Steve Fielding (Victoria, Family First Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I thank Senator Evans for updating us on the situation. I will provide a quick update on some people I have mentioned over the past couple of days—the SES volunteers from Marysville that were assisting down there on Saturday. They had less than 20 minutes to evacuate Marysville from when they realised they were under immediate danger to when Marysville went up in a fireball. A man has shared with us today the enormous guilt he feels in relation to the deaths of so many of his friends. So far, he and his wife know, from seeing their pictures in the Herald Sun, of nine of their friends from Marysville who perished in the fires. They both escaped separately to Alexandra and spent hours apart not knowing if each other had survived. They escaped in just their SES overalls. On Saturday night, a nurse from the hospital gave them the name of someone who offered them a room to sleep in. They are currently staying in someone’s bungalow in Coldstream. Unfortunately, they were among the people who went to Centrelink and got a letter saying that they did not ID properly. I appreciate the comments that you have made today and the efforts to rectify that particular situation. As SES volunteers, they felt they should have been able to do more. They were in positions of authority and responsibility. They felt they had failed and were having difficulty living with their guilt and grief. I stand with them today—as, I am sure, the parliament does—to say that they are heroes and that we are grieving with them as well.