Ruth Webber (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support Senator Payne’s remarks about the Human Rights Subcommittee’s inquiry into and report on Australia’s response to the Indian Ocean tsunami. When we commenced the roundtable hearing in Canberra, Senator Payne opened the discussions by saying that it was actually her preferred format, and I have to say I think it was a good choice of format for achieving what we did as a committee. It allowed for a wide-ranging discussion between all of the agencies, with those of us from the political process probably trying to minimise our involvement but maximise our education, which can only be a good thing.

The effects of the Boxing Day tsunami, as has been said, meant that it was the largest natural disaster that Australia has ever been associated with. It had a huge impact on my home state of Western Australia and on our community. In fact, we felt the wave of the tsunami down our coast that day. The coming together of all of the different charitable organisations, NGOs and government agencies was a demonstration of all that is good about Australia. In fact, Australia’s response to that tsunami, that disaster that struck our near neighbours, was something that I think really highlighted the fact that we do still have a very egalitarian and compassionate attitude towards those in need.

Not only the NGOs turned up to play their role—and, as someone who has had cause to visit Banda Aceh since the tsunami, I want to place on the record my appreciation of the role that both the AFP and the Defence Force also played. The work that they did not only in assisting and supporting those communities but also in representing our nation was truly remarkable in such adverse circumstances. The accounts that I heard about the work of the defence forces in helping to get the hospital up and running, or vaguely functional, and cleaning out other things sounded like experiences that I do not think anyone would ever want to go through, and there is no training that can adequately prepare you for some of the work that they had to undertake.

My concern, a concern I shared with people during the committee process, is the need for greater public education. Yes, we went in there, and we assisted highly traumatised communities and communities in a great deal of need, but, as Senator Payne said, there is a need now for ongoing support for that rebuilding process, and that is where we need to actually educate the Australian public. We need to educate them in not only the need to give donations—and they were overwhelmingly generous following the tsunami—but also the need for compassion, patience and tolerance in the rebuilding of a highly traumatised community.

A community that loses such a significant percentage of its population loses its local decision-making capacity. A community that is traumatised to the extent that communities were in Thailand and Aceh, as the closest to Australia, are not going to be able to instantly make decisions about the way they want to rebuild and re-establish their lifestyles. Having said that, we as a government, as a community or as a parliament cannot decide that we are going to do that for them. What we need to do is support them along that road of regeneration and show them the same degree of tolerance, patience and support that we did when we initially assisted in cleaning up after the disaster. Having myself lived through a very small natural disaster up in Darwin, I know what it is like when a traumatised community tries to put itself back together and then outsiders come and try to tell you where you are going to live, what house you are going to live in and how you are going to conduct yourself. It is not something that makes for a strong community. It is not something that makes for any form of community.

We need to educate ourselves about the other kinds of support that we can provide to that community to help it recover from that disaster. That is a role that the Australian media should play. Rather than saying three months later that there are still no houses and other services, we should talk about what we can do to assist those people to work out what kind of housing they want, where they want to live and how they want their community to function. There is an important role for those of us in this place, for the other agencies and particularly for the Australian media in educating people who make contributions to these charitable collections about the need for ongoing and lasting support.