Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is my 14th year of service in this parliament. Unfortunately, it's about the 10th time I've got to my feet after returning from the break to share with the House natural disasters that have happened in my electorate, the first one being in 2010, with the Grantham floods, which very sadly took 35 lives. This year, we've had a series of floods and fires but also had a mini tornado go through the electorate. It took out parts of the Gold Coast, Jimboomba and Tamborine Mountain. This one's results were a little bit different. No two natural disasters are exactly the same, so, from an emergency services perspective, our responses are slightly different.

Currently there is a review underway in this place about how we respond to emergency services, and, whilst we have an enormous amount of motivated people, mostly volunteers, that are out there ready, willing and able to respond, it was a travesty of justice that I had parts of my electorate—families—that were without power for 15 to 22 days. If you're on town water, that's no problem—you would just go to the tap—but, when you're in a regional area and you need a pressure pump to pump water up or you need water to pump through the toilet, it becomes problematic. I'll be submitting my thoughts to the review that's currently in the House.