Andrew Gee (Calare, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that Australia has endured an unprecedented number of natural disasters in the past two years;

(2) recognises the immense hardships faced by people across Australia in the aftermath of natural disasters;

(3) acknowledges that the response to these natural disasters by governments and insurance companies has been, in some cases, grossly inadequate;

(4) further recognises the invaluable work of organisations that support communities through natural disasters such as our first responders including the Rural Fire Service, State Emergency Service, Lifeline, Rapid Relief Team, Rotary and Lions; and

(5) calls on:

(a) Commonwealth and state governments to activate the full suite of disaster assistance and make it available to devastated communities across Australia, including to Central West New South Wales; and

(b) the Commonwealth Government to pursue equality in disaster relief that ensures no Australian, regardless of their postcode or economic status, is left behind when disaster strikes.

Ten months ago, the residents of Eugowra, Molong, Canowindra, Cudal, Manildra, Wellington and many places in between had their lives changed forever when unprecedented storms unleashed horrifying amounts of water across our region. Ten months on, and the hurt, pain and sense of loss is just as raw. Six months ago, the lives and livelihoods of residents in the Hill End area were devastated when massive bushfires tore through their homes and farms. Six months on, residents feel forgotten.

The feelings of grief and loss in our communities are palpable. While the support from our fellow residents of the Central West and our fellow Australians around the nation has been extraordinary, unfortunately the same cannot be said about assistance provided by governments. For the storm and fire hit Central West, successive state governments have failed to activate joint state and federal support. I again ask in this House: why does the Northern Rivers area have access to the home buyback and retrofit scheme, but the storm and flood hit areas of the Central West do not? Why is it that other local government areas have access to the Community Assets Program to help rebuild their towns and villages, but councils in our region do not? Why hasn't a grant program similar to the Northern Rivers Commercial Property Return to Business Support Grant been announced for our storm and flood hit areas? Why is travelling on our bridges and roads still like being in a war zone? The Nyrang Creek Bridge and the road between Wellington and Dunedoo are still closed. How can it be that in 2023 we are closing roads instead of fixing them? Why are residents in the fire hit Hill End region still excluded from the $75,000 Special Disaster Grants to help them bounce back from those devastating bushfires? Today I ask: why haven't these questions been answered by state or federal government?

Since the disasters struck our region, I have repeatedly called on the state and federal governments to activate the full suite of disaster assistance to our flood and fire ravaged communities. It has not been forthcoming. This has been an appalling failure by the major parties. It is a failure by the previous Liberal and National parties government in New South Wales to activate this support when they were in power, and it's also a failure on the part of their federal colleagues in the same parties—in particular, the National Party, which almost 12 months on has only just taken an interest in this issue. It's also a failure on the part of the current New South Wales Labor government, which has the means to deliver this assistance. There is failure too on the part of the current federal government for not sufficiently pressuring their state colleagues about this urgent issue.

This vital support for our region needs to be rolled out without further unforgiveable delay. Our residents are being treated as second-class citizens, and this cannot be allowed to stand. Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, along came the insurance companies. Hundreds of disaster-hit residents and business owners who were eager to pick themselves up and fight on found themselves at the mercy of these companies. From long delays and claims processing to widespread knockbacks, it has taken a massive toll on our region.

Change needs to come from this. That's why I called for a parliamentary inquiry into the insurers' response to these natural disasters. To his credit, the Assistant Treasurer visited our region and initiated an inquiry. Thankfully, the community spirit and support has been nothing short of remarkable, and our flood and fire affected residents would not be where they are today if it weren't for the hardworking staff and volunteers at the Rural Fire Service, State Emergency Service, Lifeline, Rapid Relief Team, Rotary, Lions and many others.

In previous speeches, I've thanked many of these community heroes. Today I'd like to particularly acknowledge the tireless volunteers from the rapid relief teams of Molong, Orange, Parkes, Cowra, Condobolin and Lake Cargelligo. These wonderful people include: Matt Sangster, Orange team leader; Malcolm Buckland, Condobolin team leader; and Kelvin Scott, Molong team leader. They also include the mighty Molong crew: Thomas Scott, Stephen Sandeman, Brenton Scott, Stephen Gibbs, Cameron Scott and Sam Pridham, Parkes team leader.

Rapid Relief Team are a fantastic group of volunteers who set up mobile catering for our disaster affected towns and also fed our fireys during the Hill End emergency. On Eugowra's darkest day, I worked closely with the Rapid Relief Team to get food into the showground that night and feed at least 60 tired and exhausted evacuees. Their kindness and dedication throughout the disasters that have hit our region will never be forgotten. I sincerely thank all volunteers and organisations who have helped our region cope with this traumatic and devastating time in our history.

I conclude again by calling on the state and federal governments to activate the full suite of disaster assistance for flood and fire affected residents in the Central West on the double. A failure to do so is not fair, and it's not right. My message to the state and federal governments is to get this assistance moving.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

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

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to speak on the motion put forward by the member for Calare. I've spent a lot of time advocating for better support for communities who face natural disasters—in our case, fires, floods and storms. We're all too aware in the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury that hotter, drier, higher risk weather conditions are expected during this spring and summer. Following the two years of record-breaking floods across pretty much every state and territory, we expect the main threat for summer to be fast-moving grass and scrub fires rather than those fires that we experienced in 2019-20, but we know we need to be prepared.

We also know that, since Black Summer, the government has taken huge steps forward in how we prepare, respond and recover from bushfire events. Unlike the response from the government at the time of the 2019-20 bushfires, we are taking preparations for this summer seriously and bringing together around 250 crisis management response and recovery specialists from governments, industry, community and the not-for-profit sector for the first National Bushfire Preparedness Summit later this month. That's a big step forward.

I want to talk about the consequences of natural disaster. It doesn't end when the smoke clears or when the water recedes. We have a government now that recognises the immense hardship faced by people across Australia in the aftermath of natural disasters. In the mountains, it has been 10 years since the 2013 fires took more than 200 homes in Winmalee, Yellow Rock, Springwood, and Mount Victoria—including mine. The memories are still very fresh for many, and the financial and emotional consequences continue. The member for Calare is right when he says it changes lives forever.

For those still trying to find a new normal after the 2019 bushfires and the floods from 2020 right through to more recent times, it's even harder. For communities west of us, like Eugowra, our community understands the pain, and I know various local community groups, like Rotary, have been out west offering our assistance. I'm very pleased to be part of the flood insurance inquiry the government has established, because that is a major continual sore that festers for people who've been through disasters.

Our job at a government level is to work closely with every disaster impacted state and territory to ensure recovery is appropriate for each individual community and person affected. State and territory governments have the primary responsibility, but we support them with the costs of providing relief and recovery assistance through the jointly funded disaster recovery funding arrangements—the DRFA; I have spoken about that a lot. Under the arrangements, the states determine the type and level of assistance to make available following disaster, and the Australian government co-funds it. But we know there needs to be improvements on how quickly and consistently that response is delivered.

The way previous governments have politicised emergency support is a disgrace. In 2013 the Abbott government changed the rules to restrict access to emergency support the day after people's homes had burned down. In the Northern Rivers we've seen top-up payments to communities in coalition seats and buybacks offered but not consistently across the state. The former New South Wales government pork barrelled recovery funds intended for victims of the 2019 Black Summer bushfires, meaning the Blue Mountains missed out completely in the first round. Now the Albanese government has progressed a range of off-the-shelf grant programs to allow funding to get out the door faster, more consistently and fairer, but we know there is more to be done to improve the timeliness. The review underway by Andrew Colvin is really crucial in giving us the information we need.

In the few moments I've got, I want to run through a couple of things that are different. There has been $94 million invested in bushfire mitigation and preparedness with state and territory governments through the Disaster Ready Fund; it's a start. We're supporting the leasing and positioning of a national fleet of highly specialised firefighting aircraft, and that is on top of the new Chinook at the Richmond RAAF base that New South Wales has bought. We've opened up an upgraded national situation room so we're better collaborating across three levels of government, and that includes having satellite imagery from partner organisations. Plus, we've got new Australia fire danger ratings—all things to try and make people safer this summer.

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

I thank the member for Calare for this motion and for his unwavering advocacy for the interests of regional Australia. My heart goes out to the people of Calare for what they've endured over the last period of time with these extraordinary catastrophes. Communities across the electorate of Indi, too, have been hard hit by floods and other natural disasters such as bushfires, storms and even landslides. Similarly, my heart goes out to the member for Macquarie, who has experienced such catastrophe herself personally and multiple times in her community with recurrent flooding.

The floods of October 2022 affected many communities in Indi—in Wangaratta, Benalla, Euroa, Strathbogie, Violet Town and Acheron, to name a handful. From north to south, east to west, rising waters affected all nine local government areas I represent. Along the Goulburn River a young couple that had just purchased their very first farm found their cattle without food, their pastures destroyed and their drinking water supply contaminated. Scott, a constituent in Alexandra, saw his property severely impacted and had to buy drinking water, fodder and food. Many homes along the Murray and in and around Wahgunyah were inundated while many others across the electorate lost stock, and businesses, infrastructure and homes were damaged during these flood events. The heavy rains even induced a landslip, cutting the main road to Falls Creek Alpine Resort for six long months, with devastating economic and emotional impacts on the businesses up and down the mountains, with residents, schoolchildren and families separated.

We are, sadly, very familiar with all manner of natural disasters in Indi. The majority of the 173 victims of the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009, Australia's deadliest, were in Indi. Towns across my electorate still bear the scars of that fateful day more than 14 years ago. More recently, the Black Summer bushfires impacted vast swathes of our region. Communities such as Corryong, Cudgewa and Tintaldra in the Upper Murray were deeply impacted, surrounded by fire and cut off from the rest of Victoria. Homes, infrastructure, stock and hundreds of kilometres of fencing were lost. Fires also roared through many of the magnificent alpine areas in Indi threatening localities such as Dinner Plain and the alpine resorts of Mount Hotham, Falls Creek and Mount Buller.

These disasters take a psychological as well as a physical toll on individuals and communities and recovery from the trauma of natural disasters is a marathon, not a sprint. This marathon is long and hard enough in the best of circumstances, but the last thing people need after a disaster is the stress of not knowing whether they will have the funds needed to get through the immediate aftermath, let alone to rebuild and improve their resilience in the face of future events. Yet this is the situation that many are facing. I often hear stories from my constituents of insurance premiums skyrocketing to unaffordable levels, complicated insurance contracts, delays in accessing insurer payouts after disasters and difficulty accessing government assistance. Graeme from Benalla wrote to me noting that the cost of his home insurance had increased from $1,000 to $4,000. Similar, and higher, increases are common across Indi. Such situations compound the stress and cost of natural disasters on our communities.

This is why I support the recently announced parliamentary inquiry into insurer responses to the 2022 floods. I support efforts to ensure Australians have access to affordable insurance with fair and simple contracts. However, I also strongly call upon the government to broaden the terms of reference of the inquiry to include insurance relating to all forms of natural disasters. We know very well that the same challenges of insurance, unaffordability, complexity and delays impact not just those seeking protection and support in the face of floods but also those in the face of bushfires, storms and more. Following the Black Summer bushfires, dedicated members of my community—and I want to particularly name Steve Belli from Mount Hotham—have worked incredibly hard to advocate for those affected by the crisis in insurance affordability. In some cases there is withdrawal of insurance offers because the risk of insurance is just too high. We need to get this right.

The issue is particularly salient in my electorate of Indi, with the Climate Council's Uninsurable Nation: Australia's most climate-vulnerable places report rating Indi as the eighth most at-risk federal electorate in the country. The Climate Council finds that in the most at-risk electorates one in seven properties will be uninsurable by the end of this decade. In many cases it's the least well-off electorates that are the most at risk, and Indi rates 133 out of the average income of 151 electorates. We need to get this right.

Dan Repacholi (Hunter, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are a country which has some of the most extreme weather conditions in the world, but in the last couple of years Mother Nature has brought weather so extreme that we have experienced natural disasters in numbers that are unprecedented even for us on our harsh Australian continent. We have had weather events of all extremes. In all corners of our country we have seen events from floods to bushfires, from droughts to landslides and we have even seen severe storms bringing massive damage.

My electorate knows the pain of these natural disasters all too well. The small communities around Broke, Wollombi and Singleton were hit by flooding and then, just as they started to recover, they were hit even harder by severe flooding again. This happened just as I was elected as the member for Hunter. Being on the ground with community to experience the impact of this is something that I will never forget. The community of Broke and its surrounds was where most of the damage was done. Many had to evacuate as the river rose, only to return home to find they had lost everything. The community was shattered, but what stood out above everything else was the community spirit. In some of the hardest times in their lives, the whole community banded together to support one another and make sure they all got through it. The response from the community was amazing.

I was proud of our response as a government as well. Things can never be perfect in unprecedented and unexpected times of disaster, but I know that our actions as a government during this time were appreciated by many who I have spoken to. Ministers were straight onto the job, making sure that this community had everything they needed in a quick time frame as well. It was also great to have multiple ministers on the ground with me, speaking to those impacted and understanding, on a more personal level, how they could support this community. But what disappoints me most is the response from the insurance companies. People who had to put in an insurance claim were going through a time which was tough, but too often their experience of and treatment by their insurance company made their situation even harder. People, left with a house unsafe to live in and contents destroyed by floodwaters, were left waiting, sometimes weeks or even months, for an assessor to come and assess the damage for their insurance claim. When these assessments were eventually made, there was no relief for some. Constituents contacted my office to tell me stories of their damage not being assessed properly, and sometimes there were disputes about whether or not their policy covered them for the damage that they received.

Insurance is supposed to provide a sense of assurance. People insure their property and their contents so that if the worst happens they can have some help to rebuild after losing everything, but the insurance companies aren't in that kind of business unfortunately. What we saw in Broke on too many occasions was wealthy insurance companies exploiting loopholes in contracts and policies to get out of covering people who had lost everything, keeping their own pockets full while not only willingly letting others suffer but adding to their suffering and distress. Even to this day, more than a year on from the disaster, I am having Broke residents contact me saying their insurance has become so high they can no longer afford to have a policy. This is a disgrace.

There is also a lot of good in the world. The situation in Broke and the widespread damage was hard to comprehend, but I could not imagine how much worse it would have been if it was not for the amazing work of our emergency services. Our community is ever grateful to these services, such as the Rural Fire Brigade and the SES. It's easy to forget that many of these people, who put themselves to the point of exhaustion risking their own lives to help communities in their time of need, are actually volunteers. It's not a job; it's a passion. It's for their community. I admire every single one of these responders. It was also amazing to see everything that was done through community groups like Rotary and Lions Clubs who were there to give a hand to those impacted.

I know that Minister Watt understands the frustrations expressed by the member for Calare and has raised these with Minister Dib and other officials in the New South Wales government. That is happening, and we're looking forward to a response.

Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.