Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to update the house on the efforts to repair damage caused by flooding in Western Australia last month, particularly in my electorate of O'Connor. The impact on entire state has been severe, with 88 local government authorities being declared eligible for disaster recovery assistance. It has become clear that in the south-east of the state this was a once-in-a-lifetime event and a full comprehensive recovery project will take years to carry out. I also need to mention the tragic loss of two lives.

Last sitting week I received leave from the parliament to head home to assess the damage and offer my community support where possible. I want to thank the Opposition Whip and the member for Fowler for giving me a pair, and I also want to wish Chris a speedy recovery from his accident. Driving south from Perth through my electorate in the wheat belt, the damage got worse as I headed further south. Brookton, Pingelly and Cuballing suffered from heavy rain but no real damage. It was good steady rain and in fact the farmers are probably fairly happy. In Narrogin, Wagin and Katanning damage is likely to run into millions of dollars to local government authorities, farmers are looking at replacing many kilometres of fences and there were some sheep losses. A little further south into Gnowangerup we are looking at about $10 million of damage to the road network in the shire plus, once again, significant damage to farms.

Further south-east down the south coast at Ravensthorpe the damage that I witnessed was quite extraordinary. The shire CEO, Ian Fitzgerald, suggests that the damage within that shire alone will be around $15 million to the road network. I met some farmers out on Springdale Road. I met Sam Foulds, who is a cropping farmer and owns a property that runs right to the coast at the termination of the Jerdacuttup River. I witnessed about 500 hectares of his farm that is about a metre under water. That water has nowhere to drain and no-one really knows how long it is going to evaporate and disappear, so obviously he is going to suffer some serious financial damage. I also caught up with Wes and Peter Daw, whose farm is on the South Coast Highway where the Jerdacuttup River crosses the South Coast Highway. The damage there was extraordinary—around 200 hectares of land completely stripped of topsoil; 50- to 100-year-old yate trees flattened by the force of the water that came through there. The Daw family have suffered probably 20 kilometres of fence loss and a couple of hundred hectares of topsoil washed down the river. My thoughts are certainly with those farmers down in the south-east area which suffered serious damage.

The damage to road infrastructure is enormous. Main Roads Great Southern manager, Andrew Duffield, estimates that the damage to the South Coast Highway is around $20 million through the Great Southern and overall about 850 kilometres of their network is affected. The Phillips River Bridge just to the west of Ravensthorpe on the main South Coast Highway has been completely destroyed and probably will not be replaced this year. Andrew estimates that full repairs will take about two years to complete.

One of the issues that I came across consistently when I was talking to the local government authorities was the arrangements for the natural disaster relief and recovery program. The main issue is the day labour issue, which means that local government authorities cannot use their own work crews to conduct the remediation work. They have to go out to tender and get outside contractors to come in and do the work. This is highly inefficient, probably adds to the cost and also slows down the projects. I have spoken to the federal justice minister, Michael Keenan, and he has offered Western Australia an exemption to the day labour rule. This exemption will allow local councils to use their own staff and get moving on the remedial work. Last week I wrote to the WA emergency services minister, Joe Francis, requesting that the state government take up this particular exemption. Unfortunately, as of this morning the Western Australian government has yet to submit a request.

The damage to much of Western Australia is severe and widespread. It will take many years for the shires and farmers to repair the damage and recover from the financial setbacks they have suffered. The Commonwealth government stands ready to assist, and I applaud Mr Keenan for his timely offer of an exemption to the day labour rule. I urge the Western Australian government, through its relevant agencies, to take up that offer.