Andrew Willcox (Dawson, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to provide a brief brief on the major flooding events happening in the north of Australia at this present point in time. We are now in the recovery phase, although I'm asking everybody to please still be careful, because there is some more rain forecast for the next day or so. I would like to give a big special mention to the disaster management teams—the local disaster management groups of Mackay, Whitsunday, Burdekin and Townsville—who have kept our people safe and kept the whole event organised. I'd also like to give a big shout out to the first responders—the police, fire and ambulance. The job they have been doing is second to none. To our SES workers: well done to those guys and girls. And last but not least, there is the community. The community has bonded together. It what we do in north Queensland. We look after our mates. We get together, and we make sure the elderly, our neighbours and everyone in the whole area is okay, so well done to the community. It's very fortunate that in my electorate we had no loss of life. Unfortunately, a little bit further north, there were fatalities, and my thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families at this very difficult time.

After we could start to move around, I started to travel to the smaller towns. My first stop was to Gumlu, and I caught up with the kids at the Gumlu school, some of the parents and teachers, and some farmers just to see how they fared. Unfortunately, some of the farms are not going so well. Then I was off to Giru. Quite a bit of floodwater went through houses and businesses in Giru. I met Zoe, who was a pocket rocket. She has a black belt in karate, and she was mopping out her hairdressing salon. I hope you get back up and running as soon as you can, Zoe. There was a car collector there, and he had a lot of cars go under. The post office and the corner store had water through them, so that wasn't very good at all, but they are a very resilient community in Giru, and they got straight back on with the job. At Cungulla, they had water in houses and everything, including some of their community assets as well. The little community of Nome had a lot of fences and outdoor areas breached. Some of my major concerns are the sewage within the area, particularly around the septic tanks and those sort of things, which is now floating around the yards—please be careful!—and also the damage to farms. We need to make sure that we keep an eye on that.

What this event has highlighted is the poor state of the Bruce Highway. In my electorate alone, the highway was blocked at Goorganga Plains. The previous coalition government provided $10 million to go towards working out a plan to fix that. Unfortunately, the state Labor government sat on that, so nothing happened. It was blocked there. A T-section on the Bruce Highway at Hamilton Plains was blocked. Myrtle Creek was blocked. Albeitz Road, or 'Peter's Flats' as the locals call it, was blocked. Wangaratta Creek was blocked. Plantation Creek was blocked, and it's still blocked today, but, thankfully, there are some heavy vehicles being allowed through. It was blocked at Barratta and at Alligator Creek.

This is simply not good enough. This is how we get our supplies up from the city. It's how we get our produce to market, and it is how our families get around safely. To have all these blockages is just not acceptable. It just goes to show that the Back Our Bruce campaign, which I have been running and which has been supported by all my federal compadres up and down the Bruce Highway, is certainly warranted. I am extremely concerned about the number of potholes that are available. There is a conga line of potholes. If you could work out a way of putting a roof over those potholes, we could solve some of the Labor created housing crisis that we're experiencing at the present point in time. The other thing about potholes that I am worried about is people swerving and potentially running into incoming traffic. We desperately need some of the $7.2 billion announced by this government. Thank you, Mr Albanese, for that. It has been matched by the opposition. It's very important that this money doesn't all get spent down in the south-east corner. It needs to come into my electorate of Dawson and do some good where it is needed the most.