Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek the indulgence of the House to make a statement about the floods in Queensland.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Proceed.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I thank the House. I want to take some time to put on the public record some of the issues and to note the support we have had in Queensland in my electorate of Maranoa with these floods that are unprecedented in recorded history. To give the House some idea of the geographic distance and spread of the floods, they cover an area—obviously intermittently broken up by land mass—twice the size of the state of Victoria. Prior to the more high-profile areas that have been receiving some attention during the course of the last week, in what I would call the Darling River system, the Lake Eyre basin system right out in the west of my electorate—the Diamantina, the Bulloo, Barcoo and Quilpie shires—were certainly getting it as the rain depression moved across from the Northern Territory and dropped unprecedented amounts of rain. The Diamantina, the Georgina and the Barcoo-Thomson rivers all fed down towards the Lake Eyre basin in record floods which have cut off communities for the last two to three weeks.

To give the House some idea of how isolated people have been and what an impact the flood has had in the Bulloo shire, the flood in that region has been so prolonged that people have been able to drive out of Thargomindah for 14 days this year. This has of course presented enormous challenges for basic household needs, like food, fuel, supplies and medical needs. Anyone who has had to move in and out of the area has had to go by air, which obviously underpins the importance of air travel and, of course, a good airport in these communities. Their lifeline really has been air support out there, and I think it is important that I acknowledge the great work of the council employees and the mayors in those shires. The work that they have done has been quite extraordinary.

To give the House some idea of the geography, think of a remote pastoral property up to 100 kilometres from the nearest town, isolated all the way by water, with the power cut, if the property were on rural power. If they were generating their own power, obviously the diesel that is used would be getting low. In some cases drums of diesel had to be transported by helicopter into these very remote pastoral properties so that they could keep power generated for refrigeration and to maintain electricity in those homesteads. That is in the west of my electorate. I know there are going to be severe stock losses out there, fences and property are going to be lost, and we probably will not know for several months the extent of the damage to roads in that part of western Queensland. These roads will be out for probably another month to two months to come, and we will not know even then whether we will be able to get heavy vehicles into those communities. The flooding does of course feed into the Lake Eyre basin and also into the Cooper basin oil and gas area and the Moomba gas fields—an important resource for the whole nation—and it will disrupt the movement of vehicles and personnel into those oil and gas fields.

Two little communities in the Quilpie shire, Adavale and Eromanga, probably did not make the news down here, but houses and people in those communities were cut off and inundated. Like so many people when we see adversity like this, they are self-help communities. People jump in and help each other, and that has been one of the remarkable features of this flood event across my electorate.

I want to mention the leadership of the mayors out there—Dave Edwards of Quilpie; Robbie Dare of Diamantina; my namesake, Barcoo Bruce Scott in the Barcoo shire; and John Ferguson in the Bulloo shire—and the local councils. I want to emphasise the local councils, because further east we have seen some amalgamation of councils. This has required someone to be able to take charge during this severe flooding event. To get an idea of what I mean when I say ‘severe flooding’, there have been unprecedented amounts of rain, with eight or nine inches on the old scale overnight in a town like Birdsville—which has an average rainfall of about five inches. So you can start to get some idea of the challenge that was confronting the local councils and employees which required the leadership of local mayors. I thank all of them.

Further east, to Charleville and the Warrego River, you move into what I call the Darling River system. It is often called the Murray-Darling Basin, but we should not confuse the two systems. I find them to be two totally different systems. The Darling River system is east of the Lake Eyre basin. Charleville was probably the worst hit of any of the communities in the Darling River basin in my electorate. They had over 500 houses that were inundated. I note Minister Bowen is here in the chamber: thank you, Minister. Your department’s people out there, the community services and the fact that you were able to have me on your plane as we visited Charleville yesterday to see what has happened there was great comfort to the people, and I want to say a little bit more about the government support in a few moments.

It was one thing for people to have the first flood through their homes, with very little notice—within eight to 10 hours—and to start the clean-up but, two days later, the flood came again and inundated the same homes. This is a traumatic event for people and families. It is about the safety of people, being able to evacuate people, being able to keep moving the emergency services in—they could not come by road; they could only come by air, often by helicopter—and deploying them in the areas to help these communities. Mark O’Brien, the mayor, showed enormous and wonderful leadership in that area. Once again, it showed a local council leading and being able to bring the emergency services meetings together to coordinate the efforts of the SES, Emergency Services Queensland, the rural fire board people and emergency people from New South Wales who were also up there with helicopters. Once again, that local leadership was needed.

I noted—and I am sure you did, too, Minister—that the volunteers who were manning the community support there were able to process claims for cash grants and other grants that will obviously flow for people who may not have been insured. There were people from the Red Cross. I sat down with Betty Taylor, from your electorate, member for Hinkler. People from Townsville and Cairns came out to help their fellow Queenslanders, their fellow Australians. They were just so busy. They showed compassion for people who were obviously in a distressed situation and were able to calmly deal with the situation and get that cash and emergency aid coming through to the people as they went back to their homes and started to clean them out. Councils were able to take the destroyed carpets and beds and almost all of people’s belongings that were on the front footpaths away to a rubbish tip.

Minister, you might have seen the local doctor there in Charleville and the new rural medical infrastructure that had only been opened in the last 12 months and how proud she was of the equipment that she put in there, because she wanted to have a beautiful surgery. Much of the money for that new rural medical infrastructure and the consulting rooms had been provided by the Commonwealth, but it has all been destroyed. No-one could ever have believed floodwaters would have entered that medical centre. In fact, two weeks ago, Minister Albanese, the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, opened the local town hall, after some stimulus money had gone into the refurbishment. That hall was also inundated and some of the money that was spent there will have to be spent again. The beautiful floor will have to be lifted. Also, the paint and some of the other materials in the kitchen have also been destroyed. It will take a long time for a community like Charleville to recover. Although they have seen it all before, this is one of those extraordinary floods that, notwithstanding they had a levee bank built to keep the Warrego River out of the town, the Bradley’s Gully, which has approximately a 450,000-acre catchment, had 10 inches of rain overnight on two occasions and that is what flooded the town.

I now move further east to my own hometown of Roma. I was actually going to do a Commonwealth health promotion, a Healthy Living breakfast, but I was blocked because of floodwaters. My rain gauge recorded eight inches on the hill that I live on—and, thank goodness, I live on a hill. To give you some idea of the magnitude of what hit the people of Roma, where 200 houses were inundated, according to the official recording station at Bungil Creek the water rose eight metres in six hours. If that occurred on the coast you would say you had a tsunami. That was the type of event that hit mainly homes and a couple of small businesses in my hometown of Roma.

I talked to a young teacher who was on her first job in western Queensland. She had left her flat at eight o’clock in the morning and gone to school, not thinking that by midday she would be alerted to the fact that her flat, which she rented, was four feet under water. All the goods she had bought that had not been insured—the refrigerator, the bed, the little lounge chairs and things like that—were destroyed. It gives you some idea of the sudden impact that this has had on families. They had no chance to move anything out of their homes. The big effort on that day, at midday, was about getting the SES and council workers into these low-lying areas and also into areas that had never seen water in recorded history and about helping people, children and babies and getting them to higher ground.

Further downstream, those systems run into the Condamine and Balonne. As I understand it, over in the town of Meandarra, which has never had inundation, 16 to 20 houses were inundated. Once again, a sudden impact, a shock, hit them so quickly. Down at St George, people certainly had time to prepare, with sandbags, for perhaps the worst flood they had ever seen. In fact, they had the highest recorded flood they had ever seen in St George. The Minister for Human Services and Senator Ludwig were with me yesterday. To see the sheer volume of water moving down into the Darling River system is wonderful, but of course it is doing damage. Whilst we have that, we also hope for much better times ahead.

For those who often like to use Cubbie Station in my electorate of Maranoa as one of those touchstones for all the problems of the Murray and Darling River system, can I just let them know that 320,000 megalitres of water is passing through the Beardmore Dam gates every day. In a day and a half that volume of water will fill Cubbie Station’s storages. That water is still running through today. It will run through tomorrow and the next day and it will run through at that rate for several weeks. It gives you some idea of what this volume of rain can do. To put it into perspective for people, it will take a day and a half to fill Cubbie Station—that wonderful irrigation farm that is currently in voluntary administration. Now it will be back in production it will produce about 120 jobs, and up to 300 with all the subcontractors, in the townships of Dirranbandi and St George. That is the kind of hope for a better future. But we have to get through the here and now as the waters go downstream.

While we were in St George yesterday, Minister Bowen, the emergency services and community support were not able to get out to Dirranbandi, Thallon, Hebel and Bollon. Premier Anna Bligh had been to Bollon several days earlier and there was nowhere to land. They found a dry spot just to the west of town and they took her into town on the back of a tractor carryall. She had water up to her knees as she went in to see the people of Bollon, who were all perched at the hotel. That was the only bit of dry space where they could meet—and that is where the people of Bollon have been for the last three or four days. Likewise at Cunnamulla, which has got a levy bank, they have done magnificent work in closing off the levee to the town. That is certainly going to save Cunnamulla from the inundation that would otherwise have happened without the levy banks.

I record my appreciation for the wonderful work of the community services, the State Emergency Service, the fire brigades, the local residents and Telstra. All of those services have been absolutely magnificent. They went to those communities and we had them deployed to a building to help with cash grants and advice. They were there just doing their job. It was just wonderful to see—as I am sure you saw yesterday, Minister—the relief on so many people’s faces. We are all aware of what the support, through these cash grants, means to the community.

I also thank the Prime Minister. I was speaking to his office and I said: ‘This is not about politics; this is really about people.’ I wanted to make sure that, whatever happened, we took a bipartisan approach. We have got to do the best we can as a state, as local government and as a nation to help these people back. There is no politics. If anyone wanted to play politics out in my part of the world whilst this is happening, I can assure you they would not be welcome and they would soon get the short shift from people who can pick someone playing politics a mile away.

I thank the Prime Minister and thank Minister Albanese, who tried to get me three or four times by mobile phone. In the end I was getting voice mails before we could make contact with each other. I said to my office, ‘If that is Minister Albanese, next time, if I am on the phone to Buckingham Palace, please put them on hold and I will take Albo’s call.’ He was very interested. I think it demonstrates the genuine concern from ministers of the government to help these communities. I had calls also from my leader, Warren Truss, on several occasions, as was the case with Tony Abbott, and I told them the same thing. I gave them an overview of the picture that we are now confronting and will for several months yet. This is about helping people, saving lives, making sure that people are comfortable and helping them make the best of what has been a very difficult situation for so many families.

I think there are two messages that are coming from the mayors in many of the communities. We hope that any of the grant or insurance money that people are receiving for rebuilding and reconstruction is all spent locally. We might not be able to get all the tradesmen locally but we hope the money is spent locally. I think that is the message that all these communities want to send: if it is public money or insurance money, please can we see as much of it as possible spent in the local communities to help those communities—because they too will be suffering from the loss of revenue. This takes a while to feed through the system and people will be naturally focused on the rehabilitation before they will start to spend on other personal effects.

In looking at our communities and at the volunteers who come forward, on Sunday in Charleville and in my home town of Roma, the Commonwealth Bank opened up just to cash the cheques, which were Commonwealth Bank cheques. That gives you some idea of how people felt about their fellow Australians: they opened on a Sunday to cash these cheques. It is just extraordinary. You could say that about all those throughout my electorate who have been affected by these floods. That is the sort of response we got from local people.

I want to acknowledge the great work of Telstra Country Wide. They were absolutely magnificent. I know in St George and in Roma they opened up the pay telephones as free phones because that may have been the only phone someone had. They have made free mobile phones and satellite phones available. They have got a new plan for rental costs to help people that have lost a connection to their home or will not be able to go back their home. Telstra Country Wide have been absolutely fantastic, as have the other emergency services. I want to place on the record the great work that they have done and the fact that they are a physical presence in our community.

Finally, once again, to the members of the ministry here, the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, the Leader of The Nationals, Warren Truss, and all of those at a state level—including Anna Bligh, who was out there on several occasions—I thank all of you. This is about people. This is about how we can all do the right thing by these people and help these communities to rehabilitate, to get going and look forward to the better times that the rain will ultimately leave behind. I thank the House.

Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

on indulgence—As the honourable member for Maranoa said, yesterday he and I, together with the Special Minister of State and, for some of the time, Senator Joyce, were able to visit some of the affected communities to tour the area and assess the damage. There were two reasons I wanted to go to the affected area. Firstly, I wanted to thank the staff members of government agencies, both those locally based in the affected areas and those who had flown in for the purpose, for their tireless work in assisting these communities over many hours—often very long hours and often with very little sleep—and, often, for those who are locally based, dealing with trauma in their own family. Several staff members that I had spoken to had homes which were flooded but their key priority was assisting others.

Secondly, I also wanted to assess the government’s response to ensure that we were doing everything we could and to assess whether there was anything we needed to do better or anything more that needed to be done. I am very pleased to be able to report to the House that federal government agencies, primarily Centrelink, and state government agencies, primarily Emergency Management Queensland and the Department of Communities, and local government agencies and not-for-profit organisations such as Red Cross, the Salvation Army, Lifeline and the SES, as well as private companies like Telstra and the banks, have come together as one to provide seamless support and assistance to those affected.

Yesterday we were able to visit St George and Charleville. It is true that the degree of damage, indeed devastation, is very significant. We expected to see that. It is also true that the degree of resilience and determination in those communities is very evident. They are not all in the same situation. It is easy for those of us who are watching from afar on television to assume that there is one flood and one situation. That is not the case. The people of St George, for example, got significant notice that the flood was coming. That does not mean the devastation has been less, but it means it has been different. The people of Charleville had very little notice at all. Several people I spoke to went to work at eight or nine o’clock in the morning and by 10 o’clock their houses had been deluged, with no warning at all. So these situations are very different.

Yesterday we were not able to get to places like Quilpie, Thuringowa and Dirranbandi, but they were very much in our thoughts and they were very much in our questions as we spoke to members of the various government instrumentalities and not-for-profit organisations about what support and assistance is being supplied to people in those communities. It is very difficult in some circumstances there, where access is very limited indeed, but nevertheless the support is being given.

The government has activated, through the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, the Australian Government Disaster Recovery Payments, and they are a big focus of the government’s response. Yesterday, further assistance was announced by the Prime Minister and Premier Bligh in relation to primary producers and small business. This is very significant, and I thank the member for Maranoa for both his public and private comments on yesterday’s announcements. A number of small business people I know had difficulty getting insurance coverage for floods. Underinsurance is a big issue around Australia but, where a company tries to get insurance but cannot get insurance, that is a separate question altogether. I know that the further announcements made yesterday, with grants under two different programs of up to $20,000 or $5,000, will be very significant in those communities.

I say to the House, as I have said to the member for Maranoa, that the government stands ready to listen seriously to any further issues or requests that arrive. As the member for Maranoa said, the Prime Minister spent a considerable part of the weekend on the phone to the various mayors, which I know the mayors appreciated. The member for Maranoa should not hesitate to provide further information, requests or anything of that nature to the government, because we stand ready to take seriously any requests.

I thank the mayor of Charleville, Mark O’Brien, and the mayor of Balonne, Donna Stewart, for their assistance yesterday. It was very useful to have them personally giving us a tour of the towns, talking about the issues that the community is suffering at the moment and talking very positively and constructively about the recovery and the determination of the communities. We stand side by side with them.