Ken O'Dowd (Flynn, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to talk about the devastation suffered by many families in my electorate of Flynn which happened because of tropical Cyclone Marcia. This report is not complete, as there are many more damage reports still to come in. I have inspected a fair area of my electorate but due to the road wash-outs and bridges that have actually disappeared I have not been able to go too far inland, where the damage really happened. I did try on Saturday to go to Biloela, which was badly affected. Forty houses in a new area have been wiped out. There are big losses of cattle—some 500 head, one grazier has reported. Let's hope he finds them somewhere. With cattle, you never know where they end up, but hopefully he can recover some of those 500. Another grazier I know has had 100 head disappear.

It was not really the wind et cetera from the cyclone that affected Biloela; it was the rain which filled the Callide Dam and other dams in the area. They all seemed to let go all at once and a wall of water came through at about three o'clock in the morning. They told me it was just frightening how a river or a creek could go from one-foot high to about 30-foot high in a matter of minutes. That is what happened on the Callide Creek.

As I speak, there are no phones, there is no electricity, roads have been washed out, food is scarce and service stations do not have electricity. People have generators but not enough fuel to keep them going. It is a lesson for us all that when these disasters come we have to be really prepared.

The North Burnett Regional Council and the Banana Shire Council have asked me to express to Minister Keenan the need to reintroduce the daily labour so council staff can be employed on these cleaning up measures, fixing up the roads and bridges that would at least give access to different areas of the shire.

The Queensland Betterment Fund worked well in the 2013 floods and that should be reintroduced. That is where you do not reinstate infrastructure in the same place that will get flooded out again down the track. Whether it be pump stations or whatever, you put them on higher ground so it does not happen again. The volunteers have been great. We have the Army starting to move into these areas, but sometimes they just cannot get to the places where they would like to go. Telstra worked all last night and we got some form of communication into the town of Jambin— (Time expired)