Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Health Services and Indigenous Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There were a range of emergency responses all around the nation to help the people of Bundaberg in central Queensland during the floods of early this year. My area of Redland, being one that had already developed the community flood relief efforts under Suzie Masters and her team, swung into action again.

I would like to acknowledge the unique effort this time to mobilise the Coles and Woolworths stores right through my electorate to collect groceries and non-perishables and have them transported to Bundaberg in what turned out to be a far larger enterprise than we could ever have imagined when we embarked on it. At Coles Cleveland, Merilyn McCann and Julie Elton and her team devoted their own staff to help pack these groceries into boxes and have them rack stacked and packed, taken out the back and shot off to Bundaberg. Initially, we expected through the great work of Hammond 4WD to take up one semi-trailer. That turned out to be two. We had excellent effort also from Greg Elton, Maxine Shipplock, Daniel Nagi and Aaron Vion. Woolworths Cleveland matched them. They had their own effort to put out large melon bins, collecting groceries there.

At Coles Capalaba Central, Kaye Henderson and the team were helped by Martin and Jess Holzworth, who were just passing by and dedicated the entire day to packing these groceries in large tubs into the boxes that would enable them to be palletised and shrink-wrapped for transport. Tim Kinman at Woolworths Capalaba Central, along with Emma Edsall from Cleveland and Em Mead, his staffer, from Birkdale all helped as well as did Woolworths Alexandra Hills who found people rolling up with entire shopping trolleys full of food for donation.

Woolworths Victoria Point Town Centre got on the phone and said, 'We hear it is happening; we want to be part of it too,' and within an hour we also had a collection point there. Coles Victoria Point with Dale Anderson was helped by customers who just stopped their shopping to help with the packing. They included Lorraine, who had a Scottish accent so thick you could carve it, and David Sallow, who just popped in for five minutes to say hello and found himself working all day. At Woolworths Victoria Point, manager Michael had Matty Clark turn up with collections from his street of Orana. The two young boys of Sheldon's Darren Gould gave away their sweets for the week. Kimberley Parker gave an entire trolley because she used to live in Bundy. Sarah Skelly and Nathan Cameron did the same. Lance Hewlett was collecting, of course, in his ute. All of the state members, Steve Davies, Mark Robinson and Peter Dowling, ferried it all to Capalaba and to the great team at Hammond 4WD: Graham Toms, Christa Bool, Chloe Cook, Jana Laufer, Joshua and Cameron Laufer, Ross and Carol Shaw, Belinda Meredith, Alison Henry, Renne Winnington, Melissa Jack, Grant Chappell, Kacie Newlands and Daniel Egstorf. The Baylisses donated a large truck to do the transporting. LNP HQ got the message out around the state. Gordon Somes, Betta Car and Ute Hire, and Mark did all the driving of a second 20-tonne truck. There was the donation of a container by Mark Finnegan. Glen Lindsay from Lindsay Transport was there. And the Salvos were there to receive it when it got there.