Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Universities and Research) Share this | Hansard source

I begin by commending Senator Moore on yet another excellent parliamentary contribution. As part of a generation that watched revolutions and wars unfold on television, it always seemed to me that natural disasters happened elsewhere, usually a long, long way away. Not that Australia has ever been immune to natural disasters. Sure, we have had our floods, fires and cyclones. But the loss of life was much more in earthquakes in Pakistan or floods in China or tsunamis in Indonesia. But with the media revolution of the digital age—Twitter, mobile phones and the internet—we really are a much smaller world. There is no escaping human connection. Our common humanity is not only emotional and biological; it is now graphic. Our sense of community has grown with the communications revolution. There is no escaping natural disasters now anywhere in the world. We all feel the impact of natural disasters. They are no longer some vague abstraction. Fox News broadcasting from the Avenue of the Americas in New York City was relaying shots taken just down the end of my street. The world is changing. If it is not a global village it is at least an international neighbourhood.

Day after day the Brisbane River swelled and when I looked from my place in Teneriffe just around the river bend from New Farm where Senator Moore was it looked like there were at any given time dozens of large crocodiles just below the surface of the brown, murky water of the Brisbane River. The river carried away thousands of trees, which were then followed by boats and then pontoons. I even remember a restaurant floating by. The river carried away houses and homes, businesses and livelihoods, memories and, of course, lives. We watched a raging river in total quiet. Senator Moore was right: we were awestruck. I thought I would never see soldiers in my street. And yet, when we lost power and torches shone and candles burned, the Australian Army arrived to sandbag and, wherever there were gaps, they gladly filled them in.

While the damage bill in Brisbane is enormous, other parts of the state were much worse hit. When news.com.au superimposed a map of the Queensland floods, the area flooded was greater than England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland combined. It really was a catastrophe. Queenslanders in Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley were very badly hit. So were Central Queenslanders in Emerald and Rockhampton. For all those people, the flood must have seemed of biblical proportions.

The same connectedness and sense of community that all of us experienced as the floods unfolded unleashed an amazing outpouring of community spirit as tens of thousands of people eagerly and cheerfully volunteered to help. They volunteered to help not just friends and neighbours but, in most cases, complete strangers. It says so much about the spirit of my state. It is said that this is the most costly natural disaster in our nation’s history. It will clearly take billions of dollars and months, if not years, for homes, livelihoods and lives to be rebuilt. The people of Queensland performed magnificently under the most extraordinary of circumstances. Right across the world, Queenslanders won admiration for their pluck, their toughness and their great spirit. With all that said, my heartfelt thanks and admiration go to the people of Queensland. Queenslanders are different, and we are proud of that. I hope we never suffer these trials began but, if we do, I know my state and its people will overcome.