Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Community Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Over the past month or so we have seen some devastating weather effects wreaking havoc on the Australian summer. We have had the floods in the Carnarvon and Gascoyne region in Western Australia; and the Rockhampton and Emerald floods. And who can forget that dreadful day of the ‘inland tsunami’, as it is now being called, in Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley? We have had the Ipswich and Brisbane floods; floods in New South Wales and in my own home state of Tasmania; floods in Victoria; storms in Victoria, the Northern Territory and New South Wales; some very serious bushfires in Perth; and, of course, Cyclone Yasi.

As the PM so eloquently put it, ‘We have had our summer of horror.’ It has been an incredibly emotional and difficult time for all those affected. People have lost their homes, their businesses, their employment and, more importantly, their loved ones. We all know how harsh the Australian environment can be. Just two days ago we had the second commemoration of the Victorian bushfires, and they immediately spring to mind when you think about Australia’s history of natural disasters. We have had more than our fair share. But these past weeks have seen a convergence of the floods, the cyclones and the bushfires at such an immense level and so close together that each disaster becomes more and more shocking to watch.

I know the people of my home state of Tasmania have been feeling great empathy for their fellow Australians as they deal with the ramifications of these floods. The people of Franklin would want me to extend my sincere sympathies to the families and friends of those who have been lost. Tasmanians have been fortunate in that we have had very few natural disasters, but whenever we have needed a hand from our fellow Australians it was always there. So at this time we want to lend a hand. We want to stand tall with all those affected and assist where we can. I know many Tasmanians have donated money to the disaster appeals. I know our SES volunteers have been to Queensland and assisted where possible. And, as I speak today, we have our firefighters ready to fly to WA should the exhausted fire crews over there need some support. Tasmanians have been playing a hand.

In my role as Parliamentary Secretary for Community Services last week it was my very great privilege to visit the communities of Toowoomba, Ipswich and Brisbane. I saw firsthand what these communities are experiencing—the incredibly difficult conditions they face as they clean up their homes and their businesses and pick up and move on with their lives. I spent some time with my colleague the member for Blair, talking to people affected. It was very clear that he has been and still is supporting and fighting for his local community.

I was pleased on that day to be able to announce that the Gillard government would provide additional emergency supplementary relief funding of over $1 million. This funding will be offered to organisations in flood affected areas of Queensland that currently have emergency relief services operating and are able to quickly deliver more help to those in need.

We certainly met a lot of people doing it tough in Queensland, but we also saw some great community service providers across the flood affected areas who are doing an amazing job supporting those who need it—organisations like Lifeline Community Care; Mission Australia; the Salvation Army; Centacare; and Lifeline Darling Downs and South West Queensland, based in Toowoomba. These organisations have been a focal point for the community and they will be pivotal as the recovery efforts in the coming weeks, months and years are undertaken.

We heard some remarkable stories—stories of children who are experiencing trauma; children who, after the floods, started to wet their beds at night; children who were frightened as they heard about Cyclone Yasi. There is much work to do. We have heard about marriage break-ups already and the increase in domestic violence as the stress on individuals increases. The people in these community service organisations, both the paid staff and the volunteers, have done a tremendous job. I want to place on record my thankyou to them all for not just doing their job but doing it even though they themselves sometimes were affected by the floods. There were some workers who had lost their own homes but who continued to volunteer and turn up every day to help others. It really does need to be put on the record.

It is great to hear about the courage and the spirit in which Australians have worked together in these disasters. I believe it is reflective of the mood across the country. Certainly it is reflective of the mood in my own electorate. We have seen Australians have community barbecues, raffles, concerts and sporting matches to support our fellow Australians who are doing it tough. If that does not make you proud to be an Australian, I do not know what will. We know that rebuilding infrastructure is one thing, and we have a plan to do that, but rebuilding lives is quite another. The emotional impacts will take years to resolve and those affected need to know we will all be there with them as they do that. Australians have a proud history of supporting each other during tragedies such as we have just experienced and I have no doubt this will continue to be the case.

John Cobb (Calare, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Food Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Obviously I do want to talk about my own region and about the agricultural situation around Australia, as part of my portfolio, which is very much agriculture and in this case food security. It has been an extraordinary few months. Without doubt, last year started off as a big year for eastern Australia and south-eastern Australia, with the biggest cropping season ever in my lifetime. Up until middle or late October, the rain, by and large, was a very welcome event. But my part of the world is I guess where all this really started—rain, flood and eventually cyclone, and flood again in Victoria last weekend. It was about moisture and it was about water. Basically, unless you were in the path of a flood, the rain had pretty much the same effect as flood itself—there was just too much water. We had 10 years of the worst drought in my lifetime, and droughts always finish with a bang when they finish, so I suppose we should not be too surprised that the biggest drought also had the biggest ending, and what an ending it has been.

The Murray-Darling system, by and large, has been replenished, though not quite everywhere. The biggest dam in Australia is still not full. In my area, the Oberon Dam is not full and Wyangala Dam is not yet full. But the system has been replenished and it has been done with one heck of a bang. As I said, this started off as a rain event in my part of the world—the central west of New South Wales. Towards the end of October, it rained and it pretty much rained through November, off and on in December and even through into the new year. The initial effect was to very much downgrade the crops in the central west of New South Wales—Parkes, Forbes and, even earlier, Nyngan. Even before it had started in that part of the world, the crops had pretty much been shot and sprung. The harvest was still a very big harvest. The saving grace has been that it was such a big harvest, even though the price was down. But it was not just the cereal harvest. It went through to Orange and Young, further south of us, and finally to Bathurst et cetera. The cereal crops had so much rain they shot in the head, they sprung and they went down. A lot of barley could not be harvested at all. Southern Queensland was the first to be affected. Most of the crops there got harvested but some, on the heavy, flat country, did not and nor did they in northern New South Wales.

Horticulture also suffered badly and cherries just blew up. At first growers thought they would not be able to harvest the early cherries, and then it was the lot that they could not harvest. The vineyards were very much affected by so much rain. In fact, a few weeks ago, they found that there were no chemicals left in the country to spray for things like downy mildew. That has continued right through, encompassing most of eastern Australia. It was not just the obvious losses in agriculture. This sort of wet brings in disease and brings in insects so that herbicides and various other chemicals have to be used ad nauseam or, in the case of horticulture, cherries and various other fruits soak up so much water that they just blow up. Vegetables become so downgraded that no-one wants to put them on the shelves.

Very early on, with one exception, every single local government area in my electorate of Calare became a natural disaster area. As I said, in the Parkes-Forbes area, crops were lost or very seriously downgraded. As you moved further east, the damage in Cabonne, which was probably the most affected area, included lost roads. There were approaches to bridges where, although the bridges were standing, on each side of them the roads were just cut about. The town and the oval were isolated, basically, for a couple of weeks because it took the council so long to repair the approaches to two bridges. Eugowra, a very small town, was in the news very early on because it got flooded about three times within a couple of weeks. The town was split. Thankfully, with one exception, we did not lose any lives in our region. One week before her 45th wedding anniversary, Denise Brownhill, one of our old assistants at Parkes, drowned when she tried to cross a path of water in the Parkes region. We were devastated by that, but as a region we have been lucky as far as those things go. We all sympathise with her family.

Talking about the incredible events in Brisbane, I want to briefly mention a gentleman called James Perry, who was one of the casualties in the Lockyer Valley. His wife, Jenny, and her family come from Orange. I know that is just one family out of a lot of families, but she is a local from my region who has been through an incredible situation and her husband is not coming home any more. She and her child were very lucky to survive.

My region has had enormous agricultural losses and enormous local government losses, particularly because of damage to roads. As early as months before that, Lithgow had had a landslide because of the rain which was up towards Capertee, which was going to cost a lot of money to deal with. Some local governments, two or three months before, had spent a lot of money on roadworks, which really was wasted because the rain just ripped it all out. Nothing destroys roadworks like consistent rain, which even digs holes in the bitumen. It is something I have not seen before and I do not think many have.

Much of our area was affected—a lot more than most of Australia but obviously not nearly as much as the lower areas, and neither the Lachlan in the south of my electorate nor the Macquarie in the north flooded to the extent that it was dangerous. It caused inconvenience, it caused flooding, but in the grand scheme of things it was quite doable, to put it mildly. But everyone had their issues and certainly there was serious financial loss. Despite all that, when the incredible events started happening around Central Queensland and Bundaberg and then in Toowoomba right through to Brisbane, the businesses, schools and local governments in my electorate raised money not for our own area but for the people of the Lockyer Valley. I am very proud of the people of my electorate. Les and Cheryl Birdsall, two very good friends of mine who own the Telegraph Hotel in Molong, at their own expense brought in a heap of gear for kids and families. One Sunday about three weekends ago, and at their own expense, they put on this day and held auctions and all these things. That money was not to be spent locally; it was for the Queensland flood appeal. The schools, local government and all these people did that, and it was pretty damned good.

Over the last month as part of my responsibility I have visited the flood areas in Queensland and in New South Wales, and earlier Warren Truss and I went to Wagga and Dubbo after the rain events—which actually started in October—in December, when it was apparent how heavy the crop losses were. Late last week I spent quite a few days in Victoria around the Loddon and Campaspe, and on the weekend down the rain came again at Mildura and various other places. I guess we hoped that we were going to have a little bit of respite for a while, and now we have got fires in WA.

The losses to agriculture are just incredible. From talking to the locals and various industry bodies like the banana people, sugar cane growers, the various state bodies and ministers and shadow ministers, in the three main eastern states estimates are that losses are probably around $2 billion. In New South Wales it is mostly loss of income and in Queensland and Victoria it is probably more fifty-fifty infrastructure and income. When you go to places like Theodore in Queensland—who got belted with floods in March last year and had serious infrastructure losses then—you find blokes like one fellow I talked to who had spent almost half a million dollars since March last year getting ready for this one, because he lost infrastructure last time; everything he had done was wiped out. He had lost his whole crop. It looked like it had been defoliated. Almost all the cotton crop around Central Queensland did. The irrigation did, because it got flooded. Cotton does not have to be underwater for long. This is very high input cost. On top of the loss of the income and the inputs was the infrastructure. This bloke had spent nearly half a million dollars last year; all that had gone, plus he lost all his pumps—and that was very common in the area—and his off-river storages. The water just came in on the wrong side and then burst out and took the storages. So heaven knows what sort of losses people like that are up for.

But human nature is an incredible thing. Theodore is a town that came out of irrigation; it did not exist once, but it is probably the oldest cotton area in Australia. Within a couple of days, all those cotton farmers who had suffered that incredible loss—not just income but, as I said, infrastructure—had ignored their own problems, got their tractors, their pumps and their tanks, dragged them into Theodore and helped the locals clean out their houses. Half of them were on stilts, but they still went under. They just hosed them out. They just ignored their own troubles and went out and helped the locals deal with their house situation. So human nature is a pretty good thing when you get right down to it.

Actually, that is where I was when Toowoomba copped it, then the Lockyer Valley and subsequently Brisbane. When we were travelling between Theodore and Biloela, late on the Monday, Ken’s staffer who was with him knew one of the mayors in that area. We had heard about the rain, and no-one realised the extent of it then. He rang up this bloke, who had just gone across a crossing, just below Toowoomba, which was under a couple of inches of water, and while he was driving over it he got hit by seven feet of water—bang! He was still shaky on the phone.

I do not think we can comprehend it. I certainly cannot. I am a bush boy. I have lived inland my whole life, out in the semi-arid country. You just do not expect something like that to hit that far inland—I think Toowoomba is around 80 miles inland—in our country, certainly not that far south. Knowing country people as I do—and, to me, that is almost rural—I shudder to think how long it will take those communities, which are very close communities, to deal with their issues. I think we will all plug in for them for a long time.

To get back to the overall effect of the losses in Central Queensland—and by that I mean the potential losses—that is where a lot of New South Wales, not to mention South-East Queensland, get their winter vegetables and fruit from. They get them from that part of the world. So, unless the growers can get back on their feet and get settled before then, it is going to be a little different this winter. I hope not. Let us hope that they can deal with it.

The one thing I find, whether I talk to the northern cane growers and banana growers or the dairy farmers way down south in Victoria, is that they keep asking, ‘Is the government going to provide the interest rate subsidy?’ It might be a drought thing, but the drought basis was a one-in-25-year occurrence before you got Exceptional Circumstances—by inference, the interest rate subsidy. We are talking about a one-in-50- or, more particularly, a one-in-100-years circumstance, so I do not think there should be too much of a moral problem for any government in looking upon this in the same way that you do drought.

As I said, these people, most of whom have serious debt after a decade of drought, need to be able to deal with their banking. The banks, by and large, I think have been pretty good, but people have this debt. They have to be able to separate their minds and be allowed to deal with the debt they already have before they sit down and try to deal with the infrastructure problem they have to get over now to go on with next year’s planting, next year’s crop and, in the case of fruit and vegetables, one hopes this winter’s crop. It is an enormous issue.

How they personally feel about it all is a shock to the system. It is not the kind of shock fire gives; it is different to that, but it takes longer for what you have lost and what you have potentially lost to sink in. The only good thing as a farmer is that at least the ground is going to take a long while to dry out, and we need moisture in the ground to grow anything, whether it is to regrow or whatever we do.

I could go on about this for a long time. I will not. I will just say that the government and the opposition have to realise that, after a decade of the worst drought in my lifetime—and I am 60 years old—people have now had the worst natural disaster in their lifetimes, and it is very much an exceptional circumstance. It will be dealt with, in a productive sense, only by money and, yes, by strong will and hard work. But they have always had that. I do not care whether you are a banana grower or a sugar grower in the north, a dairy man in the south or anybody in between—as I said, horticulture has been hurt; wine cultivation has been hurt; everything has been hurt—this is about water rather than floods, because rain has exactly the same effect. Even without what has happened in WA or Tasmania or anywhere else, I think we are looking at a $6 million issue for the agriculture industry to deal with.

I am very proud of the people my area. They have their troubles, but they recognise that other people are far worse off at the moment. I am very proud of the agriculture industry because I have not heard anyone say, ‘That’s it; I’m out.’ People sometimes have to go to the wall because, financially, that is it. But I do not think that the spirit of the Australian agriculture industry is broken any more than I think that the people who live in the Lockyer or anywhere else are going to call it quits. They are not. But I do believe that as a parliament, whether in government or in opposition, we have to recognise that there are limits after a decade of drought and now this.

And we should not be surprised. We may have been surprised by what happened in the Lockyer Valley. But the longer the drought goes on the harder it is going to be to get out of it. And people cannot get out of it on their own, for the most part. I would certainly say that as a parliament, not just as a government or as an opposition, in the same way that we work together when lives have been lost, such as when Australian lives are lost overseas while doing their duty, we have to look upon the agricultural industry at the moment as being in that plight. Thank you.

Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too would like to support this condolence motion. Madam Deputy Speaker D’Ath, in late December 2010 and into early 2011, significant flooding occurred in your home state of Queensland. Like many others, I watched in horror day in, day out as our television sets showed towns being engulfed by water. As you would appreciate, it dominated the news, both print and electronic media, as people were transfixed, watching in disbelief. To some extent it is a little reminiscent of what occurred two years ago in Victoria: Monday was the anniversary of the bushfires. As one of my sons pointed out to me, watching the flood coverage he felt the same wave of emotion that he experienced when the twin towers went down.

This is something that has had such an impact on all of us. I think the member for Calare is right that floods will occur from time to time. But sometimes they happen when you cannot appreciate them or you are not prepared, and sometimes—as has clearly occurred in this instance—they lead to outright devastation. That is not what we normally talk about when we talk about floods. The Queensland floods are now being seen as this country’s worst national disaster. We saw it unfold in front of our eyes, so it is only right that it has had such an impact on the national psyche, and I would like to talk a little bit about how that is reflected in our communities.

In late December we saw the disaster unfold. We were hoping, at least coming up to New Year’s Day, that that was last year and we were looking forward to the sunshine—but that just did not happen. All up, 35 people lost their lives from late November through to the conclusion of the flood situation. What occurred on 10 January with the flash flooding throughout the Lockyer Valley was called—I do not know who coined the phrase; I had never heard it before—an inland tsunami. How accurate! Again, it defied belief. We have heard the horrific stories, such as of the young fellow who rescued his sister by putting her up in the roof, while his mother and father vanished. It became very real to us all of a sudden. Courtesy of modern media, we become and feel part of the situation.

My heart goes out to all those families who lost loved ones and whose loved ones are missing. Many people in Queensland stared at their houses realising that their life’s work and a lifetime’s worth of memories were gone. It is very hard to contemplate that. Yet the people of Queensland showed enormous courage and strength. They came together as an extended family and lent emotional and physical support to one another, particularly those who lost the most.

Over that period of time, Madam Deputy Speaker D’Ath, I had the opportunity to speak to you on a number of occasions in Queensland and I know the efforts that you were going to personally to help others in your community. It did not matter on what side of politics we were, most of us had the opportunity to talk to people who were involved and we know the work that was being undertaken. Differences have been set aside and people were, and are, united in a common interest to rebuild. Some of that rebuilding will be of infrastructure but a lot of the effort will go to rebuilding lives and communities.

I have great respect and admiration for our Queenslanders, though I may not show it all that much in the rugby league season. The strength that I have witnessed—the resolve, the commitment and the sheer stoic resolution of the people of Queensland not to be beaten—is something to be admired. I would also like to acknowledge the heroic and selfless work undertaken by the men and women of the police and the various emergency services, both the paid and voluntary services, and by the military personnel. Many risked their lives to battle the waters to rescue fellow Australians. The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, the Queensland Premier, Anna Bligh, my colleagues from, I emphasise, both sides of the parliament that I have had the opportunity to talk to over that period, and the local mayors and councillors showed a commitment and a resolve in the face of what is now seen as Australia’s worst natural disaster—a resolve which the rest of us can only stand and be humbled by. When the events came without warning, we saw that the authorities, the police and the SES acted immediately. Where events could be predicted, they worked tirelessly to ensure all that could be done was done to minimise the damage to property and communities and to prepare communities for the onslaught. Right across Australia, and internationally as well, people were asking what they could do to help.

As you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, I live in what is, according to the ABS, the most multicultural electorate in the country. I would like to take a bit of time to explain how it impacted on them and what they did. The Fowler community were no different to residents of any other area. They certainly were affected. They were glued to their televisions. They rolled their sleeves up very quickly to get involved and do what was necessary. When Premier Bligh said, ‘What we need is help and financial help,’ they did that.

I was very touched by a comment by the head organiser for the Golden Heart 2 Heart charity dinner, Dr Vinh Binh Lieu, who advised me that there is a very famous Vietnamese saying that goes something like this: ‘When you eat the fruit, have regard for those who planted it.’ He told me that, a little over 35 years ago, Australia opened its arms and provided protection and support for the people of Vietnam who were escaping the tyranny of communism, and now, seeing Australia in trouble, it was the responsibility of the Vietnamese community to give something back. The event that he organised one Saturday evening about two or three weeks ago was a great success. It raised $145,000. I would like to acknowledge all the 10 associations that formed the organising committee. Special thanks must go to Lim Chieu, the owner of Maxims wedding reception and function centre, who not only donated his centre but also provided the staff and all the food free of cost for the event.

I also acknowledge Andrew and Kim Tang and their daughter Katie, who own Danielle Fashion, who donated $7,000, which was half the profits from the weekend takings of their shop in Cabramatta.

The Vietnamese religious leaders have asked that people be generous, and they have been. Father Paul Van Chi called upon the Vietnamese Catholic community in New South Wales, and they raised $40,000 from a collection for the Premier’s Disaster Relief Appeal. The Phuoc Hue Buddhist temple is also raising money for the Queensland flood appeal and is hosting a massive charity luncheon.

Vietnam Sydney Radio, who I have had the opportunity to speak to, started a phone-in, and in one week they raised $40,000 for the appeal. The New South Wales VCA committee has organised a fundraising dinner which will be held on 18 February. Special thanks go to the owners of the Crystal Palace Function Centre, who are donating the centre, the staff and the food, with all moneys raised going to Queensland flood relief.

Vietnamese Community in Australia were also actively fundraising over the three-day Tet festival last weekend, which was very hot. They were out fundraising the whole time, notwithstanding the 42-degree heat. Their organiser said to me, ‘This is something that we need to do to show the people of Queensland that it is our turn to give.’

Vietnam Vision, a group of doctors that provide medical services to underprivileged people in Vietnam, put on a barbecue last Sunday in Cabramatta. Just on that Sunday afternoon, they raised $5,000.

The East Timorese Chinese community also had their annual New Year’s celebration over the weekend. The event was organised by their president, John Phillip Jong, who decided everything that was raised would go to the Queensland flood appeal. They raised $10,500 that evening.

The Cambodian community, which I should have mentioned a little earlier, put on a charity function in Cabramatta and raised $63,500. Special thanks go to Ms Thida Yang from the Salvation and Cambodian Culture Association and Ms Lina Tjoeng from the Khmer Community of New South Wales for organising such a successful function, along with about 15 other Cambodian associations, which I am just not able to mention here at the moment.

During the Cardinal Stepinac Australia Day Appeal, the Croatian community raised $30,000. Special thanks go to Matt Smolcic, the Cardinal Stepinac Village CEO, for what they have done in that respect.

The youth of the area have also been heavily involved, with the Fairfield-Cabramatta Police Citizens Youth Club raising significant money through a barbecue. I thank the organiser of that, Tony Fornasier, and all the young people who participated.

The New South Wales Indo-China Chinese Association held a New Year’s celebration lunch on the weekend, which I attended. I thank the president, Mr To Ha Huynh, and Fairfield councillor Mr Dennis Huynh. Again, they decided to donate everything they raised, which was $20,000. It has all gone to the Queensland Premier’s Disaster Relief Appeal Fund. I thank all those groups for their generosity. It shows that we in Sydney—or New South Wales, or anywhere else in Australia—do not just say, ‘That was bad, but that’s Queensland’s issue.’ Everybody, including the newest of our Australians, decided it was their issue. They see themselves as fellow Australians, and when the chips were down it was their responsibility—and, as they put it to me, their obligation—to help.

In closing, my thoughts are with the families of Queensland. It is just so cruel that Mother Nature has rendered this blow to the Queensland community. The suffering that has been occasioned through the flooding and the cyclone is something for which, unless you are there, you do not have the same degree of appreciation. But we can all feel what it does to the community. I know that the Prime Minister is resolved to rebuild Queensland, and I strongly believe that we as a government will do everything we can do to support Queensland in its time of need. The people of Fowler feel the pain of those people in Queensland. In my diverse community we will continue to do what we can to show our support for Queenslanders, because we too are Australian.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker D’Ath, I understand that as a Queensland member your electorate was not untouched but that you and your residents regard yourselves as fortunate in comparison to the travails felt by others.

Just over two years ago I stood in the centre of what is East Creek, Toowoomba, to begin the coalition’s Murray-Darling Basin tour. At that stage East Creek was little more than a storm drain with a few puddles of water in it. East Creek was, as so many Australians now know, the epicentre on the western side of the ranges of the great torrents and inland tsunami which ripped apart the heart of much of Queensland. On the eastern side, of course, Grantham and Murphy’s Creek witnessed extraordinary tragedy and untold and unspeakable damage. But to have stood in a place such as East Creek, to have seen a part of Australia which was simply bone dry, to have at the time done a video blog which remains on my site today about it being the headwaters of the Murray-Darling Basin, to acknowledge and recognise the challenges that it faced and then, just over two years later, to recognise that this very selfsame spot was witness to the extraordinary scenes which travelled around the world—of vehicles, of trees and, above all else, of humanity being transported down that wave of raging water—is very humbling.

We know that the people of Toowoomba, the people of Grantham and the people of Murphy’s Creek have been the victims of nature’s most savage work. It is nobody’s fault. It was fast, rapid, dramatic and extraordinary in its consequence. On behalf of the people of my electorate of Flinders—the Mornington Peninsula, Western Port, the Koo-Wee-Rup swamp—which has had its own, albeit much lesser, travails—and the Bass Coast, I convey our support, our sympathy and our resolve to assist in the pathway forward.

These Queensland floods were, in so many ways, symptomatic of Australian history. They replicated that which has occurred previously. We have had previous tragedies and we will have future tragedies. From each one of these experiences, it is hoped that we learn, make things better and improve. The result of the 1974 Brisbane flood was Wivenhoe Dam both in its primary capacity and in its overflow capacity, designed precisely for events such as this. There can be no doubt that Brisbane, which suffered so grievously, would have suffered far worse had there been no Wivenhoe Dam. The nature of the operation process will be subject to inquiry, but had there been no dam there would undoubtedly have been a far worse outcome. Whether the outcome could have been better still is a matter for others to debate and discuss in coming months.

I want to make a few very brief points. Firstly, there was a terrible tragedy and we all play a part in having to deal with it. But this tragedy, which covered Toowoomba, Granville, Murphys Creek, Ipswich, the suburbs of Brisbane, Rockhampton and inland towns such as Dalby and St George, was accompanied by the very best we could ever hope for from the Australian spirit. My brother John, who lives in Brisbane, was fortunate that he and his family lived a little bit higher than the floods. They avoided the effect of the floods. He said the outpouring of humanity was one of the most positive experiences of his life. He said it was impossible not to be part of it—this volunteer army that took to the streets. He and his family played a very small part, in his words, and he wishes that he could have done more. But I suspect he did a lot more than he acknowledges. That was the common human response which defines who we are as Australians today. It makes me very proud and I know it makes the people on the Mornington Peninsula very proud of who we are—that this volunteer army emerged.

The spirit of Brisbane is something that will be talked about 50 and 100 years from now. People will invoke it. I hope they invoke it to good purpose and never for partisan purposes. I believe that that will be the case because it will be a symbol of recovery, response and, above all else, the common humanity which represents the absolute best of us. The spirit of Brisbane and the spirit of the inland towns—whether it is Theodore, Toowoomba or up the coast to areas affected by Cyclone Yasi, as well as Townsville, Cairns, Tully and Innisfail—is a guiding light for the way in which we have to try to live our lives. It is a sense of the very best generosity and humanity that is within our spirits.

It was also accompanied by the extraordinary work of the formal services: the volunteers of the SES who have spent hundreds of hours working; the volunteers who became attached to units such as that, bringing trucks or mops and brooms; and the police, ambulance and fire brigade workers who faced extraordinary shocks and risks and who carried on as resolute rocks for everybody. Sometimes we as a community can be a little bit cynical about our police force. We should not be. The way in which they conducted themselves puts them right at the forefront of community workers for any society in any place around the world.

We then go forward to the role of the military. The military—hundreds and even thousands of mostly young Australians who put themselves in harm’s way and waded through the mud in search of the lost day upon day upon day upon day—have again shown that we have defence forces that are also civil defence forces. In times of need and crisis, their role is profound.

I also acknowledge that all three tiers of government performed wonderfully. I think that we should be generous and recognise that it is not always thus. I have many great friends in America, but I know America—I have lived there—and we saw the chaos and breakdown of society post Hurricane Katrina and the relative failure of the state apparatus to deal with that problem. Neither the society nor the state apparatus failed us in Australia. The Brisbane City Council, the relevant local councils right throughout Queensland, the state government, the state opposition, the federal government, the federal opposition and all of the local members represented their areas with extraordinary alacrity, and they did it with compassion, decency and professionalism. So to everyone involved there has been great loss and great tragedy, but there has also been a sense of our better selves on display both to ourselves and to the rest of the world, and for that we will be better human beings. But, for those who were close to them, those who are no longer with us can never be replaced.

Having said this about Queensland, I say that in my own home state of Victoria we are so very fortunate that the great floods which affected us have not had the same human toll or human impact. They have had a major economic impact, but that is a gross state product issue. At the micro level of farmers and shopkeepers, it can be profound. Many farmers have seen their best crop in a decade gone. I, along with my colleagues Bruce Billson, Dan Tehan, Senator Scott Ryan and Alan Tudge, visited shopkeepers in towns such as Skipton. We spent half a day there and half a day in Beaufort helping the residents to clean up Sir Henry Bolte’s home, and then we worked with the residents and the shopkeepers. The shopkeepers had broken hearts because this was the second flood that they had faced and some of them felt that there was no way back. It was about giving people a sense of hope, of opportunity and of possibility and a sense that there was mutual support. I know that Skipton has again faced more issues over the last weekend. It is one town in a state which has suffered significantly, but it has thankfully had nothing like the tragedy which has faced Brisbane, Ipswich, Grantham, Toowoomba, Rockhampton and the great inland outback areas of Queensland.

That same spirit was on show in Swan Hill, in Rochester and right throughout Victoria. Coming closest to home, last Saturday night I received a call from my colleague Russell Broadbent saying that the town of Koo Wee Rup had just been given an evacuation order. Russell grew up in Koo Wee Rup and lived there for many years; he now lives just outside of the electorate in his own electorate. Koo Wee Rup is in my patch, and we were told that the town was to be evacuated and that it was facing inundation. We immediately dealt with the Prime Minister’s office, the Attorney-General’s office and Tanya Plibersek’s office, all of whom were very professional. I acknowledge the speed and skill of their staff and thank them for that.

We survived in our area by just a matter of centimetres. The levee banks which were built over decades and decades survived within a matter of two or three centimetres. So the town for the most part was fine, but the next morning, as we were out in the evacuation centres and then out in the farming communities, we saw farmers who had lost the value of their crop—they had had this season’s crop destroyed. Again, it is nothing compared with Queensland, and many of them said to me, ‘Yes, we have had losses, but we are very lucky compared with others.’ But they will need assistance. I acknowledge the work of our local police and the SES—I note they were military in preparation—as well as the Shire of Cardinia, the Premier and Peter Ryan and my state colleagues Edward O’Donohue and Ken Smith and our councillors, particularly Councillor Stuart Halligan. All of them were on the ground the next morning to deal with the problems faced by the farmers.

So from our own little area where we were fortunate compared to others, but where we did suffer loss particularly where there was a breach in the levy because of the failings of the desalination company to repair that work in time—and I have written to the CEO of AquaSure to seek rectification on behalf of the farmers—we acknowledge your courage and endurance. From our own little area in Victoria and the problems we faced there, going out to the great and profound and magisterial task facing Queensland and Queenslanders, they have made us better as Australians for having seen what they have been through. And above all else to those families who have been at the heart of it, I say on behalf of the people of Flinders: you have our sympathy, our support, our belief and our thanks for letting us glimpse and witness a spirit which is extraordinary, which 20 and 30 and 50 and 100 years from now will be a source and point of inspiration and uplift to future generations of Australians.

John Murphy (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too share with my colleagues in this place the enormity of the devastation of the floods, the more recent cyclone in Queensland and the fires in Western Australia. Despite the tragic losses and the incredible task before us, the marvellous Australian spirit will no doubt be critical in helping rebuild towns and lives affected by these natural disasters.

I am very fortunate in my electorate of Reid in Sydney because it was not at all directly affected by the natural disasters. However, losses for Australians in one part of our country are also felt by all of us in other parts of the country. We also remember particularly those who have lost loved ones and their homes and the many who are still without power and water. We pray and hope for the safety of those still battling the bushfires in Western Australia. We are thinking of you and we are working hard to help you. Everyone has seen the haunting images in the newspapers and on our television screens and heard the reports from distressed victims over the radio and we have all felt their suffering and their anxiety.

I also take this opportunity to wish my parliamentary colleagues who have been directly affected by the floods, cyclones and bushfires all the very best in the recovery effort. I know the member for Oxley lost his entire office with floodwaters completely submerging the building in which it stood. Fortunately, no-one from his office was harmed in the floodwaters and that is of course the most important thing. Who could have imagined that a town like Toowoomba, which is some 700 metres above sea level, could have such a devastating tsunami? It is unthinkable.

For the lives lost, we send our sincerest sympathy to the families at this extremely difficult time. To the businesses and farmers, we offer our resolve to rebuild the vital infrastructure necessary to enable them to recover as soon as possible. To the families struggling to overcome everyday challenges, we offer you our earnest efforts to provide effective and timely services for your needs. To the SES crews, the police and the countless volunteers, we thank you. To the Defence Force personnel who put their lives on the line to save the lives of others, we cannot thank you enough. After many years of drought, floods are a double hit for Queensland. For the flood affected towns and regions in Victoria, the Black Saturday bushfires are still vivid in everyone’s memories. These events put our lives in perspective and remind us of what is truly important.

This environment brings out the best of the Australian qualities of mateship and stoicism. They call on all levels of government to make decisions in the best interest of the people. We are talking about a natural disaster that has cost Australia billions of dollars in income and destroyed billions of dollars worth of wealth. This is not just a river bursting its banks or an unfortunate accident affecting a small part of Australia. The floods have affected an area larger than New South Wales, the state from which I come. It is in everyone’s interest to finish the clean-up as quickly as possible. It is in all Australians’ interest to get those ports and railways open, prepare local economies to function again, provide jobs for those affected and ensure our society functions as it should without undue delay.

Australians from all corners of the country were shocked and saddened by the ferocity and damage of the floods and have been quick to offer assistance where they can, whether it be practical support by opening their homes for emergency accommodation or by putting their hands into their pockets to donate. This, however, is not surprising. Australians are a very compassionate, empathetic and generous people. We do not like to see others suffering. International aid efforts are also a reflection of our generosity.

In my own electorate of Reid, I attended a Friday afternoon prayer session at the Gallipoli mosque in Auburn where the local members raised $12,000 for the Premier’s Disaster Relief Fund. The imam presenting the cheque on behalf of his members added that he wanted to make sure that the money would go to the people who really needed it. It goes without saying that the mosque has made a tremendous donation and their generous thoughts for the Queenslanders affected will be very much appreciated. Last Friday, Communities for Communities hosted a charity golf day and dinner at Barnwell Park Golf Course in my electorate. I attended the dinner and fundraiser. I also acknowledge the amazing fundraising efforts of Communities for Communities, established by the inspirational Lance Brooks. At the dinner, I was very pleased to meet many of the participants during the day, who were delighted that the funds raised were going to the Queensland recovery effort. They raised in excess of $30,000. These were just two outstanding fundraising efforts in my electorate of Reid in Sydney’s inner west. I know that there are many more individuals, businesses and organisations who have really put their hearts into raising much-needed funds to help our Queensland neighbours and I thank them for their superb efforts.

We cannot overlook the generosity of the people in Australia and indeed our international neighbours for their support. As the Foreign Minister noted during the immediate clean-up, he received countless calls from our international neighbours, offering their support and resources to help us in our hour of need. We are not without friends, let us not forget. And we are also not without means. We will rebuild. Together, individuals, families, businesses, insurance companies and local, state and federal governments, we will restore these areas. Already, the Australian Government Disaster Recovery Payment has helped over 100,000 Australians and provided nearly $136 million to people in need. I am very pleased that the government has also ensured that the Natural Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements were provided almost immediately after these events. The assistance is provided to rebuild essential infrastructure such as roads, bridges and schools. It also offers grants of up to $25,000 for small businesses and primary producers for the clean-up and recovery as well as concessional interest rate loans of up to $250,000 for small business operators and primary producers, as well as freight subsidies of up to $5,000. The government was also quick to provide the personal hardship and distress assistance. These are important measures that were available as soon as possible and will help many victims of the floods.

The response teams should be commended for their timely efforts. As we reflect on the magnitude of the floods in Queensland, we reflect that our great, vast land has indeed wrought a history of climatic battles, as has been referred to by other speakers in this debate, and famously encapsulated in that magnificent poem My Country by Dorothea Mackellar. Unfortunately, I do not believe that these will be the last or the worst natural disasters our country will face. Indeed, it is more important than ever to prepare ourselves for any future natural disasters to minimise the loss of human life and destruction to industry and personal property. Today, and over the course of this condolence motion, I have listened to the many heartfelt and personal contributions both from the government and the opposition. I am deeply saddened by the individual stories of those who were caught, helpless in the natural disasters, and the consequent losses.

As I have previously mentioned, it is these extraordinary events that put our lives in perspective and highlight the importance of good governance to help people through such adversity. There will be tough decisions to make and they may be painful in the short term, but I believe that they will be beneficial in the long term. We cannot deny the magnitude of the disaster and expect homes, schools, businesses, ports, railways and roads to rebuild themselves. Indeed, this road to recovery will be very much a group effort.

In concluding, as we pause to remember those who have been lost and grieve with those who have suffered we can look to the future with confidence, knowing that the nation is behind the recovery. As our government continues to provide assistance to affected communities, on behalf of the people I represent in the federal division of Reid, I would like to offer my sincere condolences to everyone affected by the recent natural disasters that have beset our beautiful country.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I join with other members in extending my condolences to the victims of natural disasters across the summer months. Australia has some remarkable and beautiful landscapes, but as we are only too well aware, nature can turn quite savage on us. Across the summer months we saw that all too frequently across our nation. Queensland, tragically, was the epicentre for much of the natural disasters. The focus of our nation turned towards the Sunshine State as it experienced more than its share of rainfall over an extended period of time.

We are not unused to natural disasters in Australia but I think what struck lot of us this time was perhaps the media coverage and the graphic images we were able to see in real time, almost, from towns such as Toowoomba and of the aftermath in the Lockyer Valley. To see the vision and images, shot either through the commercial media or on BlackBerries and mobile phones, which were then put out into the mainstream media, and actually see what was happening in real time—on the web or on the television networks—was something that captivated many people and brought the focus of our nation onto the Queensland community in very graphic terms.

Gippslanders are in the good fortune on this particular occasion to have basically escaped unscathed from the disasters. In previous times we have experienced floods, fires and major storm events, and there is no question that Gippslanders’ hearts went out to our fellow Australians as they experienced these disasters over the summer months.

The reaction of our nation as reflected through the members of parliament in this place is something we can be very proud of. I have listened in to many of the members of parliament from both sides of the House as they have given their reports from the front line and given very emotional accounts of how their communities were tested and how their communities have responded magnificently. Naturally our thoughts and our prayers go out to the people whose loved ones have been killed or injured or who themselves have been injured in these disasters. This will be a defining moment in many people’s lives. They will define their lives by what they did prior to the floods and what their lives were like after the floods. Many people will need support for many years to come. This is not something that people get over very quickly.

I know from my own personal experience in the Black Saturday bushfires two years ago—which, incidentally, we commemorated this week—and from the Black Saturday bushfire victims that some people seem to be able to get on with their lives quite quickly and seem to cope quite readily with adversity, but for others it seems to fester away in them and the events will re-present many weeks, months and years afterwards. Some people simply do not recover completely. We need to be careful and aware of that in this place. In the support we put in place for those communities we need to be aware that we are going to have to be there for the long haul. Long after we fix the bridges, the roads are back in place, the rail lines are working, small businesses are being cleaned up and the customers are coming back to our tourism resorts, our people are still going to bear the emotional scars of what they have been through.

Anyone who has spoken to people who were directly involved in either the flooding in Queensland or Cyclone Yasi has heard their tales of the trauma they have been through. We need to understand that as a nation we have to stand ready to support those people for many, many years to come. I am one of many MPs, I am sure, who have been touched by the emotional stories from our colleagues. I commend the members on both sides of the House for the way they have conducted themselves in this condolence motion and the way they have brought the stories of their people to life. They have brought the stories of their communities and explained to us who were not there exactly what impact these disasters have had.

In addition to the personal injuries and the deaths there are obviously the economic costs when we are talking about our agricultural sector, and I think that story will get worse as the months go on. There are economic costs to the agricultural sector in terms of lost crops and lost hope. We are talking about some of our farmers who were looking at some of the best crops they had ever seen. Having had them cruelly washed away or blown away will be very difficult for those farming families to cope with. And, of course, I just referred to the tourism industry and our small business sector. These challenges are going to face these communities for a very long period of time. I congratulate the members for giving a very full account of the experience and the challenges that their communities are going to face into the future.

Of course, it was not only Queensland that was touched by tragedy over the summer months and touched by natural disasters. In Victoria we had quite dramatic rainfall events, particularly in the north-west, which inundated towns. The town of Charlton was inundated on three separate occasions, I think, and Rochester on two occasions, and many other towns faced significant damage. While not as traumatic, perhaps, as the inland tsunami which seemed to hit Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley, it was still quite devastating for those people, and the impact of that flood is also going to be felt for a very long period of time. I understand that the people of Tasmania and Western Australia were also affected, and now we have had the bushfires in Western Australia as well.

The challenge for us as we move from this immediate response phase is to be there for the long haul of the recovery—to make sure that in this place we stand shoulder to shoulder with our fellow Australians and let them know that we will be there to support them. As I said previously, the time frame for the recovery from the Black Saturday bushfires has made it very apparent to me that this is not a short-term operation. It is going to take a long period of time for our communities to repair themselves.

I believe that the nation is looking towards this parliament and this place, looking to us in our roles here as elected members and expecting us to demonstrate leadership in our roles and in the way we are prepared to work together to achieve the rebuilding process. I think we are united in many aspects on both sides of the House in our commitment to rebuild these communities. I do not think there is any doubt about that. I know there will be some debate about how we go about that process and how we fund that process, but even when we have differences of opinion I think the people of Australia are expecting us to demonstrate leadership and respect for each other and put aside some of our differences to recognise that the bigger picture here is the people who have been directly affected, their lives and how we repair their communities and let them go on and be prosperous into the future. I think there is a strong expectation in our community as they look at this place for us to not forget the fine words we have said in the condolence motion as we prepare for the future and as we rebuild these communities.

I am not by any means seeking to lecture other members, other than to say that there are many things that unite us in this tragic sequence of natural disasters and we would be well advised to live up to the expectations of those people who have been most directly affected. I think in those people we have seen such great spirit, such incredible willingness, such selflessness, humility, determination, strength and resilience—they have demonstrated such character traits—that we can reflect those in this place as we go about helping them in their rebuilding process.

The local members go back to their communities this week. I guess in some ways our local members have had some respite; they have come to Canberra and they have been able to get their gumboots and their working clothes off for a week. At the same time, back in their communities, people have been slogging it out, out there doing that repair work. In Western Australia they have still been putting out the fires this week. But as the local members go back to their communities I wish them every success in their roles. I urge them to keep the pressure on the banks, to keep the pressure on the insurance companies, to keep the pressure on government departments and to make sure that their people are well looked after.

In closing, I would like to extend my thanks, as many others have, to the countless people who have made a contribution throughout our community. I know the emergency service workers will be tired. They have put in an enormous effort over the last month and they will be required to do even more in the weeks ahead. I also extend my thanks to our military personnel who were incredible in the response phase and for the courage they have shown in saving lives in extraordinary circumstances. I recall hearing members talk about the helicopter pilots indicating they have never seen conditions like it. I acknowledge the bravery of those people and I wish them well as they go back to their lives. I thank the volunteers and the people who have travelled for miles just to go and extend a helping hand to their fellow Australians in need. I also thank the people who have been involved in fundraising programs right across Australia. I think it is one of the great things about the Australian spirit that people just want to do something. We found that out with previous disasters like the Black Saturday bushfires where people just wanted to do something to extend a helping hand to their mates or to an Australian in need. We have seen that again here.

We honour the victims of these natural disasters by the lessons we learn from them. We honour the victims by choosing to serve our community here in this place as members of parliament. But we do not need to be members of parliament to honour them. We need to take this message back to our community about the spirit they have shown, the resilience they have shown during these traumatic times and the way the experience has brought our community together and united us: we do not need to wait for a natural disaster to occur to repeat this in the future. There is a real message here for us as Australians that we have a remarkable capacity within our population to work together and achieve great things when we are tested.

The challenge for us now, after these natural disasters, is to go back to our communities and encourage each other to build on that spirit and to continue to make a contribution to our community in whatever way we can, whether it is as a volunteer for our local Red Cross, in a Rotary club or as a surf life-saving volunteer. I encourage my fellow Australians to take inspiration from what they have seen over these months, to take inspiration from the volunteers, the emergency service workers and the military personnel, and to look back at their own community now and decide what they can do to make a contribution to their community on a daily basis. It is something we can take out of this disaster as a positive.

Finally, I simply say from the people of Gippsland, our hearts go out to those who have been affected over these summer months. I am sure I speak on behalf of the entire population of Gippsland when I say our thoughts and prayers are with you as you recover and we wish you every strength in the future.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I join with others in this place, particularly on behalf of the people of the north-west coast of Tasmania, to send our sympathies and express our condolences to those who have lost loved ones and friends, to those who have lost their homes and businesses and to those whose communities have been massively disrupted in so many different ways. The devastating floods in Queensland in particular, and the corresponding flooding throughout New South Wales, Victoria and indeed in my own state of Tasmania, followed by the cyclonic episodes in Queensland most recently and now by those terrible fires in Western Australia, have left several different legacies. They have been commented on by colleagues in this place in the last few hours—tragically in a lot of instances. The first legacy, of course, is in the personal devastation visited on those families who have lost loved ones. Indeed, in Queensland, in those terrible floods that hit Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley and then on into Brisbane itself, 22 people died and, sadly, nine more are still unaccounted for. I cannot imagine the emotional distress associated with these losses and I again extend my personal and my region’s condolences to all those families.

There is a second and associated legacy: the personal trauma from and economic cost of the massive physical damage done by the natural disasters. We cannot even begin to assess the psychological damage done to people affected by these natural disasters. And I understand estimates of the cost to the Commonwealth approximate $5.6 billion for reconstruction of some of the key infrastructure.

Apart from the huge amount of physical damage experienced by individuals, families, organisations and businesses, there is the massive loss of infrastructure and the cost of that. The government is committed to providing 75 per cent of this public infrastructure, and that is at the heart of funding, in the form of the flood levy announced by the Prime Minister and the $2 raised through budget savings for every $1 raised through the levy. I hope that that may be enough to begin this massive reconstruction program. But, if it is not, the Prime Minister has made the commitment, on behalf of the government and, indeed, the parliament, that we will continue to support these communities, families and individuals to the best of our ability.

As many members here have said before, recovery will not just happen tomorrow or the day after—indeed, it is going to be very much long-term. I share with our Victorian colleagues the melancholy of the second anniversary of the bushfires of Victoria. I noticed in some media reports and from listening to some of my colleagues that there are individuals and communities who are still hurting very much in the wake of those fires—and that is two years afterwards. So I expect that this will go on for some time and, as I said, will leave its legacy; its scars will be there for a long time yet.

In terms of personal loss, the federal government is working with state governments—indeed, with all levels of government, and with agencies and communities—to help rebuild businesses and local government infrastructure, and to assist individuals and families who have been directly and severely affected by the floods. This government is committed to continuing that support into the future.

Programs include the natural disaster relief and recovery policy which allows local councils to claim between 50 per cent and 75 per cent of the costs of their infrastructure once the damage bill exceeds a certain portion of the council’s revenue. I know that, in a sense, that will not be enough and that those communities, those municipalities, will have to forgo expenditures and programs that they have already got in the pipeline, in order to make their contribution to the massive rebuilding campaign. But I know that that is a fact of life and that is what they are prepared to do. We are prepared to do our part as well.

The third aspect of the legacy of the natural disasters is the wonderful, fantastic example of community support that has accompanied the devastation and suffering. As many members here have commented on, and as some have experienced first-hand—in some cases, tragically—time and again, Australians have supported their neighbours. Indeed, the term ‘neighbour’ in Australia has now been elasticised and extended right across the nation. In my own region—even apart from the flood damage that has occurred there, which I will refer to in a moment—people, I know, feel a great empathy for and sympathy with those people affected. I remember time and again being affected by what I saw on the television, and by comments made by some of my colleagues whom I had contacted to see if they were okay and how they were coping with it. Judging by the tremendous quality of some of those speeches—very emotional—of some of my colleagues, I know that they have felt it very personally. As an individual Australian citizen, I, too, have felt for my colleagues across the states. So I think that the concept of ‘neighbour’ in Australia really has been extended across the nation.

I follow on from a point the member for Gippsland made. I often follow him in this House, I must say. It is nice being regional members on either side and following each other. There are the ideas: ‘Who is your neighbour?’ and helping your neighbour, which, we claim, is an Australian characteristic. Indeed, we share that with a lot of other communities. It is interesting that we have to have some form of tragedy for people to have the reason to come out and provide support. In fact, we often think that our time-poor lives preclude us from being neighbourly until something nasty happens. That is really sad. Australians have a great sense of community. I think it is part and parcel of not just our DNA but, indeed, also our environment, yet our time-poor lives tend to exclude us from that. I hope that some of those communities that have been seriously affected by some of these disasters get some positive ongoing benefits from that tremendous community spirit that has been demonstrated.

There are the incredible fundraising activities—a plethora of them. Some of them are very unique and clever in trying to raise funds for neighbours in other states. It has been fantastic. There has been the help to mop out. The number of people who arrived with their buckets and mops reminds me of a musical clip in Fantasia. There they were—hundreds of them with their buckets and mops, wanting a reason to use their buckets and mops. It was just fantastic. I am sure that if I saw that many people coming towards my house if I was in distress, I would be pretty happy too. I thought it was done in a really good neighbourly way. It was just fantastic.

Some people are fantastic at feeding people. They can make a sandwich out of a cardboard box and make it tasty! There was the housing of people and transporting people—all the different ways that people found to transport people. It was really clever. You could not help but have a giggle as well as a cry when you saw that. Comforting people—what a wonderful skill. Some people have a natural way of comforting people. It might be with a joke, an arm around them, a bit of a hug or even a bit of a punch on the arm sometimes. That was fantastic to see. All those different methods of being neighbourly were demonstrated throughout the affected areas. I thank all the people who went out of their way to help their neighbours. It was fantastic.

Of course, as others have alluded to, the work of the emergency services and agencies has been first rate. We are very lucky to have the professional people and our volunteers. I saw the SES in my local area. A lot of them must have been issued with a new uniform, because they stood out. They were ever ready to fill sandbags, get their chainsaws and shovels out, and do whatever else they could do to help out. That was demonstrated throughout Australia. We also saw our armed forces at work, doing what they do best: helping. There are also the people who secured the lives of the many thousands of people who were physically threatened by the natural disasters. When you think of what could have happened in both the floods and the cyclone that hit Queensland, we are blessed that it was not worse. I know that is hard for some people to accept, given the suffering that they have experienced.

I do not suppose a lot of people know that Tasmania was affected by flooding, and severely in some parts. I am sorry that the Leader of the Opposition omitted Tasmania in his address yesterday. Between 11 and 14 January there was excessive rainfall in my state and, while it did not cause absolutely widespread flooding—and nothing on the scale of Queensland, I accept that—it did cause some very severe flooding. People may be surprised to hear that a number of families in my electorate were actually isolated and remained isolated for a week or more, because we lost a number of our connecting bridges. There is some massive devastation and, if you are interested, I have some of the pictures here. It just shows you the extent of the damage.

Most of the damage was done to infrastructure, particularly in the Central Coast Council area, which is my own municipal area, and in the Burnie municipality. In Central Coast, Purtons Flats Bridge, Bannons Bridge, Central Castra Bridge and the Bellchambers Bridge were lost. It does not sound a lot compared with what occurred in Queensland, but mine is a food-producing area, particularly through the hinterland, along with other natural production, and these areas have been cut off. In central coast something like 22 roads were closed with the flooding.

In Burnie, the neighbouring municipality, the Upper Natone Road and the South Riana Road were severely cut off. In total, there was something like $12 million worth of infrastructure damage in those two municipalities. The township of Railton in the electorate of Lyons, represented by my colleague Dick Adams, was completely cut off and there was mass flooding of the township itself. Further into the state and on the east coast of Tasmania there was severe flooding as well.

Through the federal government, the state government has activated the relevant assistance and recovery scheme, and indeed the Attorney-General visited my affected area with me on 21 January. With the state government he was able to essentially announce the recovery assistance packages for Tassie. I am glad that we were able to help in our way, and I know our municipalities are now looking forward to working with us and with the state government to get some funding for these important pieces of infrastructure.

I have been on the road recently with my colleagues, including the member for Farrer, who is in the chamber at the moment; we have been on the road together and it is a pleasure, of course. We are part of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Regional Australia and we have been looking at the impact of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority guide to the plan. The irony there is that we had to cancel some of our visits because of the floods in Victoria.  Also, I had to leave that trip to go home to my own town, Forth, and I was sandbagging my house. It is the second time that there has been a major flood in my area in the last three years, and this one actually came further than the 2007 flood. I live next to a beautiful river in the Forth Valley, called the Forth—which makes sense, I suppose. It used to be f-o-u-r-t-h, because there used to be the First, Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth rivers, but in Tassie we started to get a bit imaginative and gave them other names. It took 10½ hours in 2007 for the river to flood, and this time it took 2½ hours and it came further than the 2007 flood. So we had some mighty rains and a bit of damage. Fortunately, Sid’s house had 57 sandbags and about 10 tarpaulins on it—so I know how many to use next time—but it was not affected and I do thank all those people who came to help, particularly the SES.

Down the road at Harvest Moon of Forth Farm Produce, they lost about half a million dollars from their early planting that they had just set out. So my little neck of the woods has been affected—nothing like Queensland and I would not attempt to say that, but my communities have been affected, particularly transport infrastructure, and we look forward to being able to access the assistance packages that the federal and state governments are now triggering.

Before I finish, I would like to try to give a human face to the devastation in my home state and mention a terrific family at Wings Wildlife Park. Colin and Megan Wing have a wildlife park up in the Gunns Plains, which is beautiful. It is as green as green. It has a terrific river and they have fishing contests up there. These people eat, sleep and drink wildlife. Anyway, the floodwaters took out the park. Here is a guy cut off on one side of the river looking over and watching his life’s work literally going down the river. But while he was on one side of the river some of his staff were becoming aware of how dangerous the rising waters were and got into the park and saved almost every animal—birds, geese, ducks and everything else; I think two chicks were lost. Loiyal staffer Tracey Lane got on the tractor and down she went. They managed to save a lot of the wildlife. Of course there was incredible physical damage. Poor old Colin. He has a great sense of humour in life and everything else but the guy was devastated. Imagine the scene, as the light emerges, 40 volunteers come to assist that family and that business.

Colin hosted the Attorney-General and me. I felt a bit guilty being there whilst he was cleaning up, but he was a genial host. There were all these volunteers helping to build his bridges, rearrange his new driveways, cages and whatever else and here is Colin in his good humour giving us morning tea. The following media record gives you an idea of what he was like:

“We did have a lovely fish display but they all swam off in the creek—I guess it was their lucky day,” the park owner said with a chuckle.

“The aviary floated down 50 metres with the concrete slab still attached to the bottom and all the birds inside doing just fine.”

“The swans and the geese just floated out of the wetlands and were waiting for us the next day. We only lost two chicks all up, so we didn’t do too badly at all.”

That is inspiring. His whole business is just wiped out. That is just typical. That is a real human story.

I love the heading in the local Advocate of that day where it says ‘People power saves park’. I think that is reflective on a grander scale of what happened throughout Australia. I join with my colleagues—not to make light of it but to say it as a very human thing—in saying that in tragedy you get so much support and neighbourliness, and this was a classic example.

I join with Mayor Jan Bonde of my Central Coast municipality when she said: ‘The great thing about this whole flood emergency has been the cooperation between community; council staff; police; SES; fire brigades; the Department of Infrastructure, Energy and Resources; government departments; forestry; and the Army.’ She concludes, ‘It has been great.’

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare and Early Childhood Learning) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am happy to support the motion of condolence moved by the Prime Minister. While, quite rightly, much of the news and focus from this exceptionally difficult summer has been engaged with the extreme weather events to our north and south—and may I on behalf of the people of Farrer pass on my sympathy to those affected by the floods in Queensland and Victoria and by Cyclone Yasi—I do also wish to raise the attention of the House to the plight of many in my electorate from properties, small businesses and homes lying to the west and south-west of New South Wales.

Can I join with others in the Riverina and pass on my personal sympathy to the family of the northern New South Wales man who perished in the swollen Bullenbung Creek at the weekend. This tragic accident occurred at 3 am on Sunday morning on a property about 10 kilometres north of Lockhart when the man’s utility was swept away as he tried to drive through unseen floodwaters. This creek, like so many of our waterways in the last six months since the drought in New South Wales came to an abrupt end, has routinely been turned from a trickle into a torrent.

In October, Lockhart’s main street was also under water from the normally docile Brookong Creek. Then, again, unprecedented rainfall between last Friday afternoon and Saturday night dropped up to 150 millimetres on the town and across much of the Riverina region. Record rainfall totals were recorded in a little over 24 hours. In some cases, it was four to five times their February average. In as many instances, the falls completely demolished the historically known record February rainfall figures.

Also significantly affected was the area in and around Urana. On the back of being swamped in October, Urana received another massive dumping last weekend. Three homes were flooded out, and the initial damage bill estimated by the local council for repairing road infrastructure has topped a further $1 million.

Other towns and centres were affected, including but not limited to Hay, Rand, Holbrook, Culcairn, Walbrundrie, Albury and Corowa. In fact, at Corowa, one day’s rain smashed the town’s entire February monthly total rainfall record, which had dated back 80 years. In Albury, the 100 millimetres we received in 24 hours was the biggest daily tally that the current weather station had received for any month of the year in its entire history. In rural and outlying areas, this was yet another setback for our local farmers, many of whom have now suffered not once or twice but four times since a massive deluge of water swept through local towns and rivers in October last year.

I visited there shortly afterwards, and, while not on the scale of what we have witnessed in Queensland and parts of Victoria, what I saw and heard was confronting, to say the least. Quite apart from the first decent crops for up to 10 years or more being smashed, there were numerous examples of small businesses and homes being caused grief by uncompromising insurance companies. In a number of cases, argument and delays centred on the technicality of whether someone’s home or property had been inundated from below or from the heavens above. As you have all heard and seen recently through the extreme experiences of our neighbours in Queensland, a home is your home and water is water, and when it runs through someone’s bedroom, kitchen or lounge it leads to vast disruption and trauma, displacement and enormous unforeseen costs. In some local instances brought to my attention, insurers, seemingly intent on minimising their outlay, have paid for the replacement of a home’s contents but not the home itself, using an available loophole in the wording which labelled the person’s property ‘undermaintained’.

I also heard of sheer and utter frustration with the increasing and often overwhelming numbers of hoops that landholders, small businesses and local governments are being asked to jump through in order to access emergency assistance. A classic example of bureaucracy being completely unreflective of reality has occurred in my own local Greater Hume shire, and I suspect that they are not alone. Under the Natural Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements—known as NDRRA—guidelines, the council can only be reimbursed to carry out emergency repairs and restoration of vital infrastructure if it uses outside labour and contractors or works its own staff during overtime hours after a destructive event. Any local council staff—or a handyman, for that matter—will tell you that, in reality, some things have to be done right away, even on a weekday, with the local staff who know the region. It is also quite feasible that the work needs to be done during daylight hours, not overnight or maybe on a possible weekend that suits. Quite often in rural areas—and I am sure this would be felt in our cities as well—getting enough available contractors in and on the ground within a reasonable time frame is simply not possible, and that has certainly been the case with the widespread damage and magnitude of events witnessed across our nation in recent months.

In Greater Hume’s case, they estimate that a burden of $3 million from their budget has already been spent cleaning up from these events, even before the most recent deluge over the last weekend. But here is the anomaly. Because the rain fell at the weekend, clean-up costs up until start of business on Monday were covered by the NDRRA, but, once the normal week got underway, council staff, in theory, had to go back to normal duties. In reality, if council’s full clean-up costs are not reimbursed under NDRRA, it will have a significant impact on their ability to undertake previously approved works programs, meaning that in the long run the ratepayers will be paying for the flood damage.

I want to also make mention of the current plight of our agricultural industries and the businesses along the Murray, further to the west. Like the previous speaker, the member for Braddon, I am part of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Regional Australia, which is looking into the socioeconomic effects of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Many of us visited a great number of locations between Adelaide and Griffith in a nine-day period in January. It was ironic that our visit to the Swan Hill area in Victoria, just south of my electorate, had to be cancelled because of the enormous inland sea that was moving towards Swan Hill and the swollen rivers in that area which made it impossible for those who wanted so much to come and talk to the committee to actually get there and give their evidence. I very much hope that we can return to Swan Hill. The irony escapes no-one that the evidence that they were going to give to our committee concerned the attempts by government and successive policy instruments to remove water from agriculture. Those policy initiatives were certainly developed during a time of drought and, while no-one would ignore the need for a basin plan that operates sensibly in the Murray-Darling Basin, it certainly has highlighted that there was haste and misinformation applied to the existing information that we have received.

On my information, as of Monday, the weekend downpour saw another 140 millimetres fall in a very short period of time, and this has further affected our region, particularly the local wine grape growing industry in the Wentworth shire. Even prior to this most recent rainfall, by last month many vignerons were widely reporting average wine losses of between 20 and 30 per cent. They were not even the growers hit the hardest. Some had already reported that their entire season’s vintage for 2011 was gone with the advent of downy mildew. This number has now multiplied, with widespread evidence of powdery mildew and brown rot. It is a very difficult situation for wine growers at the moment because, having had this enormous dump of rain on a crop that is not very many weeks from being harvested, they have to consider whether they will continue to apply really expensive chemicals in order to keep the various mildews and rots at bay in the hope that they will realise a harvest. It might even be a question of throwing good money after bad. It is not just the growers in the Wentworth shire but also those further upstream through the Balranald and Wakool shires. The town and surrounds of Euston, for example, has roughly 60 to 70 growers in the region, mainly for table grapes. After this most recent event, their second in two months, growers tell me that up to two-thirds of their harvest is underwater or lying in water and probably worthless.

In light of these unexpected rains—and they are exceptional events—I think an exceptional response is needed. I have just today received another plea for governments both federal and state to reconsider the classification of exceptional circumstances to include the event of a flood. The Murray Valley Winegrowers write, and I am forwarding this letter to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry for his urgent attention:

We urge the Federal Government to extend the existing Exceptional Circumstances Assistance Funding support for a further 12 months to March 31 2012.

In our view, the effect of the series of unprecedented rainfall events through Spring and Summer clearly warrant classification as exceptional circumstances for the industries in this region.

Without an extension of EC Funding for our growers, the heavy additional costs of fungal disease protection and fuel, together with the heavy crop losses from fungal disease will exacerbate the extreme financial duress under which many growers are currently operating and will force many more growers to exit the industry.

That letter is just about wine grape growers, but it equally applies to those who grow horticulture, including table grapes, to those graziers who have lost paddocks and stock, and to those who have lost wheat crops, because they are harvesting now and only just realising the extensive downgrade from that huge rain in October and November last year.

Every one of these farmers will explain how close to the edge they are—and it is obvious when you see it on the ground, of course. Nobody likes to put their hand out and ask for assistance, but, if the exceptional circumstances interest rate subsidy and the exceptional circumstances relief payment—the two very important arms of that policy—cease on 31 March as they are bound to do, across my electorate there will be some serious repercussions and there will be people in farming families whose businesses cannot survive. It would therefore seem a reasonable request that, at a minimum, the exceptional circumstances relief payment—the fortnightly Centrelink payment that those who are affected by the floods in other circumstances and other parts of the country are receiving under these disaster arrangements—be continued for farming families to get through at least the next six months. That is an absolute minimum, and I will certainly be asking the minister to extend the entire EC regime for another 12 months.

Those who are familiar with the exceptional circumstances policy—and in the last government I was certainly involved in a lot of its iterations—will know that it was a policy designed to address drought in a long-term sense rather than a catastrophe, such as a flood, which occurs in the short term. But the flooding catastrophe which is being addressed by national disaster relief arrangements has a long-term effect no different to a drought. In fact, if your topsoil, seed bank and vegetation are removed, the effect is very much like that of a drought. We have, over time, changed that EC program, and at one stage we persuaded the National Rural Advisory Council—an important body in the assessment process—that it should apply to irrigated agriculture. That has nothing to do with the drought but has to do with a lack of irrigation allocations. So there is scope for this policy to address the very real concerns of the farmers not just in my electorate but across Victoria and New South Wales.

To the far west of New South Wales, nature has arguably been even more volatile. Next week I will be taking an inspection tour of that region’s mid-January flooding. During that four-day period, some properties near Broken Hill received close to their entire annual rainfall. One homestead 140 kilometres north-east of Broken Hill reported 240 millimetres in two days, with 160 millimetres of that having fallen in just over two hours. Last week much of that property was still underwater, the only way in or out being by light plane. Even that has been made much more treacherous with the main airstrip underwater. Here—and the story is mirrored by many other property owners—hundreds of kilometres of fencing have been wiped away. Access roads are either still blocked or impassable through normal means. Wild animals remain dead and decaying and entangled in tree branches where the water ran metres above normally red and parched creek beds and channels. I am told the welfare of the stock that remain alive but still at risk is uncertain simply because the landscape is impenetrable and will not allow the owners to check on them. There has not been a postal service into or out of the place for three weeks, with the deadline on applying for government assistance even for that required to be in hard copy and now passed.

Another property owner I spoke to, whose home was inundated with 30 centimetres of water overnight, still cannot get the local insurance assessor in to check and begin the clean-up—that is no simple task when your local agent is five hours away. Early last week the far west region received another 75 millimetres of rain as a precursor to the cyclonic weather coming in over the Top End. Last weekend, on the back of that, we received a further three inches of rain. For this weekend there is still more heavy rainfall forecast. On this, spare a moment’s thought for the prospect for the Bornholm family, who live 80 kilometres south of Broken Hill. Margaret and Colin Bornholm run a merino sheep property which was affected by severe dust storms in September last year, before the drought had broken. In January they were hit again, this time by rains which destroyed the same fencing that had just been repaired. Channels and piping to local dams were also destroyed. Then—yet again—this past weekend the Bornholms’ property was inundated with a further 100 millimetres of rain. They, like many of us in many corners of this nation, must be wondering just how much more they can take.

I cannot better sum up how my electorate feels than by quoting the last paragraph from a letter sent to me last week. It sums up the spirit of the people of Farrer—that Australian spirit which has been so often detailed in the House during this week by my fellow members. Sue Andrews from the Pastoralists Association writes:

The damage to dams, fencing and flood gates is very extensive across the area. Stock losses will not probably be known until people can get out to muster, which could be months.

The storms over the last week are making it more difficult to move about.

As to the psyche of the people, we had 10 years of severe drought, now flooding rain which in a way we all expected as this is what happens after such a drought.

The hardest hit have had good support from neighbours, SES and national parks (helicopter) and also the rural counselling services.

Having the financial support from the Government will make a great deal of difference.

The people of western New South Wales are practical, commonsense people. They clean up, they pick up, they get up. They do not often ask for help. If you ask them, they will tell you what they need—reluctantly—and of course they will always tell you that somebody is worse affected than they are. They have given extremely generously to the pleas for help from the Queensland flooding, from Cyclone Yasi and from the Victorian flooding. Many of them have spoilt hay that they have harvested from their own ruined crops; they have offered to send that hay to farmers in Victoria. They have explained that they cannot afford to actually deliver it but that it is there in their shed and they want to donate it.

I, and of course everybody in this House, along with people everywhere across the country and internationally, feel enormous sorrow for the toll that has been extracted from the people of Queensland, the Lockyer Valley and everywhere that has been affected by these disasters. I do want to say today in conclusion that I do hope that my communities, the communities I represent in the electorate of Farrer, are not overlooked as governments restructure and rebuild.

Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today on behalf of the people of Canberra to offer our condolences to the people affected by natural disasters this summer. I have been deeply moved by the stories that we have heard in this place yesterday and today, as I am sure have the people in my electorate. The thoughts and prayers of the people of Canberra go out to all those who have lost loved ones in deeply tragic and shocking circumstances and to those who have also lost homes, businesses, pets, valuables and treasured items.

In recent months, those who have not been directly affected by the floods have been confronted with images of destruction, tragedy and heartbreak caused by the floods, bushfires and cyclones that have ravaged this country every day. These hundreds and hundreds of images have all told their own tale of the suffering of our fellow Australians, of the human toll of natural disasters unprecedented in our history. But, for me, three images spoke the loudest.

The first was of a mother and her daughter and son running to a helicopter to be evacuated from the floods. They were hot, they were wet, they were crouched and they were propeller blown. They were also visibly frightened, shocked and in a state of disbelief. What underscored the kind of tragedy of the situation was the everyday reality of the family, which so starkly juxtaposed the chaos of the situation. The family was wearing everyday summer clothes and thongs. The daughter was clutching a Barbie backpack—the kind that is standard issue for my nieces and goddaughters and every girl under the age of 10. From memory, the mother was clutching a handbag, which probably contained all the important documents she could collect at short notice. For me, the image evoked some of those iconic images of civilians fleeing the Vietnam War. But the people being evacuated here were not refugees in a foreign land. They were everyday Australians enduring extraordinary circumstances.

The second image was of a son who was watching his mother hosing down the roof to protect it from the bushfires in WA. The boy was visibly stressed. He was worried about his mother, he was worried about his home and he was worried about being caught too late in the bushfire. It was deeply disturbing because he was too young, too innocent, to be experiencing such emotion and fear on such a magnitude, on such a scale. It was disturbing because this image and the earlier one I mentioned are not ones we normally associate with Australian life.

But it was the third image that has deeply haunted me. It was an aerial shot of roofs, where the houses were invisible because they were submerged under metres of water. This image has deeply haunted me because our homes are meant to provide us with physical security from the elements, and here they were engulfed, rendered useless by those elements. This image deeply haunted me because our homes are where we take our newborns to grow and flourish. They are where we celebrate our rites of passage, our birthdays, our weddings and our anniversaries. They are where we collect the souvenirs of our journey through life. They are the keepers of our histories and hallmarks of our identity as people. They are meant to provide us with security for our family and our future. Our homes are meant to provide us with emotional security. They are our haven, our shelter, somewhere we can be ourselves away from the world. They are our sanctuaries. Now tens of thousands of Australians face the prospect of life in the near future without their home or with a damaged home that will take a lot of blood, sweat and tears to repair.

On behalf of the people of Canberra, I want to let the people of Queensland, Western Australia and Victoria know that they will be in our hopes and prayers when the water has subsided, when they are picking up the pieces and when they are without their safe haven. We will be with you in the future; in the really tough times when the reality of your situation comes into sharp focus. Even though nothing we have experienced in recent months touches the scale of these disasters, the people of Canberra have some understanding of what you are going through. In 2003 bushfires ravaged the southern part of Canberra, destroying 500 homes and killing four people. It took years for some families to get back on their feet, having lost everything. Then our community rallied around for their fellow Canberrans, offering money, opening up their homes, giving clothes, shoes and toys and lending cars, and then the rest of Australia sent emergency assistance and support to us. The people of Canberra were grateful for that and they have not forgotten. Now we are running around and digging deep for our fellow Australians in their moment of need. Our cafes, restaurants, clubs, shops, baseball teams and radio stations have held fundraisers. The Raiders have set up a charity auction with items donated by players and staff. Community groups have conducted sausage sizzles. Businesses and families have donated food, toys, clothes and shoes. The business community has given to the Premier’s appeal. Canberrans have given in a personal capacity but our public servants are also giving in a professional capacity. Our public servants gladly serve the nation because they want to make a difference, and many of them have been giving above and beyond to help those in need in this moment of crisis.

Emergency service officers have also been lending a helping hand. I received a letter yesterday from a woman in my electorate who had just returned from a deployment in Queensland. She said, ‘It was wonderful to have the opportunity to help others in our wonderful country.’ I do believe that this reflects the views of so many Canberrans. I want to thank all the SES members, all the emergency people and all the volunteers who have helped the rest of Australia in their moment of need. I particularly want to thank the ADF, who, as always, worked extremely professionally and extremely hard to help those who found themselves in extraordinary and often very difficult circumstances. I thank them all.

I would also like to use this opportunity to pay tribute to the role played by the fourth estate during this unprecedented crisis. I would like to acknowledge the work of the journalists, producers, camera operators and all the others who work behind the scenes in making sure—sometimes at risk to their own personal safety—that the Australian public stays informed. Without them, those in the midst of these disasters would have no idea of what was happening around them. They would not know where safety lies, where they can seek help and whether their loved ones are safe. Without them, there would be no way for government to connect the victims of these tragedies to the vital services they need. Most of them came back from leave to ensure that these messages got out, and I pay tribute to their dedication, commitment and professionalism and to their strong commitment to the community.

I particularly want to acknowledge the journalists, producers, camera operators and staff in local radio and local television. Nothing better underscores the value of local radio than an emergency or crisis. This was borne out during the crisis of recent months; it was borne out during the floods in Wagga; and it was borne out during the bushfires in Canberra. I know journalists and presenters from Canberra’s Triple 6 provided relief to sleep-deprived journalists and presenters on ABC Riverina when they had the floods in Wagga. When the bushfires hit us in 2003, local radio, television and print journalists dropped everything. Everyone was on leave at the time—they were at home or down at the coast or elsewhere—and they dropped everything and returned to work to get the word out to their community.

It is perhaps difficult at this point, while disasters still unfold in Victoria and Western Australia, to understand how the communities that have been affected will rebuild and recover. We have yet to tally the full cost, both economically and, perhaps more importantly, emotionally. But I believe that these communities will recover and I believe that their homes and lives will be rebuilt. I have this firm belief because of the strong, binding ethos of these communities of Australians, the same ethos that has seen scores of volunteers from across the country help with the clean-up and recovery, the same ethos that has seen millions of dollars donated to help those families in need.

While other communities have collapsed into anarchy during crises—and we see it all around the world quite often—we have seen our communities rally through mutual support. We have seen people from across the country ask, ‘What can I do?’ Often the only link they have to the tragedy is that they are Australian and that a mate is in need. To see this in action, to see what I have always believed—that when there is need an Australian will always lend a hand to a mate, often a mate they do not even know—has made me incredibly proud to be an Australian and also a Canberran.

As a nation we have been tested by these tragedies and we will be tested again in recovery when the cost of these disasters, both human and economic, becomes known. However, we as a nation are prepared for this. The Australian character is a strong one. I believe we are capable of handling the hardships and challenges of our environment because we always have. I am confident that governments—federal, state and local councils—will do all that is necessary to rebuild. I am confident that communities across Australia will continue to unite to help those in need and I am confident that those areas affected will rebuild and, with the strength of their spirit and the help of the nation, will come out the other side even stronger and more united.

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is very humbling to stand here today to consider the effects of the events of the past six weeks on communities in Queensland, in Victoria, in WA and in northern New South Wales. The electorate of Forde was fortunate enough not to have been severely affected by the Queensland floods. As a result, we were in the privileged position of being able to offer our electorate office as a collection point for flood relief items for distribution to affected areas.

My sincerest thoughts and prayers are with those in the flood affected areas, particularly in the Lockyer Valley, where the loss of life was greatest. Yesterday we were privileged to listen to the heartfelt words of the member for Wright on the effect of those floods on the community. For those of us who have not been affected and do not live in those communities it is going to be very difficult to understand what they have been through. But we commend those communities on their unwavering spirit and stoicism and desire to rebuild.

To those in North Queensland who have suffered as a result of Cyclone Yasi and to those in WA, more recently, who have experienced the fires and loss of property—but, fortunately, not lives—our prayers are with you also at this time.

The events of the past six weeks, whilst devastating for so many communities, have also served to demonstrate the generosity of spirit of the Australian people in a time of need. It is heartening to see the many volunteers. In Brisbane many thousands of volunteers got out there in their gumboots or, if they did not have gumboots, because the state sold out of them, in whatever they had to clean up the mud and the mess and to help people start to rebuild their lives. Having been through floods before, I know what a horrible, smelly job that is.

I believe that these events have served to reignite a community spirit that may have been waning under the pressures of everyday life. It is reassuring to see that community spirit. It was no more evidenced than by a comment from my sister-in-law, who is a Canadian and who works for a local radio station in Mount Isa. She said that she was amazed, because in Canada she felt that that would never have happened. So it is a great testament to our country, our community and our people.

The events of the past few weeks I think have also allowed us as a community to reflect on what is important. Whilst material things can mostly be replaced, it is the loss of life that is so tragic, as it leaves a hole in the lives of families and the communities affected. I thank the residents of Forde for their generosity. My staff and I have been overwhelmed by the donations of linen, clothing and personal care items that we have received. We have also had many people offering their time in sorting through the items and aiding in transporting them to a nearby warehouse which was donated for storage, and also to ultimate points of distribution.

My thanks go to community and religious organisations such as Dream Centre, Beenleigh RSL, Dunamis Christian Centre and Currumbin RSL, who donated so many of the items needed. They are simple things that we sometimes overlook. In the early days, the call was for a toothbrush, toothpaste, a hairbrush, ladies’ sanitary items, socks and undergarments—simple things that, in the rush to help families, we overlooked because we were looking for clothing and bedding. Some of those organisations made the long drive up from the Gold Coast to deliver those items to our office. Recently we received two pallets of donations from Sydney. Over the first two weeks of receiving donations, my office saw over 20 pallets of clothing, personal care items, bedding and linen sorted. We had over 40 volunteers help us with that.

My thanks go to community organisations such as Mission Possible and Calvary family care, who have been working tirelessly in the affected communities to distribute the necessary items to individual families so that they can get the immediate requirements they need. They also made us aware of areas of need in the community that have been overlooked, that we were not aware of. Again, I thank the community for responding quickly to our requests for specific items to help out. Residents are continuing to bring in donations and we are continuing to look for ways to distribute those and to help the affected communities. The majority of the donations have gone to the electorate of Wright, to help Scott Buchholz’s electorate, as that has been one of the worst affected. Again, I would like to thank some of the community organisations in Beaudesert, particularly the Country Women’s Association, who were able to store that stuff for Scott to allow it to then be distributed. I feel extremely fortunate to be part of such a generous and community minded electorate and country.

Other organisations that have done a tremendous amount of work and that have been recognised by many but should not be overlooked include the SES—even in our electorate they had some work to do; the Australian Defence Force, which did an enormous amount of work in very difficult circumstances, both in the Lockyer Valley and also in North Queensland; and the police and the work that they have done to help keep order in those communities and to try to establish some sort of sense of normality, as much as that was possible.

My thanks also go to our media outlets—radio, TV and print—for their coverage to keep the community informed. I hope that the work that they have done is appropriately recognised and that it sets a benchmark for the value they can add to our community in these times of need.

It is important over the coming months that we do not forget these communities and ensure that the flood relief both via donated funds and via government assistance is quickly and efficiently distributed. The quicker that money can be distributed to those families and communities, the sooner they can begin to rebuild their lives. With this also goes the call to insurance companies to assist in being timely in settlement of claims.

We should be proud of ourselves as a community that we have been so ready to help those in need. We should never forget that Australian spirit and that we live in a country where people are prepared to help their neighbours, even if they do not know them, in a time of need. We should never forget that and we should be proud of how we have handled ourselves in these circumstances. I pray that these communities have a speedy recovery and that, as I just noted, we do not forget.

Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Over the past month and a half, we have watched in shock the devastation caused by natural disasters in all parts of the country. We have watched the people of Queensland, regional New South Wales and regional Victoria wade through waist-high water. We have seen communities in Western Australia ravaged by shattering bushfires which have destroyed 72 homes and damaged countless others. And we have witnessed Far North Queensland face Cyclone Yasi—the worst tropical cyclone to hit Australia in nearly 100 years. As the Prime Minister has said, it has been a summer of extremes, a summer of tragedy, a summer of devastation.

Over the past day, I have been touched by the words of my parliamentary colleagues from both sides of the chamber. I pay tribute to my colleagues who have risen to support their constituents in a way they surely could never have wished for nor imagined. Listening to the experiences of those members whose electorates have been directly affected has been nothing but heart-wrenching. Their personal experiences, and those experiences of others that they have recounted, remind each and every one of us of the human face of these disasters.

I do not have the words to describe the sympathy I feel for those families who have lost so much as a result of these tragedies. In some cases, they have lost everything. I know that nothing I say will bring back what has been lost. Nothing I can say will alleviate the pain currently experienced by those who have lost their loved ones—their sons and daughters, their husbands and wives, their brothers and sisters. Nothing I say will bring back the missing possessions, repair the damaged homes or rebuild the roads, businesses and schools that have been destroyed as a result of the floods, the bushfires and Cyclone Yasi.

But I can say this: Australians will rally together as we always do in times of great difficulty and, driven by our unique spirit of determination, we will rebuild from these disasters. I do know that through our collective efforts we will help get lives back on track and we will rebuild the towns that have been ravaged. The fighting Australian spirit will once again be on display. Indeed, this fighting spirit has been on display over the summer. It is clearly exemplified through the actions of those emergency services personnel who have been working tirelessly to ensure that fundamental services are returned to the people who have been affected by these disasters. Other organisations, such as the Red Cross, have been critical in the recovery process for disaster-stricken suburbs and towns across Australia.

I can only imagine the fear and anxiety felt by those directly affected by these natural disasters. I could only hope and pray that my family and friends in Queensland would be some of the ‘lucky ones’ who managed to avoid harm. I know that many families were in a similar position as the events unfolded and a nation sat glued to its TV sets, hoping that the waters and storms would ease, and tuning in that fateful morning to see the city of Brisbane submerged.

A parliamentary colleague of mine, not from this place, was in Queensland during the flood crisis and witnessed the loss of a very close lifelong friend who was swept away by the devastating flood waters. There are too many similar stories, and many have been recounted in this debate. Tragically, for so many, what should have been a time of celebration and family became a time of despair, loss and suffering.

Australians always band together and help out someone else in need. This compassion has been evident across my electorate of Greenway where many community groups have rallied together in support of fundraising for the worst affected communities. Our fledgling AFL club, the Greater Western Sydney Giants, offered support to those affected by the Queensland floods. Israel Folau and four other team mates took it upon themselves to seek leave from training and travel to Brisbane to help in whatever way possible with the clean-up. The GWS team is currently in the middle of preseason training and for a marque player of AFL in Western Sydney to put his training on hold to support families doing it tough is a credit to him and the management of GWS. I pay tribute to Kevin Sheedie and his boys.

The Riverstone Girl Guides, who currently do not even have a clubhouse due to a collapsing roof, put aside their personal fundraising endeavours and chose instead to raise funds for families affected by the Queensland disaster. For me, this is a true example of Australian compassion. These young girls not only understand the severity and hardship currently being experienced in Queensland but also displayed the maturity and selflessness to put aside their own needs and help others. This is nothing short of amazing. Two weekends ago I joined the Riverstone Girl Guides selling their famous cookies and holding a fundraising barbecue at the Riverstone Market Town. In the space of three hours we raised over $300 in sales and donations. I commend the Riverstone Girl Guides for their efforts and I thank the good people of Riverstone for their support.

I also thank the members of the Filipino-Australian Community Association of New South Wales. This association has given tirelessly to ensure that the necessary funds are sent to Queensland. At a fundraising event held last Sunday in Blacktown, the Filipino Australian community raised well over $14,000 from just one event. I would like to thank the members of this community for their compassion and generosity—a community which itself has endured much devastation in their homeland in recent years due to a series of typhoons.

There were many other fundraising efforts instigated by the good people of Greenway. These include Simon Holt of Kellyville Ridge, who launched the Great Aussie Wine-athon, and the Blacktown Workers Club, which will be holding a fundraising event on 19 February and a series of auctions.

In the words of the Queensland Premier, Anna Bligh, who has displayed an unending level of resilience and tenacity:

As we weep for what we have lost, and as we grieve for family and friends and we confront the challenge that is before us, I want us to remember who we are.

On behalf of the citizens I represent in my electorate of Greenway, I offer my heartfelt condolences to the families of those who have lost their loved ones. I also offer my deep sympathy to those whose lives have been devastated by the floods, the bushfires and Cyclone Yasi. We in Greenway are a compassionate and caring community. Despite our geographic distance, I say to the victims of these tragedies, ‘We were with you. Our thoughts and prayers go out to each and every one of you.’

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of my electorate of Murray in northern Victoria, I acknowledge the tragic deaths and the widespread devastation in all states, it would seem, as a consequence of recent natural disasters—the floods, cyclones and fires. I also acknowledge the two-year anniversary of the Black Saturday fires in Victoria. The legacy of these fires is still very much in the hearts and minds of the families who were burnt out and the families where members were killed. That very tragic event should have taught us a lot about how to deal with suffering. Unfortunately, a lot of those lessons have not yet been learned.

Our land is a place of ‘drought and flooding rains’, of fires and killer winds. We all know Dorothea Mackellar’s poem , or at least those of us who had to recite it many years ago at school know it. This poem mirrors the reality of the Australian landscape and the Australian seasons. Australia is a land of great differences. We are also a land that has a deeply ingrained set of beliefs which value and encourage self-help and which has volunteering at its core. Self-help and volunteering are not just a part of our culture and highly esteemed. Self-help is essential when there is a natural disaster and you are a very long way from anyone or anywhere else; where there are no cameras or nearby Defence Force; when there is not an SES, a fire brigade or, indeed, a police station; and when the flood-warning communication systems fail, or were never in place.

In my electorate we have had seven years of drought—a very, very devastating time for most families; we have lost half of our dairy farms, for example—and we were so pleased to have warm, gentle rains which gave us the best crops on record some seven or eight months ago. We thought that the drought was over—here was a bumper season.

And then of course the rains kept coming—and that was not until the locusts had had their way, of course, with a lot of these bumper crops. But then the rains kept coming so we had the first of our floods back in September in the Goulburn Valley in particular and in the top of the Goulburn Valley. Then we had more rains again in the Goulburn Valley. But in 2011 it was the Campaspe area, the Loddon Valley, across the Wimmera and parts of the Mallee that had the most devastating rainfall and flood events in the history of European settlement.

I have to say that that flood legacy is still as bad as it was when it occurred some three weeks ago. It distresses me every time our Prime Minister stands up in this place or in the public media somewhere else and talks about the devastation in Queensland—which I acknowledge was distressing, heartrending and just terrible for the nation and for Queenslanders with all of those deaths, a tragic time—but fails to mention Victoria. As we speak, in Victoria I have thousands of families who have no way of living. Their farms are completely devastated. There is no fodder, no grass. Their houses have also been inundated of course and they have massive losses of livestock. And they have just, as I have said, come through seven years of drought so their financial, emotional and physical resources were already at rock bottom. So when they are forgotten by the Prime Minister it does hurt them. I have just been talking to some members of the government to remind them, please, do not overlook all of those communities that are continuing to suffer.

We had one death in these floods in Victoria in my electorate—tragically, a young boy who fell into the floodwaters of the Goulburn River at a billabong and was lost despite his brothers trying to throw sticks to rescue him. One death of course is one death too many, so I can imagine how those Queensland communities feel with their many, many more deaths. But in my electorate it is a case of livestock deaths, environmental damage, family hopes destroyed and, at the moment, very little sense of the future.

I began a moment ago by referring to the fact that you need to have early warning systems in place and, where they are not in place, it is extremely difficult. How, for example, do you know what is happening if all you get is a phone call from your local federal member? I rang on the Saturday saying to my people on the Loddon River, ‘I know that you have not heard from anyone else but you have a tsunami, metres of water coming down the Loddon River.’ They said: ‘The sky is blue. The sun is shining. The rain occurred two days ago. It was the heaviest rainfall on record and we are wet, but it is okay.’ I was saying to them: ‘No, you have not been warned. There is no system to warn you, but I know because I have been talking to people upstream at Durham Ox, to Chris Harrison, and he is right now putting all of his belongings in his shearing shed’—and in our part of the world these sheds are six feet off the ground so the stock can go underneath—‘and he is hoping to rescue some of his things. But the water is coming down very fast.’

Those farmers along the Loddon River, around Canary Island, Fernihurst, around Durham Ox, and further downstream around Lake Leaghur should have had text messaging. They should have had systems which said, ‘There is a wall of water coming down upon you. You only have hours to get out of there with your lives.’ These people were not able to assess whether they had time to rescue their livestock or their belongings, their lifetime memories, or to put their things into sheds, or whether they should simply try to get out in a four-wheel-drive. Or at this stage maybe some of them could only make it on a four-wheel-drive motorbike, all that was possible to get them up the gravel roads to the nearest bitumen some 19 or 20 kilometres away.

In the east of my electorate, in the Goulburn Valley, we are very lucky as we have text messaging and excellent telemetry. We have all sorts of gauging systems in the Goulburn, the Broken and the Seven Creeks systems and we had excellent information for the September floods. We were told within centimetres and within hours of when the peaks were to occur, and the information was so accurate. You have to ask why, therefore, in the far west of the electorate communities just as dependent on that information—in fact, are even more critically dependent on information to move livestock because there were further distances to travel—had virtually no information available for them. The Bureau of Meteorology websites had not been updated for 12 hours. There was a breakdown in their phone landlines; they could not ring each other because of the congestion and telephone exchanges going underwater. The only thing they still had working were mobile phones—and no-one was texting them.

I am pleased that the Premier of Victoria, Hon. Ted Baillieu, has announced a very comprehensive review of flood warnings and emergency responses to the severe flooding across Victoria because he has had so many complaints about the failures in the system. We cannot say that the Loddon Valley was overlooked because the streams there are ephemeral. No, they are not; they are irrigation and regulated streams. And at the top of the Loddon River there is both the Cairn Curran and the Laanecoorie reservoirs. Part of the reason we had this tsunami coming down on these farms without warning was that those two reservoirs were spilling at rates never seen before. Why weren’t these people downstream told by Goulburn-Murray Water or by Coliban Water or by their local catchment management authority that this was what was happening literally hundreds of kilometres up basin from where they were? That information was not transferred to them.

I was told by the Bureau of Meteorology, which I was ringing desperately to try to get them to start telling people what was going on through their website: ‘Look, we don’t know ourselves. We actually heard about some of those dreadful flood risings through your local farmers ringing talkback radio. We picked it up on talkback radio. That is where we heard about the floods.’ This is our Bureau of Meteorology. Another person ringing the Bureau of Meteorology begging for more information about rainfall events and river levels was told, ‘We have other priorities.’

I think this is a time when we have to look very, very seriously at why it is in this modern age of telemetry—where our irrigation systems all through this part of the world are automatically managed through telemetry—when you have an event as severe and catastrophic as this, that people were not being told what was going on unless someone knew of them and made them a personal phone call.

What we are looking at now in northern Victoria on the farmlands is catastrophe; it is environmentally a disaster, with the blackwater now ponded up against every roadway and every channel. We have huge losses of livestock. I will go through some of those losses. This is in my electorate and spilling over into the electorate of Mallee next door. The Department of Primary Industries is now auditing the losses on farms in northern Victoria. So far they have checked 2,800 farms. They have another 900 farms to go. So this data is only for about two-thirds of the numbers who are in fact very seriously affected and for whom this disaster will go on not for weeks or months but for years.

They have lost 4,100 kilometres of farm fencing; 133,150 hectares of grazing pasture was totally destroyed, and that included some of the best dryland lucerne anyone had ever seen and grown; 76,909 hectares of field crops are gone, and that includes most of the state’s tomatoes; and a massive loss of 123,200 tonnes of hay and silage. Bear in mind that all of that had been harvested and manufactured up at great expense. Also lost was 5,245 tonnes of stored grain, and 500 mainly dairy cows. For anyone who knows the value of dairy cows you will be able to do a quick sum and see that that is a very substantial loss. But many more dairy cows are still missing or are injured. Of those dairy cows who have survived, because they could not be milked on time and some of them not milked for days, mastitis is a huge problem. We cannot get hold of all the veterinary supplies needed for that mastitis treatment. It is an animal welfare issue. It is a serious problem for the owners and managers of those dairy cows—

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no income.

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no income—absolutely not. They are exhausted by trying to treat their surviving dairy cows daily, and, needless to say, the dairy cows are not eating. As you would imagine, they too have been traumatised. There have been 30,000 sheep killed or injured—bear in mind that only two-thirds of the farms’ losses have been surveyed—and 330,000 chickens killed. One intensive chicken farm had seven trucks full of drowned birds to take to a local landfill, and thousands of beehives have been washed away. Someone said to me ‘that’s cute’, and I thought to myself, ‘They have no idea—beehives are not about honey; they are about honey in some circumstances, but they are in fact the pollinators of the entire crops of the Goulburn-Murray valleys and all of the almonds along the Murray River and around Mildura. The beehives between Laanecoorie and the Murray River have been washed away. That is thousands of beehives, and they cannot be replaced in the short term without very substantial financial support. For a while, we had to argue with Rural Finance in Victoria, who said, ‘Bees aren’t livestock.’ So we have lost the bees as well.

There are the most amazing stories—I am sure you have heard them from many other members and senators too—describing the heroism and the courage of the families and communities who saved one another. Very often they talk about the SES, the CFA, the defence forces and the police, and I acknowledge also those agencies and volunteers who helped in our towns—towns like Rochester. Rochester is on the Campaspe River, and they should have been told virtually to the centimetre and to the hour when the peak of the flood was coming down to their town. Their town also includes one of the biggest dairy manufacturing centres in Victoria, Murray Goulburn Cooperative, which is right on the banks of the Campaspe River. They were told to expect only a moderate flood on the Friday evening, so they made—if you like—moderate preparations. But by about 2 am on Saturday night, they found that they had the highest flood on record ripping through the town and their milk dairy processing factory.

They had had no warning, but the response of the community in that town was nothing short of miraculous and mind-blowing. The local channel constructors, who had all the gear, took charge of looking after sandbagging and levee management. No-one in that town, even the most recent of the newcomers, was alone; their houses were sandbagged, and, when the floods went through, their houses were cleaned and stripped bare of wet carpets and soggy furniture. The shops, which to a large extent were inundated, were cleaned out by gangs of community workers. One woman who has a quilting shop and who had most of her fabrics standing on the floors, as you do, anticipated that when she got into her shop from where she lives out of town she would be looking at a sodden ruin. But other people in the town, knowing that she did not live in the town, had entered her shop and shifted all of her fabrics, and she did not lose a thing. It was that sort of voluntary activity that saved the people of Rochester from the harm that they might otherwise have experienced. The Army helped by taking the aged residents out of the town in the back of trucks, and some went out with the fire brigade to be evacuated to Echuca and other places.

It was a magnificent community effort, and I commend people in towns such as Rochester, Bridgewater, Serpentine, Boort, Pyramid Hill and Korong Vale. All those little towns put in that magnificent effort, but forgive me for focusing on the farms, because they are the forgotten ones. I have not heard our Prime Minister talk about the farms. What would you do if there was no CFA, no SES, no police, no Army and no warning, and it was just you, your family, your workers—if you had some around—and your neighbours who could still get to you? The amazing thing was how often neighbours got to each other through water over their tractor wheels to bring in equipment and how they managed to put up new or better levies or to breach channel banks so they could save piggeries and dairies. It was a stunning effort.

I have to say that we are still neglecting the farms. It is not enough to say, ‘Too bad that your Exceptional Circumstances payments in this area are going to run out on 30 March and it’s all over because you’ve no longer got drought.’ Well, we sure as hell have exceptional circumstances right now: it is the worst flood on record. I am begging the federal government to announce, right now, the continuation of Exceptional Circumstances support for these people. Otherwise, how are they to buy food to put on the table? Thirteen weeks of income replacement is 13 weeks. They are going to need much, much longer than 13 weeks. Low-interest loans are fine at $200,000, but if you have no sense how your $1 million loan from the drought can be met then that makes it very difficult. These are very highly productive properties, but they are properties that at the moment look like a moonscape. Their fences look like they have been making hay along them—they are completely festooned with dry matter, with the remnants of crops pushed against them. Some fences are still standing; most are gone. In fact we have lost, as I said, 4,000 kilometres of fencing on two-thirds of the properties. There are some volunteers out there, but there are not many cameras, you see. There is not much media out there. They are very tiny districts, and the Prime Minister does not get out to these places, so we do not have the numbers of volunteers from other places that we need for help.

I am trying to put on the national record the fact that floods affect cities, and that is a tragedy; they affect towns, and that is very tragic; but they also affect farms, and farms do not have the numbers of people there to assist, but the impact of floods is just the same. The devastation is just the same; in fact, it can be worse. I had farmers tell me how they watched their sheep stand in water in full wool for two days before they drowned. Sheep can only stand for two days, then they fall over. Some dairy farmers had to walk their cows in full milk for seven hours to be milked. They were doing their best. We have got to do our best to help them.

Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It has been an extremely challenging summer. These last few months, which are usually a time of celebration and rest, have instead brought a sequence of catastrophic weather events, the most recent of which, Cyclone Yasi, has wrought a colossal amount of damage, though thankfully less than what had been anticipated, especially in terms of the lives and health of Queenslanders in its path. That is a cause for thanks, considering that the cyclone was of a scale and intensity comparable to Hurricane Katrina, which was responsible for 1,800 deaths when it struck the coast of New Orleans in 2005. The fact that Cyclone Yasi was much less harmful in terms of its toll on human life was partly a matter of fortune, which is always involved in such events, but it was also a matter of good planning and preparations, of good communication, cooperation and leadership. In referring to leadership I would like particularly to pay tribute to Queensland Premier Anna Bligh and Prime Minister Julia Gillard for their competent and compassionate handling of the many disasters over the summer.

I am thankful that, as of yet, there has been no loss of life in the fires that have been burning around Perth this week. On Sunday afternoon my uncle and aunt, David and Jenine Burge, and their children travelled to Fremantle to stay at my place because their house in Kelmscott is one of more than 70 homes that have burnt to the ground. My uncle was heartbroken that he was not able to save his father’s—my grandfather’s—violin, but he was overwhelmingly relieved that family members, including pets, had gotten out safely. Of course, my uncle was very much aware that his family was only one of many in Perth and around Australia to have suffered loss in recent disasters.

But even with the arrival and consequences of Cyclone Yasi, the fires in WA and the flooding in Victoria, WA, New South Wales and Tasmania, none of these serious events have in any way lessened our sense of the magnitude of devastation and loss that occurred through the floods in southern and Central Queensland. The loss of life, the injuries and the suffering as a result of those floods have been immense. The cost to the community in lives, in trauma and in grief has been acute; and of course there has been and will continue to be a huge cost in terms of the material wreckage of homes and roads and schools and power services, and the less material but no less distressing destruction of stability, of community and of peace of mind.

It has been moving, uplifting and sometimes confronting to hear the contributions made by members of this place. As was the case with the debate on the Victorian bushfires, the worst events not only bring out the best in the Australian character; they also bring out a sense of shared purpose, common cause and camaraderie in this place which is appropriate and welcome. I want to particularly thank the Queensland members for their contributions in recording the detail of what has occurred in their communities and to their constituents. With floods and cyclones there are so many ways to be overwhelmed by the scope and impact of these events. In these times we try to take stock of 200-plus kilometres per hour wind speeds and 200-plus millimetres of rainfall. We take stock of thousands of homes without power, roads closed and towns under water or inaccessible. Of course, these numbers and details are staggering, but in the end it is often the smaller stories, the personal stories of individuals and families confronting these events, that really go to the heart of what has occurred. So I thank the members in this place for sharing some of those important stories with us.

Above all, I join with my fellow parliamentarians in paying tribute to the people who endured the fear and hardship and pain of the recent events. I thank and honour all those who have been part of the emergency response and I thank all those across Australia who are sharing the effort to assist the recovery of people in towns devastated by the storms, floods and fires.

In Western Australia the summer has brought floods in the Gascoyne, fires in the south-west and around Perth and damaging storms to Geraldton and York. While much of the east coast of Australia has gone directly from drought to floods, in much of southern Western Australia the storms and floods, though on a much smaller scale, have occurred against the background of an ongoing and severe drought. In the wheat belt the soil remains parched; in Perth the dams are at historic lows.

In some ways it seems like a long time ago now, but in December a monsoon trough developed off the north-west coast of Western Australia and, over the days of 16 to 20 December, dumped an unprecedented amount of rain into the Gascoyne River catchment. A number of reading stations recorded between 250 and 315 millimetres of rain across those five days, in a region where the December mean rainfall is five millimetres and the annual rainfall struggles to break the 200-millimetre mark. The rain records for Carnarvon, which date back to 1883, previously recorded the highest 24-hour rainfall at 119 millimetres. In the 24 hours to 9 am on 17 December, Carnarvon Airport recorded 208 millimetres. This part of Western Australia literally went from drought to flood in 24 hours.

The floods in the Gascoyne have destroyed vast areas of agricultural cultivation and taken a massive toll on the properties and livelihood of the people of that region. The early damage estimates are in the order of $100 million. At least 2,000 cattle were reported drowned. With my other Western Australian colleagues, I fully support the government’s decisions to put in place Commonwealth-state government assistance packages, with grants and extra government assistance to those affected by the Gascoyne floods and, I also understand, the Western Australian bushfires. This will assist in the clean-up effort and will enable people to put their lives back together more quickly and with more dignity.

Life on the land can be subject to a meteorological cycle that swings savagely from one extreme to the next, with barely a season to catch one’s breath in between. We have seen that this summer. We are continuing to see it. So it is that, on the east coast, farmers who struggled to raise crops or maintain livestock in a series of dry years now confront crops that are washed out and animals that are drowned. In the Gascoyne, farmers whose crops were demolished by floods and whose animals have been drowned may well in the next 12 months face crops that will fail for lack of rain and animals who will suffer and die of thirst. I grew up in the country and I have never had anything but the greatest respect for the particular challenges that come with life on the land. This summer those challenges have been made clear again for all to see.

I would also like to recognise that, along with the terrible human cost of the Queensland floods and other natural disasters that have occurred around Australia, there has been an enormous amount of suffering visited upon animals. The floods in Queensland, Victoria and the Gascoyne have resulted in the deaths of a large number of livestock, pets and native animals. In addition to those losses, the Australian Veterinary Association has noted that the destruction of habitat and food sources will continue to have an impact on native species for some time to come. I take this opportunity to applaud the work being done by organisations like the AVA and the RSPCA and by local vets, wildlife associations, farmers and ordinary animal lovers across the affected areas.

One of the key frames through which we consider the world in the 21st century is climate change. It is a matter of commonsense that we should consider how to respond to that change and its consequences. In Australia that imperative is made stronger by the fact that we are in many ways particularly susceptible to the negative effects of climate change. The evidence and the expert analysis do suggest that climate change will produce extreme weather events of greater intensity. While no-one can say that the clearing and burning of a particular forest in South America in the year 1987 has directly contributed to Cyclone Yasi or the floods in Queensland or the fires last year in Victoria, it is absolutely correct to say that all of the human contributions to climate change are, taken together, a factor in bringing about an altered climate system that will result in higher temperatures, higher sea levels and more intense extreme weather events.

Perhaps what would otherwise have been a one-in-100-year flood event may now occur two, three or more times in that period. Perhaps the average intensity of the cyclones that occur in our region will increase. These are the kinds of things that fit a realistic prognosis. For that reason, the rebuilding and construction in Queensland needs to happen in a way that anticipates the next flood of the kind we have just seen—and possibly one that is worse. At the same time, right around Australia we need to re-examine our approach to urban planning, development approvals and the task of disaster planning and preparation. Storms and sea rises place our predominantly coastal society at great risk, and we will have no-one but ourselves to blame if we do not require planning to occur that takes account of the risks that are ahead.

I know that the new maps produced late last year by the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency made sobering reading for the people in my electorate. At the outer end of projections, there would be significant areas of the coast that would be subject to extensive inundation, including the area of the Cockburn coast that is currently being intensively developed—in some cases with apartment and marina developments that sit right on the ocean’s edge—and also including the west end of the city of Fremantle, which is regarded as one of the world’s best-preserved 19th century cityscapes. There needs to be a comprehensive review of our planning and preparation for the effects of flooding, storm surges and sea rises in order to ensure we do not create circumstances for unnecessary loss in the future and that we act to prevent damage, wherever possible, to development that already exists.

The last thing I would like to say is on another topic that, sadly, tends to arise whenever we face a crisis in Australia. When this country responds to natural disasters, and specifically to the cost of repair and reconstruction, there are always calls from a very small number of people to immediately cease our foreign aid contributions in order to allocate those same funds to our own backyard. On numerous occasions last year the coalition supported this government’s commitment to raise our level of foreign aid to 0.5 per cent of GNI by 2015-16. This is a level of aid that will make a significant difference to alleviating poverty, disease and malnutrition and to reducing the instability and violence that flow from these deprivations. I note reports of the present debate taking place within the coalition about whether to abandon bipartisan support for foreign aid. I find this very disturbing and I hope it does not continue.

If we were to do as the Leader of the Opposition suggests and renege on our commitment to help build schools in Indonesia, what would it achieve? It would mean that tens of thousands of underprivileged children would miss an education that stands to hugely improve their economic and health prospects. As a result, more would die and more would endure lives of poverty and deprivation. Apart from being a terrible loss for those kids and their families, it would do nothing for regional stability or economic development. And, as the Minister for Foreign Affairs said today in question time, it would do nothing to address the root causes of terrorism. It would not be well received by the government of Indonesia. It would be a promise that we have broken and, in that sense, it would be a mark against our own character and honour.

The phrase ‘charity begins at home’ was coined by English writer Thomas Browne in the 17th century, and its meaning is that in some cases the urge to help others can lead us to neglect ourselves. This is not the issue here. In any case, being a good international citizen and a good neighbour is absolutely in our national interest, contributing to global and regional peace and security and fostering economic development and self-sufficiency, which in turn expands our own export and economic opportunities.

Even as we lift our level of aid, it must be recognised that it is still at a level below that provided by a number of other developed countries. In fact, Australia ranks 16th out of 23 OECD nations in terms of the level of aid we provide and our contribution is well below the level of 0.7 per cent that the United Nations believes is necessary if we are to meet all the Millennium Development Goals.

There are always debates about how to allocate government funds, but the debates are not always as brave or as forensic as they should be. It is unfortunate that the focus is often on taking funds away from those who already have very little. Sometimes, domestically, the focus can be on cutting welfare or cutting funds to Indigenous programs. You would think it makes little sense, when trying to help people in trouble, to remove assistance to those already at the bottom. It is even easier but no less unreasonable to suggest that the response to our own troubles should include slashing foreign aid. As UNICEF has noted:

The recent natural disasters in Australia have given us a front-row seat to the devastation and suffering that too often we see on our television screens beamed from across the world. As a rich nation, and one that avoided the worst of the global financial meltdown, Australia has the capacity and the resources to help those in need both at home and beyond our borders.

As Queensland was being ravaged by floods, so too was Brazil, with more than 600 people dying there. These events and others, like the devastating earthquake in Haiti last year, show that disaster can strike anywhere; but of course it affects the poor disproportionately. As former Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley famously said:

We have a great objective—the light on the hill—which we aim to reach by working for the betterment of mankind not only here but anywhere we may give a helping hand.

I like to think of this as not just a Labor tradition but an Australian one.

We are dealing with tough times here in Australia, and we are going to confront that challenge together. But we are not going to confront those difficulties by playing politics with our aid commitments, because we know that those commitments go to men, women and children whose lives are on the line, and whose health and futures we help to change from being extremely bleak to being relatively safe and secure through the assistance we provide. We will rebuild Queensland and the other affected parts of Australia, and we will achieve that together, at the same time as we continue to do our part in reducing global and regional poverty and disadvantage and in promoting peace, security and economic development.

As I stated at the outset, it has been an extremely challenging summer in terms of the extent and ferocity of the natural disasters that have occurred. We have been lashed east and west by cyclones, floods and fires; yet, through all these months of danger and devastation, we have seen not just loss but also courage, not just destruction but also generosity, not just fear but also irrepressible Australian humour. In that sense, in the unstinting and big-hearted response of Australians to adversity, it has also been an uplifting summer.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The majority of what I am going to say this evening will relate to the floods in Victoria that occurred in such a devastating fashion. But, before I address what happened in Victoria, I would like to offer my condolences and pay respect to the victims of the floods in Queensland. In particular, I would like to draw attention to the speeches given by the member for Wright and the member for Herbert about what has occurred in Queensland. They are both colleagues who started with me in this place in August, and what they have witnessed in that short time as members will have had a huge and lasting impact on them and their communities. The way they spoke about that in the House can leave us all with nothing but great admiration for the job they have done as new members. I think they articulated superbly what happened in Queensland and what the lasting impact will be with regard to both the floods and the cyclones. I extend my sympathy and pay my respects to them and their communities, and all the other Queensland members who are still going through such a difficult time.

In Victoria we also had devastating floods. Two weeks ago I was in Glenorchy, which is a small country town west of Stawell, and I was shown around by a local councillor who had seen their house flooded for the second time in four months. The first flood had had a huge impact on their weatherboard house. It had started to bend the walls and do irreparable damage to the ceiling, because the house in many ways soaked up the initial flood. When the second flood came through, the house literally started to collapse around this local councillor and it is now a complete write-off.

The township of Glenorchy cannot afford to lose any more of its population but, sadly, for this local councillor the option of rebuilding in that small community is now not viable. The tears with which she expressed her disappointment at having to move away from that community—she is renting a caravan on a property and looking at where else she might head—will remain with me for the rest of my life. It showed me how much these floods, as others have articulated so well, have a human cost and a human impact, which we should never forget. As the months and years roll on we must always remember the human cost and the human impact of these floods and make sure that as members of this parliament we are there for these communities that have been impacted.

The second thing I will mention is when I was in Skipton on Sunday. Skipton has been flooded twice in the last four months, and on Sunday I was there again as that community waited for floodwaters to rise for the third time. The emergency services crews were there. The police were there. Local government was there. The Red Cross was there waiting to see what was going to happen. The resilience in that community facing flood for the third time was as admirable a thing as you could ever see. The first flood did a lot of damage; the second flood, in many cases, irreparable damage. For that community to be sitting there and waiting a third time for an event which in many ways would make the task of rebuilding so much harder. For them to be sandbagging, washing, waiting and in the end, fortunately, watching as the floodwaters rose but did not rise enough to inundate the town and the spirit with which they did that is the second thing which will remain with me forever.

I will take a moment to thank the State Emergency Services, the Country Fire Authority, Victoria Police, local government authorities, Red Cross and volunteers for the outstanding leadership they have shown in dealing with the floods and in guiding our community through it. The work they have done can only be described as inspirational.

I also praise the excellent coverage of our local emergency broadcasters, the ACE Radio Network and ABC Radio. Our emergency broadcasters at all times kept the local community informed of every development and as I travelled around Halls Gap, Pomonal, Stawell, Beaufort, Skipton, Wickliffe, Warrnambool, Allansford, Panmure and Mackinnons Bridge, our emergency broadcasters were keeping the local community informed of every development by crossing regularly to the emergency services and other relevant agencies. Even though the information was not at all times at hand, they did their utmost to keep communities informed. I know there were broadcasters who worked upwards of 15 hours to make sure that local communities knew as much as the emergency services did.

I would also like to commend our local newspapers for their coverage of the floods. Not only did they do an excellent job in providing as much information as possible but some of the weekly papers also brought us the human element, which is so important to our understanding of what is occurring on the ground. Even in some of the smaller communities which do not have newspapers but only community newsletters, those newsletters were vital in providing stories so that communities knew that what they were going through was shared and also in providing information after the events of what help was available for our local communities to access.

As I spent time with our affected communities in Wannon, and after helping with the clean-up, I heard many flood stories. The way the water came, the speed and the devastating impact on lives were all very much part of those stories. There was one comment I heard repeatedly, and I think it is very Australian: ‘There were people who were worse off than me, so I went to help them.’ People selflessly gave to help out others. I know of an example in Beaufort of a local businessman whose warehouse was flooding and yet he was working with the CFA to try to help save homes. To me, that was just so indicative of the way Australians deal with these disasters. The selflessness was there for all to see and was the constantly repeated theme that I heard as I went around.

It is very moving to hear the stories and see damaged homes and farms. I would like to particularly note what the member for Murray said in here two speeches ago on the impact these floods have had on our rural communities and especially our farms in western and north-western Victoria. There is talk of upwards of $2 billion to $3 billion in lost income for our farmers. Recuperating from that after many years of drought is going to be extremely difficult and is going to make the recovery of communities which have been flooded difficult as well, because it is the farms that ultimately provide the income that sustains a lot of the businesses in those communities. Hearing those stories—and they have been articulated here in this place—is dreadful. But, at the same time, I must say that it has been inspiring to witness the true resolve of people who have lost so much and their ability to give when you would think that the natural inclination would be to help oneself.

The flooding in many parts had to be seen to be believed. I have seen bridges with holes just ripped out of the centre of them; fences dragged for kilometres; and silage bales, which can weigh three-quarters of a tonne, delivered five kilometres from one farm down to another farm by the force of the water. It is going to take a long time for these communities to rebuild because the damage has been so destructive. Yet I am sure that in our communities in Wannon people will pull together and that that true community spirit will lead us to rebuild our communities and to move on. We have already seen that in Panmure, where the local football oval and netball courts were destroyed by the floods. Within two weeks there was a community working bee and already the repair job has started to make sure that, for the opening of the football and netball season, the recreational reserve will be in a fit state so that the community can gather again and move on.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my parliamentary colleagues Greg Hunt, Bruce Billson, Scott Ryan and Alan Tudge for assisting with the flood clean-up in Skipton, Wickliffe and Beaufort. Special thanks go to Alan Tudge for bringing members of the Salvation Army and Crossway Baptist Church to assist and also to John Kavanagh, Chairman of the Skipton Progress Society, for organising the local business owners meeting when my colleagues came to visit. Our community meeting in Skipton with all the businesses that had been impacted by the floods was an incredibly moving hour and a half. We heard firsthand from those businesspeople how they will seek to rebuild after the damage of the second flood. We heard the raw emotion, the uncertainty and the difficulties that they are facing in dealing with just the financial burden that the floods are causing them. They were concerned not so much for themselves but for the people that they employ and also whether they will have the money to keep employing those people, knowing that if a job is lost to that local community it is that little bit harder to make sure the community flourishes and thrives.

One of the things which struck me from talking to the people at these meetings is that they expect that one of the roles of government will be to support and invest in the long-term infrastructure of their communities. Right now, especially in western Victoria, I think that that, more than anything else, is what people want to hear from our government. With that in mind, I wrote to the Prime Minister. I will place on the record now how much I appreciated the phone call I received from the Prime Minister after the floods, asking me whether there was anything she could do and telling me that there was a contact in her office who I could call at any time with regard to the flood. Because of that phone call I have taken the opportunity to write to the Prime Minister and suggest that our communities in western Victoria need a one-off Roads to Recovery and bridges payment.

Having travelled around the local government areas, such as the Northern Grampians shire, Ararat Rural City, Pyrenees shire, Corangamite shire and Moyne shire, I saw that the devastation to the road and bridge infrastructure in all these local government areas will be a lasting legacy of these floods unless swift government action is taken. I know from talking to John Forrest that local government authorities in his electorate of Mallee are in a similar situation. I also know from talking to Sharman Stone that there are similar problems in her electorate of Murray. The devastation to the road and bridge networks has a major impact on these local communities. It prevents people from directly accessing their workplaces. It hampers the access of school buses, fire and emergency services and farm and freight transport. Many of the bridges are on secondary freight routes and, apart from the movement of freight, they are key economic assets in connecting local communities to the broader road networks that they travel on to get to work and school.

Prior to the floods some councils were already struggling to afford the maintenance and upgrades necessary to keep these roads and bridges open—these are not large local government authorities. Local residents, having been impacted by the floods—in some cases for the second time in four months—are not in a position to face further rate hikes.

So, to assist local government areas across Australia, including Wannon, that are already facing pressures in maintaining this road and bridge infrastructure, a one-off federal government roads and bridges to recovery payment directly to local government is, I believe, an absolute priority that must be addressed. I understand that mayors right across western Victoria will be supporting the letter that I have written to the Prime Minister by writing their own letters requesting such a payment. The Roads to Recovery program, which the former coalition government implemented and the Labor government has continued to support, would seem to be the ideal program to provide this support to local communities. I hope that the federal government will look very closely at this proposal as part of the package that it puts forward for Victoria.

On that, I would like to say that, while the plan and response that the federal government has put forward for rebuilding Queensland has been incredibly admirable, we are looking for such a plan now for Victoria. We need the Commonwealth to come out and articulate how it is going to help and assist in Victoria, what money it will dedicate to Victoria and how it will do this. I hope that we hear this sooner rather than later, because in many of the communities I am starting to get questioned about where the Commonwealth assistance to Victoria is.

In addition to infrastructure funding, the recent floods across the country have showcased the dire need for additional funding for the Bureau of Meteorology to ensure that it is well-equipped to adequately monitor and predict fast-moving, intense weather events such as these. Currently, the flood-monitoring infrastructure in the Wannon region is extremely inadequate and in many areas nonexistent. Indeed, there are no automated formal flood warning systems in the Glenelg-Hopkins region and there are only manual flood warning systems at Dergholm and Fulham Bridge. Townships such as Beaufort and Skipton and many waterways, including Mount Emu Creek and the Glenelg, Wannon, Hopkins, Merri and Moyne rivers, do not currently have adequate flood-monitoring systems, resulting in poor information for these communities regarding expected flood levels and flood time estimates. Similarly, Fiery Creek, north-west of Beaufort, and Wattle Hill Creek, Portland, lack flood warning equipment. I also understand my region has very few online Bureau of Meteorology rainfall stations.

People in Beaufort, Skipton, Wickliffe and surrounding localities could have saved more of their possessions had they received an indication of the flood level and estimated time of arrival. As it was, these communities were caught off guard yet again and for the second time—and for some even the third time—in six months some of these people have lost everything. I will give you an idea of what I experienced in Skipton on Sunday. Warnings were issued for flood in Skipton for the third time in five months. I went to Skipton in the afternoon and already they had been warned that the flood would occur at 10 o’clock; then it was to occur at two o’clock and then it was to occur at four o’clock.

I joined up with the SES in Skipton and went with them to do the latest round of flood measuring. What that entailed for the SES officer who was in charge at that time was to get down on his hands and knees and look through shrubs left over from the floods from the previous time to try and get an indication of how far the river had risen in the last two hours. In the 21st century I think we should be able to provide better information, better technology for our emergency services to do their job. The Bureau of Meteorology needs increased resources to enable it to provide early warnings about floods. Recent flood events have highlighted that my electorate is deserving of increased investment in flood-monitoring stations and funding for flood modelling. I urge the government to consider providing assistance for improved flood management and to invest more resources in the Bureau of Meteorology and its flood-warning system in Wannon and across the nation.

I wish to urge the federal government to allocate a tourism payment of the like received by Queensland to try to assist places such as Halls Gap and Pomonal in my electorate and those towns along the Murray that also rely on tourism. The devastation in the Grampians National Park has to be seen to be believed. The damage to walkways and bridges means that two-thirds of the park is closed and will probably remain so for three to six months. Right now, towns in the region such as Halls Gap and Pomonal need help in getting the word out that, although a large part of the national park is closed, they still need people to visit.

The jazz festival is on in Halls Gap this weekend. If we could get a record crowd there, that would be the best thing that people across Victoria and Australia could do for the town and the region at this time. As events occur throughout the year, if people could just keep in the back of their minds the idea of a trip to Halls Gap, that would have great benefits. It would help businesses which have been devastated by the floods and, the year before that, by the code red alert warning which emptied the town. That could be an ongoing contribution to helping western Victoria recover from the floods.

The federal government can also play a role here. I commend them for what they have done in offering money for tourism in Queensland, but I ask them to think about making a similar payment to either the regional tourism operators or jointly with Tourism Victoria to make sure that people are aware that all the tourist towns in western Victoria are open for business as well. The roads, although ripped apart in many places, are still open. As long as you are prepared in some places to take alternative routes, you can get to those towns. By visiting and putting money into those local economies you can make a huge difference.

I would like to end where I began: by pointing out that we should never forget the human impact that the floods, the cyclone and, in Western Australia, the fires have had. We should remember that people will be left with that impact not for months but for years. The government and all members of this House should remember that there is going to be an ongoing need to make sure that all these communities have the help that they need to recover.

We also must remember that we can make a difference, when we get rains, cyclones or fires like we did, by making sure that we can always improve on the way we prepare for those types of events. In the case of floods, it means by making sure that the technology is there for our catchment management authorities so that they can predict as best they can levels of rainfall and what impact that rainfall will have on communities which are prone to flooding. If we can remember those two key things going forward, as members of this parliament, we will be able to make a difference when these events occur in the future, as they will.

Deborah O'Neill (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to associate myself with the comments of the Prime Minister and other members of the House over the past day. The stories they have told are many and they are deeply moving. I hope by putting the grief, the sorrow and the loss into words we can reassure the broader Australian community of our commitment to one another as Australians. Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, when the true horror of the inland tsunami that struck Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley became clear, said, ‘I want us to remember who we are.’ These disasters have certainly made us remember who we are. They have revealed our core beliefs, held broadly across the nation, beliefs made apparent in the actions of care, of determination to hold firm in the face of adversity, to give service, to get in, one and all, and to get on with the clean-up. Across the entire nation, we have shared with another generation, generation Y, a formal and practical induction into the Australian way of enacting the deep understanding that we are an island nation and that we are all in it together.

Today I speak formally to honour the losses of lives and property, in cities, in regional areas and in rural settings. I speak to recognise the heroes and helpers who stood tall and have given such amazing service in extraordinary circumstances. As a citizen of this great country, Australia, I want to say on behalf of the people of Robertson that we care for you, our fellow Australians. Unlike the experiences of those in Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, northern New South Wales, Tasmania and, more recently, the suburbs around Perth, our homes on the Central Coast were untouched by natural disaster. Yet the response to the flood crisis, in particular, has been nothing short of phenomenal. The people of the Central Coast have opened their hearts and their wallets and in many cases have put their bodies on the line to help those in need. They have approached me asking me to convey to the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Premier of Queensland a recognition of their outstanding leadership and compassion at this time of great trial.

The people of Robertson, the people of the Central Coast, have reassured me that they want to be part of the rebuilding of the nation. We are more than willing to bear and share some part of the burden to ensure a fair go for those who have lost so much. Within days of the floods, every shop you walked into in Gosford had a donation bucket next to the cash register, for the Premier’s flood appeal. I have been to many local fundraisers. Our local Cumberland community newspaper, the Central Coast Express Advocate, ran a barefoot bowls afternoon out at the famous ABC, the Avoca Beach Bowling Club. There was money raised and there was also solidarity and reassurance that in our distant grief we were not alone, nor were we powerless to help from a distance.

A week later I was able to support another event, brought together by two Fire Brigade officers from Umina Fire Station, Billy McLean and Gary King. They are men with big hearts and great friends in the community and the emergency services. So, appropriately, they put on a triple-0 party at Woy Woy Leagues Club. I spoke that evening to many emergency services workers, who so deeply understand crises and disaster, but I also spoke to three young women who work for an insurance company up in the Hunter. They took calls from flood victims by day and then drove for an hour and a half from Newcastle by night to chip in and support the fundraiser, to do their bit.

One of our local Rotary clubs, the West Gosford Rotary group, asked me to speak at a fundraising dinner. Anthony and James and chef Jess put on a great Lebanese feast for more than 100 people at Byblos Restaurant just around the corner from my office in Gosford. Local businesses donated so generously and, by the end of the evening, Andrew Dickson, the president, and his trusty team had raised over $4½ thousand in one evening. I seek leave to table the list of local businesses who made donations to the event to ensure it would be a success. Their efforts deserve recognition in this place.

Leave granted.

Quietly, and with determination to do his bit for his country again, Australian cricket legend Arthur Morris, a member of Don Bradman’s invincible side, stepped up to do what he could from Tarragal Glen Retirement Village in Erina, where he now lives. Mr Morris donated one of his bats to the auction for a flood fundraiser. Last Friday, organised by our local radio station Star 104.5 FM, a convoy of care—six trucks from the Central Coast—headed up across the border with essentials and toys to bring a little comfort to those with so little. There were so many more local fundraising events that I will not have time to mention them here today, but I must take this opportunity to pay special tribute to two Central Coast mums who simply could not stand by while their fellow Australians were suffering.

Vanessa Betland and Sam Schuetze put together a mission of mercy to the flood ravaged area around Ipswich. They call their group the Central Coast Caravan of Angels. With an unbeatable attitude and fierce determination Vanessa and Sam marshalled financial and in-kind support from companies as large as Caltex, alongside local accounting practice Robson Partners, Chittaway Bay pharmacy and tavern, Donut King, Domino’s Pizza, Coastal Liner, Signarama, Axiom Psychological and Coaching Services, Star 104.5 and Sanitarium. These two women then went about rounding up their friends, supporters, local tradies and friends of local tradies—more than 60 volunteers in all. They got a bus, a few utes and they got to Ipswich. Volunteers paid their own way to get on a bus so they could get up there to help.

The practical side of their visit is that from Thursday, the 20th to Monday, 24 January they gutted houses, helped the ADF bag up rubbish, cleaned more than 20 houses and gave invaluable humanitarian assistance. The even more lasting gift they left behind was a delivery of hope for people who were wondering if others might forget their suffering. In her day job, Vanessa works for Robson Partners, while Sam tests children’s toys for safety. I want to give my special thanks to Vanessa and Sam, to their Caravan of Angels and their many supporters. Thank you for your amazing generosity of spirit. You are an inspiration. And it does not end there. The angels are going back to Ipswich on 24 February. Angels, you have done your region proud.

This summer has been one we will never forget, and it is one that we do not yet understand. Even as our amazing teams of emergency workers respond and some semblance of order is restored, there is the lingering question that hangs in the air: why? There are times we need to search out words to help us make sense of the great challenges that come to us in our lifetime. This is such a time. It is such a time because the floods, the rain, the wind and the fire tore away so much that our spoken words are a powerful way—sadly, sometimes the only way—in which we can record and acknowledge what was lost.

We as a nation have lost much. Every life is precious. What mother, what feeling human being would not be moved to tears by the account of 13-year-old Jordan Rice, who told his rescuers, ‘Take my brother first’? My own son, Noah, is just 14. Jordan’s courage certainly moved me.

The members for Oxley, Blair, Groom and Wright all gave moving testaments to both the pain and the resilience of the wonderful communities they represent. I am proud to be in this parliament with them. People across this great country who have survived nature’s worst are speaking of their amazing escapes and terrifying experiences in stories shared between neighbours and in words spoken in conversations down the phone. When the world around us has shifted, words offer us the chance to renew and restate our commitment to one another as human beings, to try to restore some order to the chaos and to reflect on what we have lost. To those who have lived in a disaster zone: we know that you have lost. So many treasured personal memories of places and lifetimes recorded in photographs and letters are lost and gone; so many years of tender caring for gardens, so many special pets, teddies, toys, music, iPods with favourite songs and special memories, computers with half-written books and letters—all gone. We know that, in the middle of that physical and emotional loss, the ordinariness of life was lost too. I want to reassure you that we all want to restore the ordinariness of life for you.

When we look back on this summer of 2010-11, it will be as a marker of time—a key moment in the life of our nation when nature once again revealed our vulnerability in the wake of her forces. Yet in our vulnerability we will find strength in one another’s commitment to our country and to our shared future. We will rebuild, we will not leave those most affected behind and we will be ever mindful of those we lost in the summer of 2010-11.

John Murphy (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I understand it is the wish of honourable members to signify at this stage their respect and sympathy by rising in their places.

Honourable members having stood in their places—

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

I thank the Committee.

Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That further proceedings be conducted in the House.

Question agreed to.