Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That this House acknowledge the terrible impact that Cyclone Larry has had on the residents of far north Queensland and recognise the efforts and contributions of those communities, and of governments, to restore normal life to the region.

I know I speak for all members when I recall the shock and dismay that we have all experienced this past week at the previously unimaginable scenes of devastation in Far North Queensland left in the wake of tropical Cyclone Larry: the image of a banana farmer overlooking his plantation where not a single tree is left standing, the sight of homes completely destroyed or demolished. Hospitals, schools, businesses, sporting facilities and community centres—no structures escaped the wrath of this category 5 wind force cyclone as it swept across the coastline on Monday morning eight days ago.

The initial assessments that same day told the story. Situation reports estimated that 65 per cent of buildings in Innisfail had suffered structural damage, 100 per cent some form of damage. Those reports indicated that 90 per cent of the vegetation and 100 per cent of the banana crops in the area had been destroyed. It was not the severity of the damage to the infrastructure and long-term ramifications for the local economy that were immediately apparent in the aftermath of the tragedy; it was the untold human cost of a community reeling to come to grips with the force of nature that had changed their lives forever. No dollar figure could ever quantify the impact of such a devastating event upon a community, but when people emerged from what was left of their homes on Monday morning nothing could have prepared them for what they witnessed: their homes, their livelihoods and their communities flattened in one fell swoop. A tragedy of previously unimaginable scale unfolded in just a few short, horrifying hours.

The Australian government’s response was immediate and comprehensive, but no-one estimated the enormity of the task ahead. Torrential rain and extensive flooding after the initial event provided an additional level of complexity to the challenge of the recovery operation. With road access to the north and south of Innisfail cut off and the sodden Innisfail airstrip rendered incapable of accommodating heavy aircraft, smaller aircraft and landing aircraft were sourced to assist in moving large items and emergency supplies into the township.

The Australian Defence Force mobilised immediately, and more than 400 personnel continue to work closely with state and federal agencies to help devastated communities recover and rebuild. Defence assets deployed as part of the relief operation included seven Blackhawk helicopters, three Army Iroquois helicopters, one Army Chinook helicopter, two Navy Seahawk helicopters, one Navy landing craft and three C130 Hercules aircraft. A Combat Service Support Battalion set up at Innisfail Showgrounds, providing emergency support to the local population, including with the establishment of a water purification unit capable of producing 7,500 litres per hour, the distribution of 16,000 one-man ration packs and thousands of litres of bottled water, the establishment of a field kitchen for the preparation of fresh food for residents, the provision of a bath unit that can shower up to 120 persons per hour, and the capability to provide up to 500 beds and a primary health care support team and environmental health officers. There is no question that the Defence Force has been outstanding in its ability to respond quickly and effectively to this disaster.

Other agencies have responded admirably to the events and tragedies that emerged, to help communities get back on their feet in what are the most difficult of circumstances. Across all agencies it is clear that the Commonwealth stands ready to support the people of Far North Queensland. To date Emergency Management Australia has ensured that 35 formal requests have been acted upon by a total of 11 government agencies. After witnessing the devastation first hand, the Prime Minister announced that the government is providing a comprehensive package of direct financial assistance to people at this difficult time. In total, more than $100 million of assistance has been committed in relief payments. These will be largely delivered through Centrelink.

The Prime Minister today made further announcements about assistance that he first mentioned on Sunday, 26 March. He said in his statement to this House and also in a statement that he has issued formally that, while it remains open for people to submit receipts in relation to power, which we are seeking to have restored, he has determined administratively for a quicker and easier approach that anyone who states that they have used power for the purposes of power generation will be eligible for an excise relief payment backdated to the day of tropical Cyclone Larry. The payments made by Centrelink will be as follows: $280 per month where the household is without reliable electricity and $560 per month where the business is without reliable electricity. Those payments will be tax free, and the expectation is that the payments will begin to be made by Friday. I mention this matter because we continue to keep under review the arrangements that we have in place. Where we can enhance those further in a meaningful way, that will happen.

In addition to those matters mentioned by the Prime Minister, the Department of Transport and Regional Services is helping to meet the immediate personal hardship situations and distress costs through the advance of $40 million to Queensland under the natural disaster relief arrangements. Under these arrangements, concessional loans of up to $200,000 will be eligible to farmers and small businesses to help re-establish their enterprises. The Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources will assist by offering one-off, tax-free grants to help businesses with immediate restocking, replanting and clean-up activities. The clean-up and recovery operations require close cooperation of all government agencies across jurisdictions.

I was particularly briefed that the cyclone was imminent. I was aware of the steps that were being taken by Queensland to forewarn local residents. I have personal and family reasons for being conscious of those matters, because I had a daughter living in Cairns at the time and was, as any parent would be, in touch with her during this emergency.

I spoke immediately after it with Pat Purcell, the Queensland Minister for Emergency Services, and put in place arrangements with the agency that works to me, Emergency Management Australia, within hours of the cyclone crossing the coast. Emergency Management Australia had convened the Australian government Counter-Disaster Task Force to deal with requests for assistance from the Queensland government. The Prime Minister, as he has outlined, had contact with the Premier, and I, as I have already mentioned, had spoken with Pat Purcell, and in order to ensure that these matters worked as seamlessly as possible we continued that very close cooperation. Matters raised with me by Pat Purcell I actioned. We wanted to ensure that every step that the Commonwealth could take reasonably was implemented effectively and in a timely fashion.

I think this does reflect the major strength of our well-tried and tested cross-jurisdictional emergency management arrangements. It is all too easy, when looking at what has happened further afield where governments have to work together, to take for granted that governments here will be able to work collaboratively together. I have to say that it does not happen by accident. It is because we have put in place collaborative arrangements, involving the Commonwealth, states and local government through the cross-jurisdictional emergency management arrangements, that there is the capacity for governments to act quickly and effectively together. These arrangements recognise of course that operational decisions are often best made by state authorities, who are in the position to assess priorities of need on the ground, because that is where they are.

This is not to say that there were not unavoidable delays and that assistance in some cases was not received as quickly as we would have liked. Nevertheless, we were working on those matters immediately after the disaster struck. We understand the frustration of the local people and the difficulty and uncertainty they experienced in the immediate aftermath of the cyclone. Queenslanders, and I am sure the member for Leichhardt and the member for Herbert, will tell particularly of the exploits of North Queenslanders. They are renowned for their resilience. It is a trait that we have seen from the population generally in the region in the past week in the face of extreme adversity. Communities have pulled together, neighbours have helped one another and so too have complete strangers. It is these endearing human qualities that remind us of what makes us as Australians, I think, unique in many respects.

I would like to thank people for their patience and their willingness to roll up their sleeves and get on with the job of cleaning up and rebuilding their towns and centres. I want to assure the people of Far North Queensland on behalf of the government that we will not forget you in these circumstances, and I suspect that with the former Chief of the Defence Force, Peter Cosgrove, at the helm of the recovery effort we will not be allowed to forget that this is a long-time challenge. The Australian government is in there for the long haul. We stand ready to continue to offer assistance wherever it is needed.

Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I support the motion moved by the Attorney-General. Just over a week ago Cyclone Larry tore through the communities of Innisfail and the surrounding towns and districts. Miraculously, but sadly, only one person was killed and few were seriously injured. In the space of a few hours, winds up to 290 kilometres an hour destroyed thousands of homes and businesses, ruined banana and sugar crops and destroyed the livelihoods and hopes of very many people.

The damage bill is substantial and the cost of rebuilding immense. At the outset of these remarks, I want to thank the Prime Minister for including me in his party that went north to meet with Peter Beattie to tour the sites of damage and destruction in the immediate aftermath of the horrific event. I can assure honourable members that what they saw on their television services in the nights that followed was not an isolated representation. This is one of those occasions where the shock obtained from the evening news services could not possibly encompass the damage actually suffered—extraordinary, widespread damage that will take a very long time to deal with.

The value of the political leadership of the state and country turning up, along with state and federal members from the area, was an opportunity to say to the people of Innisfail and the surrounding areas that the Australian people stand behind you in the circumstances you now confront. We are a people who responded generously to a natural disaster, the tsunami, in our region a year or so ago. We will stand with you at least as well as we did then, when there were enormous outpourings of generosity, in order to deal with the circumstances in which you now find yourselves.

Naturally enough, as the crisis unfolded there was invariably going to be a struggle on the part of emergency authorities, police services and governments to get to grips with the enormity of it, and, as a result, people’s patience would be, and was, tried sorely. It is in that context that it was very good to get the stories of self-help that emerged from the region. For starters, the extraordinarily low casualty level speaks enormously well of the people of the area. They were well prepared. They knew how to defend themselves in circumstances where a cyclone hit. Secondly, there was a real concern and care for each other, even though most were shocked and traumatised by the destruction of things that held such both sentimental and practical value for them.

I met a chap in Babinda who had spent the previous couple of days—and was continuing to do it—going through all those areas that he knew were inhabited by neighbours who were elderly and had started the process of cleaning up and taking away in his small truck the wreckage around their yards. We all saw in Innisfail the activities of butchers and a restaurateur who, confronting a situation in which people simply were not being fed and where food was scarce, emptied their storage facilities to feed the population and ensure that survival could take place.

You could go through a whole range of anecdotes about self-help. It does not get away from the fact, of course, that people are deeply traumatised and have very high expectations of government. To this point, the reaction of governments has been, to my mind, fulfilling those expectations. There is also the undertaking by both state and federal governments that whatever measures have been put in place to this point are not necessarily the last of the things that they will do.

I thought it was a very good move to put General Peter Cosgrove in charge. One of the things you can say about soldiers is that they know how to work through logistics issues. They know how to work around officialdom or blockages when they confront logistics problems. I know that General Cosgrove will stick to his task until he believes that it is satisfactorily concluded. I want to praise the local federal and state members. I want to praise the Queensland Premier as well. The Queensland Premier has spent a considerable amount of time there and he has tried his very best to keep on top of the issues as they emerge and to keep the rest of the country informed. I have words of praise too for the member for Kennedy and the member for Leichhardt in doing their jobs as local representatives in the circumstances. I want to add to that list Warren Pitt, who is the local state member directly concerned with the area most seriously affected.

Rebuilding lives, businesses, farms and buildings will take commitment, energy and money. The money pledged not only by governments but by the Australian people will be very well spent. It will, however, take time. Fifteen thousand homes are still without power and all face the dogged task of cleaning up and restoring services. I remember talking to one woman who owned a beautiful heritage hotel which looked as though it had been the object of an artillery barrage. The water was still seeping in through the roof. We must remember that the people in Innisfail are in the middle of the wet and the rain is virtually continuous. Any queuing is done in the most inclement and difficult circumstances. I think the hotel owner understood—she had before her decent insurance and decent support—there would be no monetary difficulties in handling the problem. But there is just the despair, the trauma and the horror at looking around at what had been built and what had given people so much joy for so long. She had to stand in the middle of that wreckage and face the fact that she, her husband, her family and their workers will be tied up for months and months in attempting a decent repair of that hotel to get it back to being fully operational again.

We have to understand that the workforce to do the job does not exist in the region. There are not sufficient builders, carpenters and those associated with the building industry to do the job. It is not going to be easy to mobilise the personnel to do the tasks that are necessary to see that people are going to be adequately housed. What that means is that the hundreds of volunteers, SES personnel and defence forces helping those devastated communities to get back on their feet are actually going to be required for a long time. It is another reason that it is important that there is good local representation handling these issues and a good man like General Cosgrove on the job. The fact of the matter is that this will still be a major problem for the people of the area long after this has passed from the 24-hour news cycle. It is going to be a substantial task for months, if not years, to bring an element of normality back to the lives of the people of Innisfail. But they need to know that the federal and state parliaments are seized of this matter and they will not cease to be seized of it until the job is done.

Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to share some of my experiences of the dreadful situation that occurred at seven o’clock last Monday, 20 March when Cyclone Larry crossed the coast near Innisfail. I have to say that the preparedness of the community obviously can be seen by the lack of loss of life, if you like, in this dreadful catastrophe and also by the minimal amount of injuries. In preparation for the cyclone, quite a number of residents were removed from areas that were considered vulnerable. Full marks go to the state emergency authorities in taking that initiative and removing those people from harm.

From my residence in Cairns, just after 8.15 on Monday morning, I drove the 50-odd kilometres to Babinda to where my mum lives. I had to pry her out from under her bed where she was seeking shelter with her dog after quite a bit of the roof of her house had been removed. It was quite surreal to travel down through that area at that time. Some of the power poles were still on fire, some of the transformers were going off like firecrackers and there were powerlines and debris—vegetation et cetera—all over the road as I moved further south from Cairns. You started to see the starkness of many of the rainforest hills as you came closer to Babinda where the trees were totally devoid of any leaves. The waters were starting to rise with the rain that was continuing to come down. It was an amazing feeling. It was a great relief when I was able to reach my mum, but I was devastated at the impact, particularly as I got closer to Babinda, of the destruction in the community. In Innisfail, I think, about 65 per cent of their buildings were damaged; in Babinda, I think it was closer to 80 per cent. Whilst it is a smaller community, it certainly suffered very badly.

The other thing that I noticed as I travelled through the area was the sugar cane. As we know, sugar has been having a hard time in recent years, but the industry was faced with a bumper crop and record prices for the first time in many years. Not only was the cane lying on its side as a result of the wind but also in many of these areas it had been ripped out by its roots. I understand that about 60 per cent of the crop in these affected areas has been lost. As the Attorney mentioned earlier, about 100 per cent of the banana crop has been lost.

This was a rather unusual cyclone. Its intensity was not unlike that of Cyclone Tracy which hit Darwin, but it moved a lot quicker. Whereas the local impact of Tracy was about 40 kilometres from where it hit the landfall, with Larry, because it was moving so quickly—something like 25 to 30 kilometres an hour—the intensity was maintained as it went over the mountains into areas deemed to be cyclone-free. Areas as west as Ravenshoe and Herberton in the Atherton Tablelands suffered very severe losses. Other industries, such as dairying, horticulture, aquaculture, rare and tropical fruits and plants and flowers, have all been quite severely damaged and will be without income for a considerable period. It will take some years before the macadamia and avocado industries recover. It will be at least a season before other industries, such as the sugar and banana industries, start to recover.

It took a couple of days for the impact to really set in. I have to say that the response of the emergency services was nothing short of outstanding. My full credit goes to all of those emergency services on the tablelands and the coast that responded pretty much immediately and provided food and emergency accommodation. Ergon was out there almost immediately looking at repairing services. A large number of areas have now had their power restored. Today Ergon announced that it expects the majority of its areas outside of Innisfail will have power restored within seven days. That in itself is absolutely amazing.

When such a disaster occurs, unfortunately the media tend to focus on a few negatives, but there were many positives from within the community. I acknowledge that the Leader of the Opposition went with the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister to visit the area within a couple of days of the disaster. I understand they did not go there earlier because they did not want to get in the road; they thought they would let things start to happen before they arrived.

I also acknowledge the outstanding contribution of the Premier of Queensland. There was an all-of-government response. Johnston shire’s Neil Clarke deserves special mention for the work that he has done after seeing his community almost totally destroyed. My colleague the member for Kennedy has also worked very much on the ground with the community. Other mayors in the tablelands shires—and of course Mayor Byrne, who is in this place today—were also involved in offering community support. ADF helicopters and on-the-ground crews have done a wonderful amount of work. Greg Goebel from the Red Cross has been in there, as has the Salvation Army. But there have been lots of others.

The business community has been absolutely unbelievable. For example, Better Homes, a building company in Cairns, basically closed their business and shifted their entire workforce to Innisfail for a week. They took two apprentices, nine carpenters, a handyman, bobcats, trucks and equipment and moved down there for a week. They come home every night because they do not want to take up accommodation that is in short supply. They go back in the morning with supplies. I congratulate Wayne and Jenny Cavallaro and give them recognition for the work they are doing. Domino’s Pizza, for example, within a couple of days, sent down 2,000 pizzas to Innisfail. A young woman who has a business in Atherton—Jill Fisher—rang me and said: ‘I have a catering business. It’s a mobile kitchen. Unfortunately, since the cyclone, business has stopped, but I really don’t want to sit here and feel sorry for myself when I see what is happening in Innisfail. Can I take my mobile kitchen down to Innisfail and start cooking meals at Babinda or wherever I am needed? I will do it free of charge.’

We saw this sort of generosity on the Sunrise program on Channel 7 when David Koch and the crew looked for tradesmen from all over the country. They came together in Sydney. Again, Qantas came forward in support—and full recognition goes to Qantas as a corporate citizen—and flew 120-odd tradesmen to Innisfail on Monday to start helping in the rebuilding. We saw 40 firefighters from the Gold Coast, Ipswich and Gatton. There were 15 volunteer nurses from the Gold Coast Hospital. All of these people came together. General Cosgrove said, ‘While it is devastating for the community, at the end of the day, with the community spirit that we see, there is no doubt at all that the community is going to be built better and bigger in the end.’ The member for Canberra is in the chamber. She will recall similar community spirit when the Canberra bushfires occurred not so long ago.

But there are a couple of things that we really need to do, and I would like to quickly focus on those in the time I have left. First of all, I think all of us in this place can get the message out that Far North Queensland is still open for business from a tourism perspective. Do not cancel your holidays. Please come up there, because that will help to keep the economy going. In Cairns, for example, 40 per cent of our economy is tourism. If people stay away, that is going to add to the problems we already have.

Freight subsidies are another thing. I appreciate the Prime Minister’s announcement on support for generators and fuel, but we should understand that freight that is brought into places like Innisfail and Babinda is a backload. Primary produce such as bananas et cetera is taken down south and then fresh fruit and vegetables and other things are backloaded into these areas. But there is no fresh fruit—no bananas and so on—to take south any more, so we need to look at ways to reduce freight costs. If we do not do that, when trucks bring produce from the south and are taken back empty, it is going to increase the cost of these products by 60 to 80 per cent for a community that cannot afford it. So we need to look at this and take it into consideration. I appreciate the fact that our support is able to continue to move it—it is a moving feast—and this is one area in which we really need to do it.

On income support, I think Centrelink and the Minister for Human Services, Joe Hockey, and his team have done a fantastic job. But there are many thousands of people out of work, particularly in the banana industry, and we need to keep their skills in town. Maybe we could look at a work for the dole project or some sort of subsidy—they would normally get social security, because they are out of work—to allow them to continue to work on the farms as part of a massive clean-up. We can keep the skills base there to help the farmers to clean up their farms so that they can start to replant and get their production back. We can still retain the work base within those communities. They cannot afford to lose it.

There is another area I am concerned about because of personal experience. I have a couple of very aged relatives who have lost everything. An uncle of mine, Max Anderson—I am sure he will not mind me using his name—lived at Miriwini and his house was totally destroyed. He is in his 70s and suffers from chronic emphysema. There are a lot of Max Andersons out there—maybe not with emphysema but of that age—living in old houses. Remember that in Babinda and Innisfail a lot of young ones move out of town and go to Cairns, Townsville or further afield for work once they leave school. But the old people stay there. There are lots of elderly women, like my mum, still living in town. They do not want to leave because it is their home town. They are living in houses that have been there forever, but these houses have been demolished by the cyclone.

My uncle is insured but it is an old house. The insurance company said they would pay him out completely—$130,000—but what is that going to build? The insurance company are doing fine—they are doing the right thing—but $130,000 will build nothing. In his 70s, with a health condition and on an age pension, there is no way in the world he can do it. So his only option is an old persons home, of which there are none in Innisfail or Babinda. A lot of people are in this situation. There are a lot of elderly people there and we have to relocate them out of their communities and into Cairns, Townsville or other places. Understand that a lot of people stay there because of their independence, because of their association with the community and also because of their pets. I propose that maybe we can respond to this situation by looking at some sort of group housing for these individuals within their community, where they can have a garden and where they can keep a pet. We could be looking at 10 or 12 of these in Babinda and 10 or 12 in Innisfail. To give them an alternative, they could use their insurance money to pay, if you like, for the strata titling of their unit. It is infrastructure which can stay for the future and it will keep these elderly people in their own towns. If we take these people away, we really do not have a whole community any more. There should be a bit of lateral thinking here in order to keep these people in their communities. (Time expired)

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I left Innisfail, the last two people I saw as I was racing down the street to catch a taxi were Carl and Jenny Hockey. I promised that I would table in the House this photograph of their house. You can see that there is just one panel of about three feet left on it. I have asked for the photograph to be photostated and distributed. Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek leave to table the photograph.

Leave granted.

I promised also that I would mention that the Allianz insurance company said it could not pay until it saw whether their electrical goods—their refrigerator and those sorts of things—were working when they were dried out. But you will see no electrical goods or anything there at all—there is just nothing. I think it would be dangerous. There are two people in the photograph.

My first image of the destruction was of an irregular watering hole of mine, the Marillion Hotel—a beautiful old building. The upper storey was only about three or four feet off the ground. My mouth dropped open as I got out of the car and looked at it. Three voices from inside yelled out: ‘Come in here, you mongrel, and shout! It’d be the first time ever!’ That will give you some idea of the resilience of the people in the area. In the first street I went down, the first two houses looked all right to me—though one seemed to have damage to its shed. The third house was gone completely. The fourth house had a tree that was much bigger than me—it was 40 feet—right across the top of it. Our building code is magnificent. That house took the full weight of that tree, which was just sitting on top of it. When the people opened the door, water came out and went down the stairs. They said: ‘Don’t worry about us; we’ve got no problems. But the poor people over the road!’

I walked over the road and found that all the back and top of that house was gone completely. The next house had a whole roof in front of it, but I do not know whose roof it was. The next house has to be demolished and replaced and the next one is badly damaged. Coming back up the other street, one house was badly damaged and another was completely destroyed—those were the four houses in that street. That is pretty much the situation for about half of Innisfail—East Innisfail. Kurrimine Beach and Bingil Bay might be worse than that. That will give you some idea of what we are dealing with—and, if that photo is passed around, you will also see what we are dealing with.

I want to publicly thank Peter Beattie. A lot of us have our differences and disagreements, and I am not always his admirer, but he was on the ground immediately. We faced a very angry crowd and the Prime Minister and Premier very rightly steered away from that crowd. There were 400 people there who had been standing in teeming rain, and a lot of them were into their third day waiting for handouts. So, when everyone says it was marvellous, I am sorry: 400 people were standing out there! They were different people, because the queue came and went. The Premier went down and faced the music later in the day. I really confronted him—took him aside, of course, not in front of the crowd—and said, ‘This is simply not working. The only time it worked was for the four or five hours you were in here acting like Mussolini.’ That is absolutely what you must have in that situation: someone giving orders—not arguing, not explaining but just giving the orders and getting it done. To give him his due, the next day the announcement was made about Cosgrove. He said he was coming to the same sort of conclusion. I said, ‘You need a military chain of command here—a definitive chain of command.’

In those two areas, those people stood in the teeming rain because we had no tarps. I went with a bloke on Monday to get a tarp. There were no tarps, and I had a fight on Monday lunchtime with all the powers that be—I was very unpleasant and made myself very unpopular over it. On Wednesday the same bloke was still looking for a tarp. They had arrived at the airstrip and they were being distributed by people to certain people, but they were not at the distribution point even on Wednesday afternoon. Things were going wrong. I must emphasise that there was one official living north of this area but, except for him, I would really find it difficult to criticise a single person. Everyone was in there trying hard for 20 hours. On the Monday night, one policeman had been there all day. He was there early in the morning when I was there and he was still there at nine o’clock at night and he had not eaten. I said, ‘I bought you a pie, mate,’ and he said, ‘It’s stone cold.’ I said, ‘Yeah, but the Coca-Cola’s hot!’ Everyone sort of laughed, but it really was not that funny.

You learn things. The thing I would plead with anyone in the future is: you must have a centralised command system; there must be one person who has the authority to give orders. The SES did a magnificent job—Pat Russell and the minister, Wayne Coutts, did an excellent job—but they were not in a position to say, ‘Go over there and do that.’ They did not have that sort of power and that sort of power was needed. We have it in place now, but these are things we learn. The powerlines must go underneath the ground. There is no other way. In fact, there has been a controversy raging about them putting another huge transmission line along the coast. There have been 2,000 turn out in the demonstrations against it, but the powerlines must go underground. They cost more money, but I would say the losses in electricity alone to the state government would exceed $100 million, and that may even be a very conservative figure. My principal secretary lives down that street in the first town where the hotel was. The big steel lamp that hangs over the intersection there was bent right over, all the powerlines were across the street and a telephone pole was clean snapped off. I saw another wooden telephone pole snapped in two places, to give you some idea of the force that we were dealing with here.

The highway is supposed to be able to handle everything but a one-in-100 year flood. Quite frankly, if it was not a spite against me at the last election, there would still be no work on that section between the Murray Flats and south of Tully. The Australian National Highway is pretty well one in 100 years—I am very familiar with it—but that section is going out every three years. When people were in desperate straits for electricity, the generators arrived at Tully and could not get through. They had to go back to Townsville, back to Charters Towers, all the way up the inland highway and then back down again down the Palmerston Highway. So we lost virtually a day in that round-trip because nobody had bothered to upgrade the highway.

We are claiming this is the worst natural disaster in Australian history. I have not got time to go into all the figures, but there is not a single banana tree standing—and 92 per cent of Australia’s production comes out of that area. There is $300 million lost in that one industry alone. On the early reports from the sugar industry, I do not doubt that it will be pretty close to $200 million lost there. We went through all the other industries at Atherton, and I clocked it up at over $120 million in avocados, lychees and macadamias—about 20 or 30 per cent of Australia’s production coming from that area. It will be five, six or seven years before a lot of those trees bear again. Whilst it is still hard to put a figure on the houses that have been damaged, the original figure was that 5,000 homes were in a desperate situation and needed tarpaulins. Most certainly I would be surprised if there were not 2,000 houses that need to be rebuilt there. That may be high, but they are my estimates. I just reeled you off one street that I drove down. I would say that is a pretty fair estimate for about a third of the entire area with about 35,000 people living in it. That is not much fewer than in Darwin, which had under 50,000 at the time of Cyclone Tracy. I look over here at my colleague Warren Entsch and thank him very much for his assistance. His area is a bit out of it, and we appreciate his help.

When the economy in Indonesia collapsed, we found a thousand million dollars to help the Indonesians. This disaster involves our own people, here. At the moment, 2,000 or 3,000 people are living in sheds or lean-tos or under tarpaulins. It has been teeming with rain. It rained almost the entire week, which is why I am a bit croaky in the voice.

Almost the entire council at Innisfail—George Pervan; Tommy Mauloni, who is the local poet as well as being a councillor; Dave McCarthy, who got onto us about the excise, an issue which the Prime Minister has acted on so swiftly and with such generosity; and our mayor, Neil Clarke—and I made it our business to be seen in the street, from sun-up to sundown. It meant a lot to the people. I know politicians get criticised but, where they are innocuous and just trying to give a helping hand, we appreciate very much their assistance and put it on the public record, as with the member for Dawson.

Turning to the substantial matters: the banana industry is worth $300 million. Economists work on a ratio of 20 jobs for every million dollars—that is six thousand jobs. Certainly, over 4,000 jobs have been directly affected by the cyclone. They are not highly paid jobs. Many people work in this industry. Some of them are pretty hard cases, but, whatever criticism might be made of them, they pick your bananas for you. Probably about 800 or 900 people will be retained. But it is not only bananas; there are the other industries.

Many people are now walking the streets; they have no income and many have no homes. We need the Newstart allowance to be made available—I know it is difficult, because we have to work out guidelines. We need it to go into wages, maybe $400 a week. There is $450 coming from Newstart and $200 will come from farmers, tourist operators and rebuilders—the people who are rebuilding homes.

There is a huge gap, as the member for Leichhardt said, between the cost of rebuilding and the insurance payouts. I am not condemning the insurance companies, and I single out the NRMA for praise—their staff were standing in the main street, with their ties and white shirts on, from day one, on Monday. But I am concerned that there is a huge gap between the insurance cover and what it is going to cost people to rebuild. Fred Luzio rang me just before I came into the House. He said to rebuild the cinema will probably cost $500,000—I hope he does not mind me saying this—but the insurance on it will probably be $220,000. He is not certain of either figure at this stage, but that is what it looks like. There is a huge gap.

We need subsidised wages, if I can use that term. Are we going to pay people virtually nothing to sit on their backsides to do nothing or are we going to pay them a decent wage and have them rebuilding our communities for us? We plead with the Prime Minister to get onto that. Quite a few people I have spoken to do not know that a mill is in danger of closing in this area. It was very seriously damaged in the cyclone. I spoke about it to a bloke from another mill, and he said, ‘No, they’ll be taking people with seniority from that mill and people that were just newly put on, like myself, will be gone.’ I thought he and his wife would be nice and safe, but he said, ‘No way. I’ll be losing my job at the mill that will stay open.’ His wife, who is a schoolteacher, said, ‘I’m a relief teacher, but I get three or four days work. But if all of those people move away from that area’—and she said that two families had already left—‘I won’t have any relief teaching, so we’ll have no income in this family at all.’ I plead with the government to understand that many people are in that situation. They do not fit within the guidelines and will get nothing out of this.

People need to understand what the situation has been like there. I was caught out myself when I came into town with 50 or 100 bucks—whatever it was in my pocket—and I ran out of money. I went to buy some food, and I had no money. Plastic magic does not work if you have not got electricity. The banks are all closed because they have no electricity; they cannot operate anything. So I said to the shopkeeper, ‘Cheque?’ and the bloke burst out laughing at me. Then I said, ‘You know I wasn’t serious.’ So I went hungry for all of Tuesday. Everyone else was in the same situation as me. If they were lucky enough to have fuel in their car, they went to Cairns, but a lot of people were not in that category. A lot did not have a car. They had to stand in a line to get money to buy food, which was the reason they were out there in the teeming rain all the time. (Time expired)

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It has been good to hear from the member for Kennedy and the member for Leichhardt in particular because of their first-hand experiences after Cyclone Larry. It demonstrates the great role that a local member of parliament can play, and both members have obviously done that. Some of it has been extremely personal, a lot of it has been very practical and you can also hear that both are going to be very strong advocates for their communities.

It was little Tyarne Stanley who so eloquently put it, after seeing the impact of Cyclone Larry. She said, ‘There’s fences broked; everything’s broked.’ It is hard to imagine this very beautiful part of Queensland being, as she put it, ‘broked’. But, as the two previous speakers have indicated, there is no question that this part of Australia will be restored. The great thing is that we have so many indications that many Australians will do everything they can to help. Already, as so many have said, we have seen the wonderful courage and commitment from the emergency service workers, the Defence personnel and all of the volunteers.

People have spoken about the tremendous way in which we have had so many tradespeople decide to pick up their tools and take them to Far North Queensland. In a time when we have such a serious skills shortage right around the country—there is plenty of work elsewhere in the country—these tradespeople have decided to take their livelihoods with them, to take their skills up to Far North Queensland, and be such a critical part of the massive recovery effort that is now under way.

We have seen, as the member for Kennedy has said, some power restored. Of course there is still an enormous amount of work to be done there. It was terrific to see the children going back to school, although not necessarily in their old classrooms, and that businesses are being reopened at last.

As the member for Kennedy said, it must be a real tonic for people to have Peter Cosgrove up there. When people are in distress, it is important for them to know that somebody of his standing is in charge—somebody who is now going to manage the recovery effort—and that that recovery effort is being conducted with all levels of government.

We have heard a lot from the member for Leichhardt and the member for Kennedy about the important role that local government has played, but we all recognise the important job that has been done, and I am sure will continue to be done, by both the Queensland government and the Australian government. There is no doubt that it must be a comfort if you have lost everything to see someone like Peter Cosgrove around the town with his sleeves rolled up, as he said himself, ready to get stuck in and get everybody organised.

One of the things that I wanted to do particularly today was to very strongly say that all Australians really need to dig deep and support the call of Premier Peter Beattie for the donation of cash to the disaster relief effort. As I understand it, he has set a target of about $20 million. This is money to be raised by all of us, individual Australians, out of our own pockets for this relief effort. I gather that about $8 million has been raised so far. I think it demonstrates that we can do more than that. To anyone who is listening and has the capacity to send some money up to Far North Queensland to help with the relief effort, I am sure it will be very well received.

Others have spoken about the need to get the tourist industry back on its feet. Coming from Melbourne, as I do—I know that it is beautiful in Melbourne right at the moment but it will not be that way for much longer; it will be pretty cold soon—I say to everyone in Melbourne: make sure that when you are taking your next holiday you go to North Queensland. We know that plenty of tourist areas have been very badly damaged, but they will be fixed and they will be fixed soon. What they need is for those of us from the colder areas down south to get up to North Queensland to make sure that the fabulous tourist resorts can deliver that fantastic holiday experience we know they can.

I do feel particularly for the farmers—the sugarcane farmers, the banana growers and the other crop growers. We have heard a lot in the media about the banana growers and the sugarcane farmers, but both the member for Leichhardt and the member for Kennedy have mentioned the other crop growers of macadamia nuts, avocados and all the other very specialised fruits that come from Queensland. We know that they have been very hard-hit. This means that families just have nothing to live on. Not only do they have nothing to live on now but also it is going to cost them a lot of money to rebuild their farms and their livelihoods. Anything that the federal government can do to support those people to get their farms back into operation I know will be very well received.

It has also been made very plain that many towns rely on these farmers for income, and so the local businesses in the towns are also being hard-hit and know that it is going to be tough for them to get back on their feet. Hopefully, though, we will see those businesses able to recover. As I say, I hope that those Australians who live a long way from Far North Queensland but know it for the beautiful place that it is will do everything they possibly can by donating to the relief effort and by getting up there to have their great holidays in Queensland. That way, in the most practical manner possible, we can do our little bit to help.

De-Anne Kelly (Dawson, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When Cyclone Larry, a category 5 event, pounded the North Queensland coast, it was probably the worst natural disaster in Queensland since 1918. Some have said it was the worst in Australia. I guess we will leave it to others to work out where it rates, but there is no doubt that it has really torn the heart out of the communities in Babinda, Innisfail and the surrounding areas. There were winds of up to 290 kilometres per hour. While it was going on, I rang up friends in Babinda and on the tablelands and they said that the winds were utterly unbelievable. It was like a cyclonic train outside their house, and at that time they were in the eye of the storm and waiting for the winds to come from the other direction.

I went up there last Wednesday, stopping at Babinda and then driving down to Innisfail. I saw roofs torn from homes and buildings, power poles snapped over and all of the cane lying flat—as you would be only too familiar with, Mr Deputy Speaker Causley. Whole paddocks of banana crops were cut off at about five feet. They looked like someone had gone across them with a whipper snipper and laid them over. There is a great deal of devastation. But with the level of devastation—some 60 per cent of homes in Innisfail and 80 per cent in Babinda are damaged, severely damaged or completely blown away—it is an absolute mercy that there was no loss of life. Although one gentleman apparently passed away from a heart attack in a caravan, there was no loss of life due to injury. You could see pieces of corrugated iron twisted up in the powerlines. How were people able to crawl across their yards? I met one young woman who, with her three-month-old baby, had crawled across the yard to the neighbour’s house when part of her house was blown away. It is an absolute blessing that no-one was severely injured or killed.

The residents of Innisfail, Babinda, Silkwood, Kurrimine and other areas are certainly in urgent need of our assistance. As we know, people in Kurrimine went without food for days and slept on wet mattresses. People that I met, and as we have heard from the member for Kennedy, are living with two or three families in two-bedroom units or have moved in with neighbours.

I would like to detail the assistance package announced by the Commonwealth. There are ex gratia payments to people whose family home was destroyed or uninhabitable for at least two weeks. This relief amounts to $1,000 per eligible adult and $400 per eligible child. That should give a little breathing space for people to pay for alternative accommodation while perhaps repairs and clean-up are occurring at their home. There is a further $1 million to the Cyclone Larry Relief Fund. The Queensland government has matched that donation with an additional $1 million. For farmers and small businesses there is a one-off income support program equivalent to the Newstart allowance for six months. There is also a one-off grant of $10,000, which is tax free, for small and home-based businesses, including farmers and tourism operators. Farmers and small businesses will also have access to concessional loans to re-establish their enterprises. Those loans are up to $200,000 under natural disaster relief arrangements. As the Prime Minister announced today, the federal government has already made an initial advance of $40 million to Queensland to assist under these natural disaster relief arrangements.

I would like to talk about the situation on the ground. I really do acknowledge the very hard work that has been done by civil servants, by our defence personnel, Centrelink, Ergon Energy, the Red Cross, the Queensland State Emergency Service and certainly by the local member for Kennedy, Mr Katter. When I was there he was meeting people in the queues and helping people. Many of the townspeople I spoke to said that he had been the only politician to visit them. There is no doubt that with heart and soul and with energy Mr Katter is there with his people.

These terrible situations bring out the best in many good people. I would like to highlight some of the issues that we are not generally aware of which result from a catastrophe like this. For instance, when I went down the street in Innisfail there was no water, no sewerage and no power. You do not realise the ramifications of that until you are actually there. On the day I was there water was back on and people were therefore able to get water to flush down their toilets. Imagine three days without being able to flush toilets in a house with maybe three families living in it—quite a taxing situation. Lack of power has enormous ramifications. As Mr Katter, the member for Kennedy, said, people literally had no money in their pockets when the cyclone hit. Nobody could access an ATM. The banks that I visited had holes in the roof, were damaged and there were armed guards. Even if people had been able to go into the banks, because no electronic system was operating, they could not access their accounts. So there was no cash, no money.

Local shopkeepers were incredibly generous. Because there was no power, the food in the little coffee shops and hamburger shops was gradually defrosting and would have perished. So shopkeepers put on street kitchens. Many of them just emptied their refrigerators and freezers and put on a big cook-up—street kitchens. I would like to acknowledge Jeff and Gilda Baines from Jagad’s, Len and Anita Oliveri and many others who set up street kitchens and fed up to 2,000 people a day. I know that the member for Kennedy would have seen many of these good shopkeepers. Because they were losing all of their stock, they were giving it away and helping people—at enormous personal cost to themselves. They had little kids coming up to them for a glass of chocolate milk or something, people who evidently had not eaten that day.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Oliveris, Baines and the Salvos were the only three sources of food there for one day.

De-Anne Kelly (Dawson, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I acknowledge what the member for Kennedy has said: that the Baines, the Oliveris and the Salvation Army were the only source of food for a whole day. Those people need to be acknowledged in this House.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Hear, hear!

De-Anne Kelly (Dawson, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no doubt that the state government attempted to give people cash. There were hundreds in the queues waiting for money—$150 for an individual and $700 for a family. This is not said in a critical way but we need to learn from these situations so that, were this tragedy to occur again, we would be much better prepared. People were standing all day in the driving rain with their children; they could not leave their kids behind. There was a lady, holding a toddler’s hand and pushing a pram, who had been there since eight o’clock and it was then four in the afternoon. Those people were asked to fill out nine pages of forms. I can appreciate that there was some risk management in all of this. Plainly, the state government did not want people who were not entitled to be taking cash away from the needy, but surely it would have been better to adopt a better system, to give people cash. If taken wrongly by those who were not entitled, it should be followed up at a later date but do not make desperate, weary, hungry people stand for eight hours and then tell them, as they were told that afternoon, ‘You’re still in the queue; come back tomorrow.’ That was one of the great sources of frustration. I appreciate the good heart behind the effort to give people cash but situations like that must be streamlined so that people get what they need quickly.

I would like to acknowledge Joe Hockey, the Minister for Human Services. I rang Joe. The Centrelink people were there and were working tremendously hard for all Centrelink customers to make sure that money was put in their accounts, but no-one could access accounts. To his great credit, Mr Hockey, with others, arranged for a generator the next day for one of the local banks so that people could access their accounts and get necessary cash. I thank the minister for taking my call at very short notice and for making the necessary arrangements to overcome that lack of cash. I know this was supported by the member for Kennedy, who was there in the queue as well.

I would like to speak very briefly about businesses. I met Guido Ghidella—a very well know identity in the north—in Babinda. Some $20 million is lost in the sugar industry—about 50 per cent of the crop. As you would know yourself, Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, sugar is a pretty resilient crop and some of it will be harvested, even with the lodging that has occurred.

I would also like to acknowledge Krista and Anne Dunford who travelled down with me. Krista came down with a heap of sausages and cooked them at one of the street kitchens later in the week. I know that the member for Leichhardt and others have acknowledged good people but I think where we can we should acknowledge those who have given up days, in some cases, to assist locals.

In the few minutes I have left, I would like to talk about some of the things that need to be done. I am very pleased, as I know the member for Kennedy is, with the Prime Minister’s announcement of the fuel excise exemption on generators and other fuel usage. I think that is a very useful start. I certainly support the member for Kennedy’s call for the power to be placed underground. The state government are no doubt facing an enormous challenge in the north, but they do receive record amounts of money from the GST and it is a good opportunity to rebuild properly and ensure that such vulnerability in the power network does not exist in the future. Where infrastructure has to be rebuilt—and the rebuilding has to be done—underground power is necessary. Yes, there is an additional cost, but it is certainly worth it and will be a good investment for protecting infrastructure into the future in Queensland.

I also support the call for Newstart moneys to be supplemented such that people can remain in North Queensland—perhaps cleaning up on farms and contributing to the community effort. The reason is that many of these people are very skilled. We want to keep the skill base in the local communities; we do not want to dislocate good employees who now find themselves without a job, not through their fault, their employers’ fault or anybody else’s fault. It is just a set of tragic circumstances. Keep that skill base in the community. Do not disrupt and dislocate them. Provide that continuity of expert skills.

Also, I do not want to see the north denuded of people. That is home for many of them. We do not want to see them move to the southern capitals. Innisfail needs its workforce and will need it again. Some bridging arrangements are required to enable them to stay there. Housing—and I have been talking to the member for Kennedy about this—is going to present an incredible challenge to people in the north.

Australia is a wealthy nation. We heard the figures the other day: our wealth as a nation and per capita has doubled in the last 10 years, and that is something to be very proud of. We were proud as well of the $1 billion in Australian government aid given to the people of Indonesia after the Indian Ocean tsunami. Australians welcomed and supported that contribution. It would be quite wrong to compare the two disasters. Thankfully, there has not been a loss of life directly caused by Cyclone Larry, but it is a time to help those facing devastating loss and to be generous—not to burden them with bureaucracy or rules and regulations but to be generous and give them a helping hand to live and work in their communities and to re-establish their businesses, their livelihoods and their futures.

It is a time to support North Queensland and to look forward. There can be a very strong future up there and, if the proper infrastructure is provided, the future for North Queensland can be even stronger. I thank the federal government for what it has done, particularly for other members of parliament, including the member for Kennedy. I look forward to being part of a generous nation’s assistance to North Queenslanders.

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a Queenslander I have always regarded North Queensland and tropical North Queensland as paradise. It has been my pleasure to visit and travel around it on many occasions. But, of course, with paradise sometimes there is a downside. In tropical and subtropical Queensland, cyclones are a fact of life. People grow used to the risk of these big storms, but nothing prepares anyone—not even stoic North Queenslanders, who have been through some of the biggest storms that this country has seen—for a cyclone the size of Larry, which crossed the Queensland coast at 7.30 am last Monday, 20 March.

I welcome the contributions to the discussion today from all of the North Queensland members, who have worked very hard with all of the authorities to put in place all of the schemes and responses that are required to assist those Far North Queenslanders who have been affected. If you survey the damage to our great agricultural industries and if you take into account the damage to the lives of families—pensioners, young families and all of those people who make up this community—you can see that we have a very substantial problem on our hands. It is a problem that stretches from Mareeba in the north, to the south of Tully and west of Mount Garnet.

The people of Far North Queensland have been simply battered by the worst tropical cyclone in living memory. It packed a massive punch, with winds of up to 290 kilometres an hour that brutalised 12,500 square kilometres of forest, fertile agricultural land, state and national parks, and commercial and residential estates. Of course, we do not know the final numbers yet, but, when it comes to homes, 226 homes in Innisfail have been made uninhabitable, 3,000 applications for ex gratia payments due to houses being uninhabitable for longer than two weeks have been received and 126 homes have sustained structural damage in the Mareeba area—and it goes on. We have heard so much about it today from those who have been on the ground over the past week.

Perhaps the most insightful number expressing the extent of the damage that the people of North Queensland have experienced is that, since last Monday, the wonderful men and women assisting in the reconstruction effort in the affected areas have covered with tarpaulins the leaking roofs of 1,600 houses. I would like to pay tribute to all the work of the Queensland emergency service, the counter-disaster and rescue services, the Queensland Police Service, the Queensland Ambulance Service, the Queensland health service and all of those volunteers we have heard about today, who have used their own personal and private resources in these communities to help their fellow citizens.

There are also the Australian Defence Force personnel and all of the volunteers who have come from outside the area. I know that there are many from my electorate of Lilley in Brisbane who have simply made their way to North Queensland to help their fellow citizens. They have done it because these communities are in their hour of need. Their service to the people of Innisfail, Mareeba and other affected towns and cities is, indeed, a ray of light in what are going to be dark days in Far North Queensland. Their work, in cooperation with state and Commonwealth government agencies, has certainly done a lot to help all those affected people.

But just as a tarpaulin on the roof is only the beginning of the process of rebuilding a house, so the challenge of rebuilding the communities of Far North Queensland has only begun. One point that I would like to make today is that, while in a sense it is easy at a time like this, so close to an event like this, for everybody to consider what should be done and outline the response, it is a far tougher ‘ask’ to be engaged in the planning and delivery to make sure that in the longer term the resources are getting to those people and industries that require them. The scale of the devastation is such that these problems will not go away in two or three months or a year. It will simply take many years of work to assist all of those who have been affected in this process. So what we have on our hands is a long-term project to rebuild the social and economic fabric of one of the most remarkable regions of the world—a region that I have always regarded as being paradise, and a region that makes a marvellous economic contribution as well as a great social contribution to this country. It is going to take more money than has already been committed, more men and women than have already put up their hands to help and—hardest of all—more patience and courage from the resilient people of Far North Queensland.

But as large a task as we face together, I have every faith that we will achieve that task and return Far North Queensland to the vital role that it plays in our national story. I have that faith because I know that no level of government is underestimating the enormity of the task. We have heard from the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition in this parliament, from the Premier of Queensland, from local government leaders and indeed from representatives in this House that they understand that what we say today will only be words if it is not followed up with concrete actions over the next few years, not just the next few months. So local, state and federal governments are in this job for the long term. We will be there until the job is done, because it is our job to fix it all when the TV cameras have gone and all the roofs have been patched up. There will be many other challenges before us. All of the families whose employment and schooling have been dislocated and all of the pensioners who have lost their homes and may experience difficulty in rebuilding have difficult economic and social problems that are going to require a lot of creativity and flexibility the delivery of not only government but also private sector services and programs.

I would like to finish by quoting the words of my good friend and local member for much of the affected area, Warren Pitt. Warren, who is facing a very serious health challenge bravely and with great optimism, had a few words about this to say in the Queensland parliament today. In many ways I think this does sum up much of what has been said here today, particularly by the member for Kennedy, who has been tireless on the ground in the affected areas. That is not to diminish the work that has been done by other members who are here today, but the member for Kennedy is perhaps the one who is most closely affected and will continue to be a vocal member of the parliament for these people. I know he understands the people in the community and their attitudes. I think Warren Pitt does too, and I think he would agree with me that this is the sentiment—as summed up by him today—that exists in Far North Queensland:

... the one thing which doesn’t need rebuilding is the spirit of the affected communities, because that spirit stood resolute and undamaged against Cyclone Larry ...

The people of Far North Queensland certainly have the spirit. We need to provide them with the vehicles and resources to rebuild their communities, not just economically but socially. All in this House should commit today to doing that not just in the short term but in the long term and in the interests not just of the people of Far North Queensland but of the country as a whole.

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

While I am formally known as the member for Herbert, I am informally known as the member for Paradise, as the member for Lilley would know. A key message that I want to give to the parliament this afternoon is that North Queensland has reopened for business and that life goes on. There is certainly significant devastation in a small area of North Queensland, but Queensland is a very large state and all the areas to the north and south of the cyclone track are very much open for business. Those who have been planning trips to North Queensland—maybe for business, as a holiday or to see family—should go with confidence, knowing that they will be welcomed in North Queensland.

Also, it is good news that our wonderful and marvellous Great Barrier Reef World Heritage area has suffered very little damage and that those who want to go and have a reef experience can have that experience now. Indeed there is a kind of reverse outcome from the cyclone’s crossing the reef. While there may have been some small amount of damage to coral in a small area, one of the effects of the cyclone is that large volumes of water have been turned over, actually cooling the reef. Cooling the reef helps mitigate the coral bleaching that has been happening. Certainly the reef is open and is there for wonderful experiences.

When the cyclone was coming, it was unclear what the cyclone’s track might be. Cyclones’ movements can be notoriously erratic. The city of Townsville, my home town, was certainly prepared for it. We did what we normally do, because we are used to it. As I was in Townsville when Cyclone Althea devastated the city back in the early seventies, I know exactly what it is like to suffer a cyclone. So we prepared: we stored our water, we had plastic to keep everything dry if we lost our roof, we had food and cooking facilities. People filled up their cars with fuel and filled up their gas bottles.

But something that happened this time—and it has been referred to earlier in this debate—was the recognition of the need to have cash because the ATMs did not work. We get so used these days to working with plastic cards that when the ATMs do not work there is a real problem. I think our North Queensland community and others affected by cyclones around the country will come to the realisation that they have to add cash to the list of things that they have to do when a cyclone is bearing down on their community.

I want to pay tribute to Centrelink, particularly the Centrelink staff in Townsville but more generally the Centrelink staff in North Queensland who all moved to work together to look after the people affected by the cyclone. They were prepared to go to work when the cyclone hit. In fact, local staff went out of their way to help. In Innisfail on the afternoon of the cyclone there was a local Centrelink staffer at the office checking for damage, making arrangements for repair and making arrangements to get the office reopened as soon as possible. The next day Centrelink staff were on duty at the state government community recovery centres across the devastated area. Their local staff put Centrelink operations above their own needs and that is fantastic. Centrelink are now well regarded as being a wonderful customer service organisation, and they certainly demonstrated that in this particular natural disaster.

Indeed, staff worked with local banks to get cash into the local community, solving the problem that people were facing. Up to 60 staff contributed, backed by a range of staff across Australia in call centres and administration centres who also worked to help those affected by the cyclone. It is not widely understood that Centrelink staff from around the country were doing their bit to help the people of Innisfail and surrounding regions.

I now turn to the Defence Force. I want the parliament to understand that all three services were involved: Navy, Army and Air Force. They were adapting their war-fighting skills to support the community which supports them every other day of the year. Indeed, I am reminded that members of the 2nd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment in Townsville were in Innisfail, but they were also in Baghdad simultaneously helping communities that could not help themselves.

ADF members from as far away as Holsworthy were working with the Navy and Army from Cairns and with 3rd Brigade soldiers from Townsville. The ADF were able to move quickly. They were into Innisfail between the cyclone crossing the coast and the floodwaters rising, cutting off the highways. They were there in a timely and appropriate fashion. They were able to supply life support services until emergency management and civil authorities could take control and manage the situation. Altogether, about 600 troops were involved, with between 300 and 350 troops on the ground every day since the cyclone passed. They have not just been in Innisfail; they have been in places such as Mareeba, Milla Milla, Atherton, Mission Beach, Babinda and Tully.

Let me tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and let me tell the people of Australia about a 51 FNQ Reserve soldier. He worked tirelessly with his unit in Babinda. While he was working in Babinda, helping the people of Babinda, his own family’s house further south—in Silkwood, I believe—had been flattened. He was doing his duty as a serviceman, he was putting his duty as a serviceman ahead of his family, and that is very much to be commended.

All in all, the Australian Defence Force were able to contribute seven Army Black Hawk helicopters, three Army Iroquois helicopters, an Army Chinook, two Navy Seahawk helicopters, one Navy landing craft and three C130 Hercules out of Townsville. They were doing tasks like establishing water purification plants, distributing 16,000 one-man ration packs, establishing a field kitchen for supplying fresh meals for up to 700 people, distributing 4,000 tarpaulins and planning the provision of a bath unit. There was also a capability to provide up to 500 beds, a primary health care support team, environmental health officers and so on. Of course, 3CER from Townsville were there with their chainsaw team and heavy equipment clearing away the debris.

I was particularly impressed by the CH47 Chinook helicopter flying an entire electricity pylon tower from Townsville up to the Innisfail substation to ensure that that substation could be made operational and the power put back on—and I think a picture of that may have been seen around the country. It is not only Innisfail and surrounding district that have been affected; other cities and towns in North Queensland have been affected because, invariably, they have businesses supplying goods and services to the affected area. But they will come through.

I finish now with this thought that often, as we all know, a bit of good can come out of adversity, and we hope a lot of good comes out of this adversity. It will come out through rebuilding and strengthening community relationships, neighbourly relationships and rebuilding a community with new facilities. There are lots of good things that can come out of this adversity, but currently things are quite difficult, as the member for Kennedy will know. I wish the people of the devastated region well, and I commit the government to do what it can to help them in their time of need.

Debate (on motion by Mr Pearce) adjourned.