey is going to be a long one, as I said. I'm very positive that with the recovery, the rebuild and the flood mitigation we will do when CSIRO reports its findings that our community will be safer than it was before. We are a beautiful area and we are a wonderful community. We will get back to that.

Besides the recovery, there are some projects I'm really excited about. There are lots of grants out there—farming grants, small business grants and grants to help people get back in their homes. We announced a house-raising, land-swap and buyback program. Again I acknowledge that the new government went halves with the state government in that program that was announced just a month or so ago. I acknowledge the Prime Minister was there that day to announce that.

That's a major focus, but in a different light, some of the electorate isn't as badly affected by this, so there are a lot of positive things happening. Within Lismore itself we're doing a major upgrade of Oakes and Crozier oval. There are going to be some really exciting developments that are done, besides the recovery. One I'm very excited about is a rail trail. We live in a beautiful region, the north coast of New South Wales. There are going to be some great developments made like that, and eventually that will hopefully go from Casino all the way through my electorate, down the hill into Byron Bay and then up the hill on the other side all the way to Murwillumbah. I honestly believe that will be a global drawcard, the rail trail, and there has been some money has been announced for that. The build for that has starting at both ends, so I'm very excited about that.

In the region of Kyogle, a wonderful part of the world as well, we've done a massive bridge renewal program, a program that was announced by the new government back in 2013. It has been a great program. We've done a lot of work with Kyogle on that, and I look forward to working with them on that. In Casino we're doing some wonderful upgrades of the swimming pool and also the showground. We've upgraded the saleyards. It now has the second highest turnover of cattle in the state. That's a wonderful asset, and we'll be doing more work in regions like that.

Going further south to Grafton—wonderful. If you've never been to the Clarence Valley, go there. It includes Grafton, being the capital of the Clarence Valley. You go downriver to places like Maclean, and then on the coast you've got places like Yamba and Iluka and some very exciting things happening there. There's the riverside precinct upgrade and a lot of other things we've announced over the years that will be built there as well.

Further south we go onto the northern beaches of Coffs Harbour. I actually have sought leave on Saturday morning. Sorry, team; I'm hoping I won't be there on Saturday morning. I acknowledge the member for Cowper behind me too, who had input into this. We're opening a $24 million sporting facility there that we announced a year or so ago, so there are great things happening down on the northern beaches as well.

The other thing is, as we moved into opposition, I acknowledged the Australian public's decision. They say the Australian public never gets it wrong, so we obviously now as opposition reflect on that. We reflect on the things that we did. We reflect on the good things and the good government that we were, but we also reflect on how we need to improve or why we didn't win overall. So we will do that, and we will hold the new government to account. As an Australian citizen—forget the fact that you're an MP—you always want the government of the day to do well, because if that government of the day is doing well, our economy and our country are doing well. But we as an opposition should politely, sometimes maybe not as politely as we should, hold this new government to account, and we will.

I will note that one of the things that I'm very proud of, having been a member of the previous government, is the unemployment rate we handed over to the new government. We handed over an economy that I think was the envy of a lot of the world. We'd been through a lot of challenges through COVID and other things, but when we handed over the reins to the new government, the economy was exceptionally strong. The unemployment rate was at a low that hadn't been seen since the early 1970s. We, through COVID fatalities and through any other measurement that you want to look at, had done quite well. That was obviously with the assistance of the Public Service, and I acknowledge them and the assistance we had from the health authorities and our nurses and primary care workers, who did amazing work.

Now we live in a world that has some strategic geopolitical challenges. I do acknowledge the new government. As shadow trade and tourism minister I think that some of the things they've been doing there have been very positive, and I acknowledge them—also on some of the foreign affairs issues.

But I will say that I think the new government has in some ways broken faith with the public. I think one of the major ways they broke faith with the public is the IR laws. I have run my own small business and talk to many small businesses, and with all due respect to the new government, you never, ever said you were going to do what you did. You never went to the public and said you were going to bring in the multisector and multilevel bargaining that you have. In fact, you could say that one certain minister misled when he was asked that question. He's now trying to deny that. We will hold you to account. It's our job to hold you to account. We want the unemployment rate to stay low. We want our small businesses to be prosperous. We want our children to have a better future than us and better prospects than us. I think with these IR laws you are putting some of that at risk. I think you're sending us back to the 1970s with these IR laws. You're changing back some of the changes that Hawke and Keating made. On that level, we will hold you to account.

I am also personally very disappointed about the cashless welfare card abolition. I grew up near and have spent time in one of the communities that had that card. We talk about closing the gap. I firmly believe that the abolition of that card is placing women and children at great risk. I personally believe that alcohol fuelled violence is going to increase in those communities. I think the ideological obsession the now government has about personal liberties might sound all well and good in an elite, high-level, academic-type discussion, but that means nothing to the women and children who are now in personal danger.

That being said, I congratulate the new government. I do, in my own way, wish them well for the benefit of the Australian people. I'll say to my electorate: our journey is long, but we'll do it together.

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