Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about the flood disaster in my electorate of Nicholls. I thank the member for Hughes for graciously allowing me to take up her speaking allocation at this important time—it's greatly appreciated. Firstly, I pay my respects to 71-year-old Kevin Wills from Rochester and 65-year-old Bryan Hack, a farmer near Nathalia, who both tragically lost their lives during this flood event. I offer my sincere condolences to their families, friends and communities.

Before I speak about the damage done and the enormous challenge it presents to help people recover and rebuild their homes and their lives, I first want to talk about the great people of my electorate. They are stoic, practical, empathetic, and selfless. Across the flood-affected areas of my electorate, in Seymour, Rochester, Murchison, Shepparton, Mooroopna and Echuca, we have seen and heard of countless acts of kindness—neighbours helping neighbours, strangers helping strangers, and a community spirit that is the very essence of what it is to live in rural and regional Australia. As the local member, I'm so proud.

As the situation worsened and the floodwaters approached, thousands of people helped fill, distribute and lay sandbags, and others helped families evacuate and gave them shelter on higher ground. Communities rallied to distribute food, water and other necessities where they could. In parts of north Shepparton, which was isolated for four days, a lone stranger in a kayak paddled through the streets delivering water and homemade sandwiches. Daniel Cleave, Kaiden Richards, Curt Arthur and Michael Hand used a tinnie to make supply drops around their estate in Shepparton, and the food was supplied by members of a local boxing gym. Communities formed on social media, sharing their experiences and helping stranded and isolated people find out about their relatives and friends in other areas.

Many residents evacuated to the safety of refuges where, again, volunteers from the community did everything possible to feed and comfort. Day and night, people stranded in their flooded homes checked on those around them. It was a very familiar scene for people to gather on their porches and shout up and down the street to establish who needed supplies or assistance, but it was also a way of lifting spirits. In true Aussie fashion, these street meetings would be accompanied by a beer or a glass of wine. As their accessible world shrank with the rising water, people stuck together and did what they could to support each other, and this is what good regional communities do. That that support is also evident as flood victims are dealing with the shocking reality of what these floods have wrought on their communities. The clean-up and recovery tasks are massive, as unprecedented as the flood itself. Again, these strong and resilient communities will rise to the challenge, but having seen firsthand the scale of the damage I know they can't do it alone. Local footy and netball clubs have become clean-up crews, but it will be a long pre-season. In Rochester, 90 per cent of the homes and buildings have been flooded above floor level, and Rochie has been through this before in 2011.

With so many people impacted and dealing with their own calamities, the volunteer workforce is stretched. I stood in a flooded Rochester home with 83-year-old Lorraine Wilson, who was cleaning the mud off her cabinets of collectibles and treasured photographs of her late husband. She raised five children in that home—one of them, Leigh Wilson, has been doing an amazing job rallying and supporting his community of Rochester. After the Brisbane flood there was a mud army, and Rochester needs the army, our ADF, to speed up the initial clean-up and get the town on the road to recovery. The longer the sodden, smelly mess remains, the worse the impact on the community which right now, frankly, feels a bit forgotten and neglected. They need hope and they need help.

Across my electorate, business owners have been hit hard, and some have wept openly at their loss. They need support to clean up and re-establish. An example is the IGA supermarket in Rochester. Despite the efforts of a gang of volunteers, it may not be fully operational before Christmas. Outside the towns, there are stock losses. Milk is being dumped because the tankers couldn't get through to pick it up. Healthy crops that should have produced a bumper harvest have been destroyed, and we don't yet know the full toll on mature fruit trees. Our infrastructure has suffered greatly. Roads, bridges, footpaths, community buildings, schools, sports facilities have all been impacted. The cities, small towns and rural communities impacted by this flood want to clean up, rebuild and move on, but they can't do it alone. They need government assistance and a lot of it. We, in this place, need to commit to those communities that we will provide the assistance quickly and do what it takes to speed their recovery.