Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great privilege to be able to add my condolences to the very eloquent expressions of empathy that we have heard in this chamber over the past two days, as well as the wonderful recounting of the details associated with this season of loss and tragedy that we have experienced around the nation. It really gives us a full understanding of the depth of what we have faced, and it is a tribute to the connection, I think, that all members feel with their local areas. In particular, I pay tribute to the Prime Minister for her speech yesterday, which I believe was a magnificent, inspiring, unifying and rallying point for the nation at this time.

Certainly, they were tragic circumstances, and we have heard many eloquent expressions and explanations of some of those situations that we have all seen in the media. I will not add to that. I would like to spend my time here today focusing on what we should do now in tribute to those who lost their lives. The focus should be, of course, on reaching out to the grieving but also on dedicating ourselves to the reconstruction and recovery effort to honour the memories of those who lost their lives. There is a natural focus on the dramatic pictures that we see of the floods’ immediate effects, but it is also important to understand the long-term effects these floods, fires and other disasters will have.

In that spirit, on behalf of the government, during the summer I toured flood affected areas of New South Wales—in particular, Wagga, Dubbo, Parkes, Narrabri, Wee Waa, Narromine and Warren. I would like to state my thanks here to the mayors of those areas: the Mayor of Wagga Wagga, Wayne Geale; Parkes, Ken Keith; Dubbo, Allan Smith; and Narrabri, Robyn Faber. They did a wonderful job, at short notice, of bringing together the people that we needed to hear from in relation to those long-term effects. To the people who attended those meetings or met with me on that trail—the SES workers, property owners, small and medium business people, engineers and the like: thank you very much for the input you gave me, which I was able to bring back to the government to inform our discussions. It will no doubt inform our long-term discussions about what we as a nation need to do to deal with these sorts of large-scale tragedies. We may experience not only further events, as we have seen from the cycles that these things come in, but also events of greater intensity, with the probable effects of climate change.

I would also like to thank some of the property owners for their hospitality, particularly the Angel family at the ‘Broula’ property near Tarcutta. It is very interesting to look at how these long-term effects are playing out in some of these properties. We can all appreciate that a flood will destroy fencing and infrastructure on a farm. In the case of the Angel family, they had already suffered two previous waves of flooding in March and October, and then came the November-December floods. Their neighbour had repaired his fencing each time, so their loss was compounded in that respect. But their crops were also affected, downgraded from milling quality to feed quality. They had harvested some of their crop to try to minimise the damage by selling it for feed, but then most of that was washed away in subsequent flooding.

But the longer term problems they face may be things we have not contemplated, such as the fact that the enormous floods that came down from the Tumbarumba region, which was formerly in my electorate, have deposited gravel over a metre deep across a large section of his property. He now no longer has access to the topsoil on that section of this property because of that one-metre deep layer of gravel. Some of the silting in the southern and south-western areas of New South Wales is of poor quality and of no benefit to the soil, so there are significant issues there also regarding the effect on the topsoil itself on some of these properties.

The councils were very effective in conveying to me and showing me some of the damage to the infrastructure that they have suffered. I think that we need to understand what they are going through. Heartbreak is too weak a word to express the situation for a lot of these farmers and the circumstances they are now in. This year was going to be the recovery crop. This was going to be the crop that got them back on their feet after those 10 long years of drought and out of the debt that they had acquired in that time. The worst of it was that they had already sunk cost into that crop. They had laid the fertiliser and the herbicide and done the work, and so all the money was there sitting in those crops when they were destroyed.

It was patchy. Some properties suffered extensive crop damage, others did not. But even for those who did not suffer damage to their crops immediately, damage to the roads, bridges and infrastructure has meant that it has been extremely difficult to both get the headers down for harvesting and also the produce to market. All of this became dramatically apparent in our tour of the affected properties and certainly that information has formed a large part of the thinking of the government in informing its response, and it will continue to shape the national discussion that will now take place on how we can assist these farmers. Many of them, because of the drought, were engaging in forward selling of crops. They now have to pay for crops which they were not able to harvest but which they received money for.

While I am here, I would like to pay tribute to the member for Parkes, Mark Coulton, who accompanied me on a large part of that tour of western New South Wales. Mark is a man I respect enormously. He is a very decent, hard-working local member who has taken a great deal of time to understand deeply the impacts on his region, and he continues to do. He was very helpful in making sure that that information was made available to me in the time that we had on the ground. So I thank the member for Parkes for his assistance and commend him on the work that he has done, and is doing, in his community in the face of this destruction.

We have heard talk about betterment as well. It was very apparent when we observed some of the infrastructure that you can engage in false economy with some of the infrastructure work that goes on in council areas. We observed in the north of New South Wales a road which only 12 months previously had been sealed but which was almost completely destroyed because corners were cut in relation to the cost of building the road. It is perfectly understandable where councils are under pressure with their budgets. But, by comparison, we saw a road where the required effort, attention and care had gone into the building of it. As a consequence there was very minimal damage done to it and very little effort will be required to restore it. So there can be false economies in the way we deal with infrastructure.

We have also learned a great deal in terms of civil engineering techniques and technology over the years. Many of these significant pieces of infrastructure—bridges and the like—were put in place many years or even decades ago. We saw one bridge near Wagga where the bridge itself was completely intact but both approaches had been completely washed away. Since the approaches were built, civil engineering techniques have changed dramatically. Certainly in the rebuilding we do need to learn lessons and understand the patterns that we observed in this flooding, and in particular to shape how we do the infrastructure reconstruction. I am grateful to the engineers and the councils for showing me those effects and discussing the technical and specific issues with me.

I think that it was particularly poignant that in the context of this season of loss and tragedy we celebrated Australia Day, and of course close to Australia Day we also had the announcement of the Victoria Cross for Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith. The response of the community to the disasters was what made us particularly proud on Australia Day to celebrate the thousands and thousands of volunteers who came out to respond to the crisis in Brisbane and other places and also of course to celebrate the VC, demonstrating those traditional Australian values of courage and sacrifice we all admire so much. It gave us the opportunity to re-dedicate ourselves to a unified approach based on fundamental Australian values in dealing with this tragedy, pulling together as a nation in a multipartisan way at this time.

In my own area of Eden-Monaro, we were, I guess, the starting gun for this season. On 9 December the floods arrived in my own region, and by comparison now we consider ourselves extremely lucky. I received text messages from members asking me how we were travelling—I had to evacuate my electorate office—but many of those members subsequently suffered much worse circumstances, so I think of those messages.

Four shires out of my seven were disaster declared. In particular, in our local area here, Captains Flat, a lovely little town with a wonderful community spirit, suffered very significant damage. One of our Comcar drivers, whom many will know, Leslie McIntyre, was affected by this. Leslie woke up in the middle of the night hearing strange noises. She climbed out of her bed and found that she was up to her knees in water. In the dark, she scrambled out of her house and battled out to the front yard. The waters were quite strong and she feared for her life. Today I would like to pay tribute to Mr Gary Baker who, despite warnings not to cross the river at the flat because it was unsafe, did so. In the middle of the darkness, Gary’s arm reached out, grabbed Leslie and saved her from those circumstances, in disregard of the warnings that he had received. So I would like to thank Gary Baker for his courage, and I certainly know that Lesley is extremely grateful for having her life saved.

On the negative side, there is a significant insurance issue in Captains Flat, just as we have seen play out in many other regions. There were people who carried insurance and were keen to make sure that it did have flood coverage. Now we are finding that there is unwholesome quibbling going on, on the part of the insurance companies, in respect of this damage. It is traumatic. We are still, and have been since 9 December, in the situation where this to-ing and fro-ing is going on with great trauma, stress and personal and economic loss to the victims of that damage in Captains Flat. I urge those insurance companies to rethink their position on this, to rediscover their compassion and to interpret these provisions in the way that they ought to be interpreted. There is the scope to do that. You could always find ways of interpreting words to mean one thing or another, but there is certainly scope there for them to come to the rescue of these very deserving people in the Captains Flat area.

I also take this opportunity, as many have, to salute the service of the emergency service providers and respondents that operated, but in particular to my brothers and sisters in the Australian Defence Force who have done a fantastic job. As many have said, wherever they have turned up they have brought heart and hope to people who find themselves in these circumstances. I know that often we think of the Defence Force in its overseas operations but, if you look back through its history, by far the overwhelming commitment of our Defence Force has been in disaster response in the service of this nation. The capabilities that they bring with tactical lift, heavy lift, water purification, engineering capabilities and just sheer manpower are a great asset to this nation and well worth the investment this nation makes in it. For those who cry of a waste of money in defence spending, let them see what those assets have done and have brought to bear in this disaster and think again.

Many reservists were also mobilised in this support. In the previous term, I had responsibility for the reserves in the portfolio of Defence and met with the defence reservists who had worked in response to the Victorian bushfires. I spoke to them about how they felt about that and, overwhelmingly, they tremendously appreciated and felt privileged for the opportunity of being able to serve directly the Australian community that they had joined up to serve. They found the experience rewarding and would do it again in a heartbeat. We have seen that demonstrated time and time again. I salute the men and women of this country in uniform, including our reservists, who have responded so magnificently in all the disasters that this nation has experienced.

We do now have to focus on the next job. I have seen Australians confront these tragedies. I have seen many disasters and wars and much destruction overseas. I have often seen people in such a state of shock that they did not know what to do next and would sit around waiting for someone to provide a solution. In this country it has been magnificent to see communities not wait for that and to see how they self-organise and self-help. Certainly, as they do, we need to now focus on the next step, putting one foot in front of the other. However, I stress that, in doing that, we all need to be in step as a nation.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to add my words to this motion of condolence on the natural disasters. I acknowledge the words of the Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, the member for Eden-Monaro, and thank him for his visit to my electorate in January. The electorate of Parkes has been battling this disaster in various forms since November. It started at the same time as the grain harvest started. Just as farmers were about to start or had just started the harvest, it started to rain and it did not stop. For a large part of my electorate, it was the first crop they had had in 10 years. The lost expectation of the crop that was going to turn things around has been devastating for many communities. The financial impact of that is actually probably greater than the direct flooding that my electorate suffered as well. Even as we speak today, there are still farmers trying to salvage parts of their grain crop two months after what would normally be considered the end of harvest. As the ground dries out enough to carry machinery, they are trying to salvage what they can. The quality is extremely low and the value per tonne is not very high, but they are trying to get what they can.

The electorate of Parkes is 256,000 square kilometres and covers 34 per cent of New South Wales. Pretty well every shire in my electorate was affected in some way or other. They were affected in different ways. Earlier on, the mid-western area of New South Wales, around Mudgee, had large storms with quite severe, rapid damage. Many people in that mountainous area to the east of Mudgee were isolated because the roads were destroyed. When I was last speaking to the General Manager of the Mid-Western Regional Council, they were estimating that the repair bills were going to be something like $20 million. In December, a fortnight before Christmas, the Macquarie Valley suffered major flooding and the city of Dubbo was cut in half for nearly two weeks. There was one bridge open, but the main bridge that covers the Newell Highway was blocked, which led to traffic chaos in Dubbo. It led to the closure of the main street due to flooding to the back of commercial premises. Leading up to Christmas, this was an economic disaster for those businesses affected. Realistically, a lot of them missed out on Christmas trade that they will never recoup. I compliment the way that the councils have helped and worked during this particularly stressful time. Indeed, Dubbo City Council had to rebuild one of their urban streets during the middle of this crisis because the highway traffic that was diverted down this normally urban road completely destroyed it, and they had to rebuild that as well as deal with the changed traffic conditions.

At that time we also had flooding in the lower Namoi. The week before Christmas I flew across the Namoi, Bogan, Macquarie, Castlereagh and Lachlan river valleys and there were huge amounts of water there. In the Macquarie valley, in the Warren area, there were large amounts of damage not only to the winter crop but to the cotton crop and the summer crops as well, as levee banks on irrigation farms were destroyed.

As I stand here today, a large proportion of the Parkes electorate is under water. The town of Lightning Ridge has been isolated for some weeks. Goodooga has been isolated for a month and will possibly be isolated for two to three months. Rain that fell in Toowoomba caused that horrible devastation. That water has just reached the top end of my electorate now. That is the third flood peak that has come through into the Lightning Ridge, Goodooga, Brewarrina area—and it is at record heights there. When I was at Lightning Ridge it was 30 centimetres above record high. That might not seem a lot, but in that flat landscape that means miles and miles of extra width. The levees protecting farmhouses were not high enough, so the farmers have suffered severe losses to homes, shearing sheds, machinery sheds and machinery and, in many cases, livestock have drowned. The problem they have now is that the stock isolated on ‘islands’ will eat their way out of the available feed on those islands and they will have to be cared for by fodder drops by helicopter. So this crisis will be moving on for some time.

Something I would like to mention is the issue of mental health. This is a very stressful time for all those communities—for the farmers that have lost crops, the small business people that have had their businesses devastated and the people that have had their homes inundated. I was very concerned when around Christmas time and the New Year period there were stories going around of large numbers of farmers in my electorate having succumbed to the stress of the situation they were in and committed suicide. I have done some research, I have contacted the police and followed up the rumours of suicide that I had heard, and I think it is largely an urban myth. Maybe there has been the odd case, but certainly not to the level portrayed. I had a phone call from the Australian newspaper on a Sunday evening asking for confirmation of the reports and I said that I believed this was not the case. The story the next day did not quote my words but those of a member for an electorate in northern Queensland who spoke of large numbers of suicides.

The reason I raise this is that I think this sensationalising of an issue such as suicide and mental health is terribly negative. People deal with stress and they do it in a remarkable way, but mental health is a much more complex issue. You do not have to be under stress from a flood or to have lost your crop to suffer issues of mental health and feel suicidal. To tie mental health issues with periods of extreme stress I think is very dangerous because then funding for mental health gets tied to extreme issues, whether it be drought or flood, and it is a simplistic way of looking at a very complex issue. So I hope that as people try to grab a sensational headline they might think of the consequences of making suicide an issue to sell newspapers rather than doing the research to find out the truth behind the story.

Just recently, due to large storms in the Dumaresq Valley, we have had floods in the Macintyre and the villages of Toomelah and Boggabilla were both evacuated 120 kilometres to Moree. It was one of the largest evacuations over such a distance that we have ever seen in this country, and I would like to compliment the people involved in that process. Moree Plains Shire Council is led very strongly by Mayor Katrina Humphries, who had a sense of the magnitude of the flood and raised the alarm early, and as a result they were very well prepared. I also compliment the people of Moree for opening their arms to the visitors to their town over that particular period of time, and the people of Boggabilla and Toomelah on the way they conducted themselves during that very stressful period. I would also like to compliment the government departments—the state department, DOCS, and the Centrelink staff in that area. We did have an issue because the people in the border towns that were evacuated to Queensland were eligible for a relocation grant but if they were relocated to Moree they were not. This was quite upsetting to some people. I have to say that it was thanks to the management and staff of Centrelink that we managed to resolve the issue at about five o’clock on Saturday afternoon and by Sunday afternoon those people were receiving financial assistance at the evacuation centre. I would like to thank the Centrelink staff for their extra effort at a particularly stressful time.

I would like to finish by complimenting the volunteers. While the flood in the Parkes electorate may not have been as sudden and as dramatic and as devastating as others, it has been a long, slow road. We have got volunteers in the west of my electorate who are giving months of their time monitoring flood levels, manning roadblocks, organising food drops to families, organising fodder drops and a whole range of other things that are going on for a very long time. So I would like to compliment the work the volunteers are doing. I would also like to compliment the work that all the councils have done as the primary organisers of immediate assistance for their communities.

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to support the motion that was moved by the Prime Minister yesterday and seconded by the Leader of the Opposition that has been spoken to by a number of members on both sides yesterday and today.

As a nation we have been faced with unprecedented floods, fires and tropical Cyclone Yasi this year. This summer all Australians, those who have been directly affected and those who have not, have been confronted with the reality of just how frail and unimportant we are in the face of nature’s brutal power and force.

The devastation wreaked by flood, fire and cyclone has been beyond the imaginings of most Australians. It seems not so long ago that we were faced with the tragedy of prolonged drought and yet this summer, in parts of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, parts of Tasmania and Western Australia, we have been confronted with more rain than anyone could have imagined and certainly more than we could handle.

We have often been described as a nation of extremes. I sometimes try and imagine how the rest of the world must see us when, every time they see Australia on the news, there is a fire, a flood or a cyclone, or someone is being eaten by a crocodile. Yet we, as Australians, though we struggle with these events, have developed such strong instincts and practices of resilience in the face of them.

Sadly, the natural disasters that communities across Australia have experienced this summer are not just oddities; they are not just about the power of nature. We cannot sit back and remark upon them because the toll, the cost of them, is measured in human lives and in the massive destruction to people’s property and livelihoods.

We are of course most concerned about the loss of human life and the injuries that people have incurred, but we are also concerned about the communities that have been turned upside down that will take years to rebuild and the many thousands of people that have lost their homes and all of the memories that those homes contain or have lost their businesses or places of employment. Thousands of people will wear these scars for many years to come, particularly the scars of the loss of human life—the tragedy of parents losing children, children losing parents, and of partners, siblings, friends and neighbours being lost, particularly in the floods. Of course they will never be forgotten, and it is not just their immediate family and friends that will remember them; as a nation I think all of us will remember the exacting cost of this summer.

So many homes and so many memories too—I do not think anyone who has not been through a fire or a flood of this scale can possibly imagine what it is like to lose everything that reminds you of your childhood and your early years and the lives of your children. We had terrible fires in New South Wales years ago, including in the area where I grew up. So many people remarked to me at the time that, first of all, they were thankful that they had escaped safely, but when they lost their homes they mostly regretted losing family photographs and those other things that remind us of our lives together.

We have been particularly moved, I think, by the tragedies in towns like Grantham and Murphys Creek in the Lockyer Valley. On our TV screens we watched that wall of water, that inland tsunami, lay waste to those communities. As those floodwaters moved through Queensland and we saw the floods approach Brisbane, a metropolis of more than two million people, and the central business district of Ipswich disappear under the floodwaters, all of these images have stayed with us because they indicate that these were not normal weather events that we were watching. This followed hard on the heels of the destructive floods in Central Queensland—the ones that hit Rockhampton and the surrounding region very hard.

All of the images that we have seen from around the country—from WA, Tasmania and parts of Victoria—were followed by what happened last week in Far North Queensland when tropical Cyclone Yasi bore down upon the Queensland coast. It was not any old cyclone; it was a cyclone more powerful than Hurricane Katrina which devastated New Orleans in 2005 and Cyclone Tracy which ripped through Darwin in 1974. Yet, through all of that, the bravery and the spirit of Australians has shone through. Premier Bligh in Queensland has remarked many times on the spirit of Queenslanders, and I think those of us around Australia were moved by the resilience shown in Queensland.

In 2006, after Cyclone Larry, my colleague the Treasurer told the parliament of the impact of that cyclone. He said a Queensland colleague told him:

… the one thing that does not need rebuilding is the spirit of the affected communities, because that spirit stood resolute and undamaged against Cyclone Larry.

I think that could be said about these most recent events as well: that spirit of resilience has been demonstrated in abundance in the stories of survival that we have heard.

It was inspirational to read the story of Phil and Lynne Davis who stood firm in the face of Yasi when it crossed the coast and their town of Tully Heads in Far North Queensland last week. In the Sydney Morning Herald, Phil said of his home:

This is still our little piece of heaven.

Phil and Lyn had somehow retained their sense of humour, judging by the sign in their flooded front yard that said simply: ‘Thanks, Yasi, for landscaping my yard.’

Ian Surawski was holidaying in Vietnam when he heard that Toowoomba had flooded. He believed that Brisbane would be next, so he hopped onto the first available flight home. The flood came much too quickly, and he arrived home to find that his house was under five metres of floodwater. Ian was lucky enough to salvage more than most, including some clothes, tools, furniture and other contents that were important to him. He said:

Most of the solid furniture was OK—any of the modern stuff fell apart though …

There was a china cabinet that belonged to my mother…but all the china seems to be intact, and some volunteers have offered to clean it all.

I’m involved in Goodna and District Rugby League Football Club and I had 16 sets of footy jerseys, which are all being washed for me.  They’ll be okay. Someone else is washing some of my clothes—I don’t know how many times they’ll need to be washed though.

I was able to save some of my air force mementos—they’re pretty important to me. We saved a selection of the footy club memorabilia—a lot of those were laminated.

Those stories of saving mementos and important objects and also the willingness of volunteers from everywhere to help in the effort have become very familiar to us over these last few weeks. We have seen emergency services personnel from all over Australia go into affected areas. We have seen police and Defence Force personnel go to affected areas, and the work they are doing is very gratefully received by the affected communities. But we have also seen volunteers rush to offer assistance of any type—shovelling mud, cleaning up people’s houses, sandbagging and trying to prevent inundation before the floods approached in situations where communities had some warning.

I also want to pay tribute to the volunteers for their bravery and their spirit in helping their fellow Australians. I want to pay particular tribute to the outstanding work of Centrelink and its staff in responding to the succession of natural disasters that we have experienced this summer. I commend Centrelink across the board, from the Chief Executive Officer, Carolyn Hogg, and her first-class deputy, Grant Tidswell, through to all the customer service officers who have been involved in the emergency response this summer. Your work has been outstanding.

Centrelink sometimes cops a bit of criticism and it is all too seldom praised for the phenomenal work it does on behalf of all Australians. We should be grateful as a nation that we are able to mobilise our emergency response so quickly. Centrelink has been central to these efforts. Centrelink was able to deploy hundreds of staff within days to flood affected areas to start providing assistance to those flood affected communities. At the height of the flooding across three states—Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales—over 300 extra staff were working in emergency and recovery centres, assisting people with processing payments, doing outreach work, offering social workers and counselling, and making sure that people were getting the financial assistance they needed immediately and the longer-term assistance they needed to rebuild their lives.

It is very important to paint a picture of where these staff were. They were doing work in emergency centres, in recovery centres, in school halls, in church halls and at card tables in shopping centre strips right across the affected communities. In particularly badly affected areas they were going door to door. They were knocking on people’s doors, seeing whether there was anyone home and seeing whether they needed assistance. I just cannot speak highly enough of that effort, and members of parliament on both sides have told me how important those efforts were in their own communities. Experienced Centrelink staff flew in from all over the country to help with the efforts, and many staff now remain in Queensland helping the victims of tropical cyclone Yasi. In total, more than 2,500 Centrelink staff across the nation have been working on the processing of payments for people affected by disasters. There have been staff in call centres across the nation: in places like Newcastle, Geelong—which has a 24-hour call centre—Brisbane, Perth and La Trobe, all doing their bit to help people in flood affected areas.

There have also been people from other agencies: Medicare, the Child Support Agency, the Australian Taxation Office, the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and the Fair Work Ombudsman—all of them experienced at answering complex inquiries from people who are very distressed. They have been volunteering to work on the Centrelink phone lines to help at this most difficult time.

Centrelink fielded 500,000 calls over the first couple of weeks of January in relation to the floods. At one stage, calls to the emergency hotline were consistently numbering between 30,000 and 40,000 a day. Those calls were translating into often more than 30,000 applications for financial assistance in a day. It is difficult to get an idea of the magnitude of the task of answering all of those calls—giving the correct information, helping people to put in applications for financial assistance and then making sure that the money hit their bank accounts, in many cases within 24 hours and in most cases within 48 hours. Centrelink has processed more than 460,000 claims and has paid $545 million worth of Australian government disaster recovery payments so far. It has processed 44,000 claims and paid over $19 million worth of disaster income recovery subsidies.

This task is monumental, and I really want to again congratulate the staff of all of the agencies involved, and I congratulate Centrelink for its leadership in processing nearly half a million claims for assistance and paying out over half a billion dollars. In addition to this, Centrelink has also had its ‘business as usual’ work to do—delivering services to millions of Australians every working day. In all of that, many of the staff of Centrelink were themselves affected. Many of their own homes and families were affected by the floods in Queensland in particular. One Centrelink staff member had a very narrow escape when her car was caught in a flash flood near Ipswich in the middle of the night. She had been driving on a dark, rural road to collect her father as floodwaters were threatening his farmhouse. Her car was hit by the flash flood and quickly floated downstream and began filling with water. With her mobile phone between her teeth, she climbed into the water. Despite the powerful floodwaters, she managed to swim to safety. She had loaded all of her important possessions into her car because she thought her house was about to go under. She now had absolutely nothing. The next day, with her house inundated and wearing borrowed clothes, she walked seven kilometres to go to work. She had decided that her own flooded house could wait a while and, in the meantime, she would go to work and get on with the job of helping others.

It is no wonder that Phillip Coorey in the Sydney Morning Herald described the government’s response to the floods as ‘the flawless rollout of a disaster plan, including emergency Centrelink payments and mobilisation of the military’. I am very proud to be the Minister for Human Services at a time when Centrelink has played such a significant role in helping individuals, families and their communities as part of the government’s response to the summer disasters. Centrelink staff across Australia worked evenings and weekends to take calls from flood victims, to process their claims and to offer counselling to those who wanted it. During all of that time, many agency staff were flooded out of their own homes and offices but continued to work. I am proud of these staff and their contribution. They and their colleagues should be equally proud.

I wish all Australians affected by natural disasters this summer the very best in their efforts to rebuild and recover. I sincerely hope that they and their communities can return their lives to something like normality as quickly as possible. Of course, for those who have lost family and friends, life will never be the same, and the thoughts of all Australians are with you today and always.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I stand today following a whole host of members whose electorates and, moreover, the people they represent, have been flood affected over recent months. I say ‘affected’ rather than ‘damaged’ because, even though many individuals, many families and many businesses did not endure, as some sadly did, walls of water rushing through their homes and shops, everyone in some regions has been affected in some way or other by the terrible events. Every state has experienced the devastating effects of the floods. Some were not as widely reported as others but that is not to say certain people in areas which did not make the national news were spared.

The member for Braddon, Sid Sidebottom, my colleague on the Standing Committee on Regional Australia, conducting an inquiry into the impact of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in regional Australia, had to take leave of our recent tour to return to his Tasmanian home to sandbag his house and, I am sure, to help out others while he was there. The member for Wannon, Dan Tehan, and the member for Capricornia, Kirsten Livermore, were not even able to make the tour, such was the extent of flooding in their respective Victorian and Queensland electorates.

It seemed almost incongruous for a committee to be going from regional town to regional town to discuss ways to save water and hear plausible arguments as to why water should not be taken from farming communities, when the nation was inundated with the worst flooding since 1974. The flooding in Queensland was especially disastrous. The rain came and kept coming, and as it moved south a trail of destruction and, unfortunately, death was left behind.

The images of a four-wheel drive being swept along a Toowoomba street when flash flooding hit the city on 10 January are implanted in Australians’ memories. This image spread around the world. Few could believe what they saw. This was nature at its very worst. To then learn that the Brisbane River would spill its banks too shocked the nation and the state even further.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been affected by these floods. They have lost their homes, their pets and their income and some, tragically, have lost their loved ones. Material possessions can be replaced, even if it is hard to accept that treasured mementos are gone forever. Livelihoods can be rebuilt. But the loss of human life is precious, as we all know. This is a flood which will never be forgotten.

As people start to repair and rebuild their homes and businesses, some will be trying to repair and rebuild their families as they move on from this tragic event. Australians are resilient people; we knuckle down and get on with the job and, when times are tough, we put our shoulders back and chins up and find a way through. Queenslanders will do this, as will those from other states, but it will take time.

Many people are saying now is not the time to discuss options to prevent future flooding. But if we keep putting this off then it will end up in the too-hard basket or be forgotten until next time a disaster strikes. We cannot and must not let this happen. To mitigate further flooding, possibly save lives and certainly store water, Australia’s water storage infrastructure must be improved. Flooding affects people’s livelihoods. We should be doing everything and anything possible to stop flooding such as this occurring again.

No new major dams have been built in nearly a quarter of a century. In the Murray-Darling Basin, the last significant dam constructed was the Dartmouth in north-east Victoria way back in the 1970s. Dartmouth’s capacity is 3,906 gigalitres, similar to the amount the Murray-Darling Basin Authority declared in its controversial guide is now needed to be taken from the system for the environment. When proposals for dams are presented they are usually dashed by environmental concerns. In fact, since it was created after the 2007 election, Infrastructure Australia has not received a single proposal for a dam to be built. Dams offer more than just water storage; they are a potential source of emissions-free electricity and they are an important addition to food security. Dr Barry Croke, from the Australian National University, is a water catchment expert and says dams help to ‘delay, lower and broaden’ the impact of floodwaters on urban settlements. He says that, without the Wivenhoe Dam, floodwaters would have flowed into Brisbane much faster, with a higher peak occurring earlier. It is time the social benefits to communities are put before the environment and it is time we shake off our dam phobia.

By no means as severe as the Queensland floods, my electorate of Riverina was also affected by flooding as 2010 drew to a close. For the past decade the Riverina has been devastated by drought and most farmers, not only in my electorate but everywhere else too, lost millions of dollars worth of livestock and crops. Families suffered, properties were sold and, in some overwhelming circumstances, lives were lost. Finally, in the autumn months, prayers were answered. The skies opened and the drought was broken. Farmers started preparing themselves for a high-yielding bumper season, a season which would hopefully start to pay off some of their ever-increasing bank debt.

Livestock farmers were breaking records week after week and crop farmers were sowing soil wet enough to grow great crops yet dry enough for them to succeed. However, by 15 October, the rain had not stopped. The Riverina was fast exceeding its need for water. In my electorate, properties in Adelong, Collingullie, Tarcutta, Tooma, Tumbarumba and Uranquinty fared the worst. Towards the end of November, it was estimated that $500 million was wiped off the value of the $3.2 million New South Wales harvest; however, the rain and the flooding continued over the first weekend of December, making the damage bill much higher. Most crops around the Riverina, be it wheat, lucerne, lupin or canola, were either lost or severely depleted in value. By mid-December, the situation had become so dire, districts in my electorate were placed on the natural disaster list, homes were evacuated, livestock was drowning and crops were under water. But the cruellest cut of all was the realisation that what was meant to be a bumper crop was not going to happen.

On 14 December, federal opposition leader, Tony Abbott, Leader of the Nationals, Warren Truss, and shadow minister for agriculture, John Cobb, visited the Riverina to inspect flood damaged crops. Mr Abbott, Mr Truss and Mr Cobb embarked on a tour of properties west of Wagga Wagga near the village of Collingullie. The first property they inspected, owned by Adam Jenkins, once grew lucerne and soybeans, but with the current conditions and floodwater his crops were under water—a loss of $100,000 in soybeans alone.

We then went across the road to the ‘Maroubra Park’ property of John and Anna Dennis and their sons. They are wheat and lupin growers. They had a wheat crop to strip. Its initial value of more than $300 a tonne was depleted by 14 December to significantly less, with the quality downgraded to mere feed wheat. Mr Dennis also had a paddock of lupins which was suffering from rain induced fungal disease. He was not alone. You can understand why farmers must have been thinking of those immortal words of Hanrahan in John O’Brien’s—or Father Patrick Joseph Hartigan’s—famous poem, ‘We’ll all be rooned if this rain doesn’t stop’.

Many New South Wales farmers hardest hit by torrential rain, which has downgraded the value of their crops, are about to have their exceptional circumstances relief payments containing the much-needed interest rate subsidy provision terminated next month. This program helped save them in the drought and is needed more than ever now and into the future. I was gratified to see the Prime Minister nod her head in understanding and agreement when Nationals leader Mr Truss raised this during his speech yesterday, and I would ask the government to consider extending these EC provisions. Farmers in Queensland have lost crops too and need support. Without these crops farmers were relying on, many will be hard pressed to find money to put food on the table, plant a crop next season or even meet loan repayments. The destruction of that state in a matter of days was unbelievable, and we must be prepared to do whatever we can to help circumvent any such devastation again.

The December flooding of the Murrumbidgee River would have been far worse but for the wonderful efforts of our local defence personnel as well as various organisations, including the magnificent State Emergency Services and the Wagga Wagga Rescue Squad. The speed with which the councils and police in my electorate sprang into action was to be commended. On the very night our local Wagga Wagga Rescue Squad, from which the New South Wales Volunteer Rescue Association was formed, was commemorating its 60th anniversary, many of its members were doing what they could to help save the city from rising floodwaters. Sandbags were hastily made and installed where necessary, levee banks were strengthened, people were mobilised, communities at risk were evacuated and, unlike the flash floods of a few weeks earlier in smaller regional valleys, the floodwaters came and went without breaking the levees and without causing too much heartache or damage to urban areas.

We have heard stories of heroism, stoicism and resilience; the Australian spirit at its best. There are many tales of mateship, individual bravery and effort in the face of unimaginable loss. We heard yesterday in this House, the member for Wright, Scott Buchholz, and the member for Groom, Ian Macfarlane, among others, speak emotionally about their personal experience of some of those people in their own seats, stories which have moved a nation to tears. I would like to mention one of my constituents who has made a real difference in these tragic times and who has, as have many others, gone above and beyond what would normally be expected of a person in his position. James McTavish, formerly second in command at 1st Recruit Training Battalion at Kapooka Army Base near Wagga Wagga, is now SES regional controller at Wagga Wagga. He coordinated the city-saving flood efforts at Wagga Wagga and he is still in Queensland as task force commander overseeing New South Wales SES teams.

Speaking of my local SES, a group of volunteers from the Riverina will return to their homes today, having put in many hours in the clean-up efforts. Another group went to do what they could yesterday. Tens of thousands of dollars have been raised in the Riverina to support Queensland Premier Anna Bligh’s flood appeal.

The events of recent times show again the ageless cycle of nature, floods following droughts. This is not climate change. This is not—as one elected to this place who should know better ridiculously and inappropriately suggested—the fault of the coal industry. This is Australia, a continent of contrast and extremes, a very beautiful yet very harsh land. Australia can throw up its worst in a short space of time—bushfires, cyclones, floods, droughts, storms—but nothing can weaken the resolve of our people. I offer my condolences, and those of all in the Riverina, to those who have suffered the most in these floods. As a nation we will rebuild and we will survive, but we will not forget.

Yvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Prime Minister’s condolence motion. I will start by giving my condolences and the condolences of people across my community to those who have lost family members and loved ones in these terrible floods. When we talk about the floods, we are not just talking about those that hit South-East Queensland in early January; we are also talking about the floods that affected the whole of Queensland over the Christmas period and many towns throughout New South Wales and Victoria. We have also seen Cyclone Yasi—a cyclone of epic proportions, the like of which we have not seen in our history—hit North and Far North Queensland, and in the past week we have seen terrible fires hit Perth resulting in the loss of many homes.

These are certainly tragic circumstances and ones we should reflect on. Many lives have been cut short, many young lives that were yet to start. Our hearts go out to those lost ones and to all of those who are grieving and who will grieve for a long time to come. In this the first week of parliament for 2011, we also reflect on the second anniversary of the Black Saturday fires that hit Victoria. That too is a reminder of what this country can throw at us. We have seen the worst over the last few weeks and we have seen the best. I thought it best, in trying to put ourselves in the shoes of someone who has lost everything, to read the words of someone who has been affected by the floods in the Lockyer Valley but, considering the time, I am not inclined to start those words. I await an opportunity to read those words at a later time.

Debate interrupted.