Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Before I commence the substance of my remarks, I want to briefly reflect on the terrible and tragic events that occurred over the weekend in Victoria. I imagine that all of us have, in one way or another, been touched by those events. I want to briefly share with the chamber how, through a few degrees of separation, I have been affected. A good friend of mine, John Allan, is the publican at a pub in Panton Hill in Victoria, in the seat of McEwen. John was formerly in the RAAF and a former Federal Secretary of the Transport Workers Union, while I was the federal president. I spoke to John on Sunday afternoon when I came to realise the magnitude of the events that had occurred and were occurring in Victoria. I asked how he, his wife and their families were and whether they had been affected. John told me that the man who delivered his beer had been killed in the fires. When I spoke to John he said that the local community, which had been surrounded by fires, was in the beer garden of his hotel in a kind of wake because all the people in that community knew someone who had perished in the inferno, just as John and his wife, Kerrie, knew someone. My heart and best wishes go out to all the people in Victoria, as has also been so eloquently expressed by the Prime Minister, the Premier of Victoria, the Leader of the Opposition and others.

I want to speak about water today. I do not do that in relation to the events in Victoria, but I want to talk about a trip I made to Narrabri and Boggabri, in New South Wales, last Friday—