Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Next month, December this year, marks 50 years since Cyclone Tracy devastated Darwin on 24 December and in the early hours of Christmas Day in 1974. It killed at least 66 people and destroyed more than 70 per cent of Darwin's buildings, including 80 per cent of its homes. It was our worst peacetime disaster in modern times until the devastating Black Saturday bushfires in 2009. It was also the largest peacetime evacuation in Australia's history. Over 25,000 people were evacuated by air, and more than 7,000 Territorians left by road. One week later, only 10,000 people remained in Darwin, and the Darwin community rallied together to start cleaning up and rebuilding the city. Our Australian Defence Force was a part of this response and relief work, as Dr Tom Lewis has written about in his new book called Cyclone Warriors.

With the start of the cyclone season this month, this anniversary serves as a stark reminder of the need for robust disaster preparedness and response measures, many of which were established in the wake of Cyclone Tracy. It's a reminder to have your family plan ready to go and a good emergency cyclone kit also at the ready.

The 50th anniversary of Cyclone Tracy is a significant national event. Despite being 50 years ago, it is still very raw in the Darwin community for those that were there and survived that night. That's why I'm working with the Northern Territory government, the City of Darwin and the broader community to commemorate this event, and that's why the Albanese Labor government committed $600,000 to deliver a permanent memorial at East Point, with the Remembering Cyclone Tracy group, to mark the anniversary but also a contribution towards a commemorative installation at Bundilla.

There has been some disquiet about the design of the City of Darwin project, and I acknowledge there is a variety of views how best to mark the event. This is the 50th anniversary, after all, of a very traumatic event which no physical memorial could ever really truly reflect. But I will continue to support the telling of stories and significant places, like the bent-in-half and twisted power poles at Casuarina secondary college, which are a profound reminder of the fury of the wind that night—that the wind could bend iron power poles.

East Point will have a dedicated space for the memorial by the water where Cyclone Tracy made landfall. To mark this chapter in our history, that will be a place where survivors and their families can visit to remember, reflect and heal. This, coupled with the new exhibition at the Museum and Art Gallery of the NT, will be a place where visitors and new Territorians can learn about this tragedy and pay their respects. The updated exhibition is opening on 7 December.

With others, I approached the Royal Australian Mint to commission a commemorative coin to mark the 50th anniversary of Cyclone Tracy. They would not agree to do so, unfortunately, arguing that it was only a Northern Territory issue rather than a national event. That is wrong, wrong, wrong! In 1974, Australia faced a series of natural disasters. They were absolutely unprecedented at the time and they culminated in Cyclone Tracy on Christmas Eve. At the beginning of that year, the east coast was battered by torrential rain, with 6,700 homes in Brisbane inundated with water, and the 1974 bushfire season was the worst Australia had faced in 30 years. So not only was Tracy a national event in that the nation responded and took people from Darwin into their homes all around the country but also it changed the way in which the Commonwealth responded to natural disasters. It really was a national event. The Whitlam government created the Darwin reconstruction authority to rebuild Darwin. It was planned to take five years, but Territorians cracked on and got it done in three years. This leadership means most buildings in Darwin are now built to withstand a category 5 cyclone. It certainly was an event of national significance and, with the help of the people of Australia, we rebuilt Darwin to be the incredible place it is today.