Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

After a shocker of a fire season last year, the next fire season is upon us. As I drove up to Canberra on Sunday I could see that the hills of the Indigo Valley are starting to dry off. A constituent who was out in Goughs Bay on Saturday told me that in the hot sun of the weekend the snakes were out around Lake Eildon. Summer is coming and with it the fire season. We know that last year the government ignored warnings of a looming disaster bushfire season, and we know what resulted. This year we must prepare better. The heavy rains we've had over winter and spring have meant that grasses are longer and denser than they have been in years. In fact it has been the most extraordinary spring we've had in decades. According to Adrian Gutsche from the CFA District 24, which covers Wodonga, Towong, Alpine and Indigo shires, the grass loads right now are between eight and 10 tonnes a hectare, double what we normally would expect. The long grasses in paddocks and by the sides of roads mean that the risk of grassfires will be much higher this year. People who experienced last year's bushfires in the Upper Murray, Corryong and Cudgewa have contacted me, concerned about what this means for them and their bushfire preparedness.

Yet COVID-19 has meant it is difficult for the CFA to do its usual preparations in the way that it normally would. The CFA is focused on doing community education in a COVID-safe way and preparing brigades for the season ahead. CFA Alpine commander Marc Owens is calling on people to get out onto their properties over the next few weeks to start slashing to reduce the risk of grassfires. Local groups, like the north-east regional resilience forum led by Paul Ryan, are working on building the long-term resilience of the region.

But in many cases these hard-working locals are not getting the support they need to properly prevent and prepare for bushfires. The final report of the bushfire royal commission two weeks ago found that Australia's disaster outlook is alarming. The 80 recommendations of the royal commission make it clear that Australia was not prepared for the Black Summer and is not prepared for the hotter summers that are to come. At least 19 people and organisations in my electorate of Indi made submissions to the commission. I thank them, and I thank every person in our region who helped respond to last summer's fires and those who are now leading up with their preparations and doing the work that we need for the recovery from last year's fires.

For these people and for all of us who lived through the bushfires of last summer many of the recommendations of the royal commission will come as little surprise. The royal commission recommends a huge boost to our firefighting capability, including a sovereign aerial firefighting force, investment in a domestic aerial firefighting industry, and a new national register of firefighting assets. The government has said it will take time to consider the full report of the royal commission, which of course in some ways is fair. But the fire season won't wait. I'm calling on the government to act quickly to make sure that our bushfire-prone communities are sufficiently prepared for this coming season. Here are four recommendations that the government should accept and action immediately: The royal commission recommendation 6.1 calls for the state and territory governments to assess the capacity and capability of fire and emergency services in light of the current and future risks. Recommendation 6.2 calls for a national register of fire and emergency services personnel and equipment.

These recommendation will be particularly important for people like Beechworth Fire Brigade chief Bruce Forrest, who for many months now has been raising the alarm that the Beechworth Fire Brigade does not have the equipment it needs to protect the town. The brigade has no vehicles that can access Beechworth Gorge, so if a fire broke out it would threaten half the town. The Beechworth brigade is calling for a raft of equipment upgrades, including an ultralight tanker, a pumper tanker, two light tankers and sheds. The Beechworth brigade's requirements would cost $2.1 million to protect the town of Beechworth. That's only slightly more than the government has spent in bushfire payments in Indigo Shire so far this year. It would be a sensible investment indeed, and it's a fraction of the $600 million the region lost in tourism in the first half of this year.

Last summer, in Bruce's words, 'The Beechworth brigade were brought to breaking point and going into the next season they still don't have this equipment. Part of the town is simply undefendable.' It's not acceptable that rural fire services should be denied the equipment they need to keep their communities safe and it's amazing that after the year we've just had that these services aren't getting every piece of kit they need.

Recommendation 17.1 calls for public availability of fuel-load management strategies. It calls for all managers of public lands to clearly convey and make available to the public their fuel-load management strategies and to report annually on the outcomes of those strategies. Requiring government agencies and others to report publicly and be accountable for their fuel-load management is a sensible idea. This would give reassurance to my constituents that they're not being forgotten about and that the wild oats beside the road in the Upper Murray will indeed be cut. The royal commission made clear that hazard reduction is not a silver bullet for addressing bushfires. However, it did find that clear information about government fuel-load management strategies can be difficult to obtain and this undermines public confidence and affects the broader public debate about this very polarising topic.

Information about fuel loads and fuel-load management should, according to the royal commission, be made more accessible. I would add that it not only undermines public confidence but leads to real anxiety in fire-prone communities. For instance, I know right now that some agencies, like Regional Roads Victoria, which is responsible for managing some roadside vegetation, is waiting to slash grass because, given the rain and the temperature, if they slashed now they'd be back in a few weeks to do it again. All of that costs the taxpayer. But everyday people in those communities don't actually know that there's a plan. All they see is the ever-growing grass and they have no reassurance that this bushfire hazard will indeed be managed. I get many, many constituent calls about issues such as this. Our communities, particularly in the Upper Murray, deserve the kind of clear and transparent year-round communication that the royal commission calls for.

Finally, recommendation 13.6 calls for the development of a single national app for all natural disasters. So many people in border communities like Walwa, Tintaldra and Towong were caught out last year because the Victorian fire warning app didn't contain any information about the massive fires burning so close to them right across the Murray River. If you go east of Mount Porcupine, the Murray River becomes very narrow. Fires jump over it like nothing, so having two separate warning systems and communications plans and emergency service response teams simply doesn't work for my border communities.

I understand the government will take its time to consider the royal commission, but the fire season won't wait and these are some simple interventions our communities are calling for right now. We need to support our CFAs with the equipment that they need. We need to ensure transparency on fuel management on public lands and we need to make sure that border communities are supported with a single communications system.

Last year the government did not prepare well enough for the fires, and we all saw the result. Here we are now on the brink of the next fire season and our communities are calling out for the support they need to reassure them and get them ready for the next fire season that's about to start. I'm calling on the government to make sure that the mistakes of last year are not repeated.

Vince Connelly (Stirling, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Until this year, the phrase '2020' was heavily used but normally with respect to one's eyesight, sometimes referred to as perfect vision. Sometimes we even say that hindsight has 20/20 vision. The Morrison government's plans have been developed not by looking backwards but by looking forwards, and in some ways they have also been quite visionary. We've looked forward and predicted, as far as one can, what some of the key impacts of coronavirus may be and how we should mitigate them with targeted and time framed measures—measures which not only help to cushion the blow that coronavirus has and is continuing to deliver but also help us through the recovery phase to a better future. Indeed, leadership is not about looking into the rear-view mirror but about looking forward.

In 2020, through the coronavirus pandemic, we have seen forward-looking leadership from our Prime Minister, our Treasurer and our health minister in particular. It's quite disappointing that, by comparison, the Leader of the Opposition has acted and spoken at times in an immature manner during this health and economic crisis. This is a crisis where the world has been hit with a once-in-a-hundred-years pandemic. There have been 40 million cases worldwide, and climbing, 1.1 million dead, and 600 million jobs have been lost around the world, and the opposition leader's only substantive contribution is to attempt to name the recession after our Prime Minister—an objectively ridiculous accusation. If the Leader of the Opposition had been paying attention, he would have realised that the cause of the recession has, in fact, been something called COVID-19—an aggressive and quite terrible pandemic. That's where our focus has been: on dealing with the pandemic. If the Leader of the Opposition hasn't understood what has caused this pandemic, then I fear for his ability to constructively contribute to navigating our best future as we move through the recovery phase.

In stark and deep contrast, the Morrison government has taken things one step at a time, using the best of health advice and crisis management decision-making. Having some expertise in the latter field—and I can attest to the government's employment of sound crisis management principles—let me outline a few. Firstly, it's important to always identify and contain the threat. We saw this. Our government called the pandemic two weeks before the World Health Organization, getting us on the front foot. We then banned international travel from China, again buying us precious time and space. We also then progressively placed international travel bans from countries where they demonstrated a severe rise in cases. Secondly, it's important to establish clear leadership and effective communications. The PM, working with each of the state and territory leaders, established the national cabinet. This was an effective crisis management leadership taskforce. It helped achieve information sharing, decision-making and a coordinated response in many areas. Was it perfect? Of course it was not. I don't think any construct is, but, certainly the feedback in my community was one of great appreciation for that collaborative effort at the national and the state and territory level.

Next we saw the formulation and delivery of a response plan. The response plan included the $101 billion JobKeeper program. This was an economic lifeline to businesses right across the country, including 7,300 businesses in my electorate of Stirling. There was also a doubling of the social safety net, ensuring that, again in the case of Stirling, 10,000 people were supported through some of the most difficult times that we've faced recently. There was also an option provided for those who were eligible to have early access to their superannuation, if it suited their personal financial circumstances. Emergency income support payments were made to the most vulnerable, including 15,000 age pensioners, again in my electorate of Stirling, who were at the highest health risk in terms of COVID-19. Temporary cashflow payments of up to $100,000 were made available to around 4,700 small businesses in Stirling and others around the country to help pay the bills and keep connected with staff. Direct wage subsidies were provided to apprentices and trainees, who were just at the beginning of their career, to stop them effectively being kneecapped just as they were getting started in the workforce. And there were sector-specific and regional support packages to support more deeply impacted areas.

Now we have entered the recovery phase and our economic recovery plan includes measures such as the $25,000 grant to build a new or substantially renovate an existing home, under the HomeBuilder program, and JobTrainer, a partnership with state governments to provide additional training places at low or no cost in identified skills area. Significantly, the plan also includes JobMaker. This is a $74 billion plan for the future to restore Australia to its pre-pandemic success and build an even better and safer future, including through a JobMaker hiring credit, which is deliberately targeted to support young people, who were hardest hit by closures and lockdowns; temporary loss carry-backs to support business cash flow; and personal income tax cuts for 11 million Australians, including 101,900 people in my electorate of Stirling.

A $1.5 billion modernisation of Australian manufacturing is also underway. This will help us be competitive in a changed world. There are great success stories here already, like Alcolizer Technology in Balcatta, in my electorate of Stirling, who received a grant of $181,000 to contribute to a 22-fold increase in their production of units which are used for alcohol and drug testing and now for COVID testing. There is also a $1.9 billion plan to build new energy sources, reduce emissions and improve access to reliable energy, which we know is important in terms of being affordable for families and also, of course, for businesses. An expanded pipeline of major nation-building infrastructure now totals some $110 billion. This sees $45 million for the new Stirling Cedric Street bus interchange; $17.5 million on top of an original $65 million to complete the Stephenson Avenue extension project; and $10 million in local roads and projects to fund within the city of Stirling.

We have been able to respond with these targeted and time framed measures because, from the beginning, we had returned the budget to surplus for the first time in 11 years. By comparison, the plan that Labor took to the last election was to increase taxes. By how much? By $387 billion. So, as a comparative starting point, we can be thankful that the books were balanced. In Stirling and right around the country, across the nation, thankfully, people put their trust in the Morrison government, and we work hard every day to repay that trust—no more so than during coronavirus.

We're also keeping election promises, many of which contribute to economic stimulus throughout our electorates. For example, in my electorate, some of the election commitments included $4 million towards a new Surfing WA headquarters; $500,000 for a lighting tower project for the Coolbinia Bombers; upgrades to the Carine Cats Baseball Club, to the tune of $300,000—and the list really does go on. We've also looked at what new community based projects are also the right fit, one of which is a $6.3 million commitment to the Jewish Community Centre and the Perth Holocaust Museum. I congratulate also the state government, who have matched that funding, and the community who will raise another $2 million to provide a really world-class facility, which will help keep alive the understanding and the memory of what happened during that terrible period in our history, but also to support the vibrant Jewish community over there in Western Australia. There's also $1.3 million for the Carmel school, $132,000 for the Dianella school and $450,000 for St Andrews Grammar for some important security upgrades. The reason that I have been able to achieve some of these outcomes is because of the support of the Morrison government and the associated ministers. When I have knocked, the doors have been opened and their advisers have been helpful—and, ultimately, the people in Stirling are the ones who will benefit.

None of us in the government claim to have 20:20 vision. A few of us on this side and across the other side even wear glasses. So we certainly don't have perfection vision. But we have to deal with the circumstances as they present. It has been challenging during coronavirus. It will remain a challenging set of circumstances into the future through what will be, I'm sure, a lengthy recovery. But I can say that this government is absolutely committed to making the best decisions and the best investments we can to secure the future for all Australians.