Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Materiel) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to identify strongly with those Australians who, during a savage summer, have endured trial by water and fire. I speak of those in Victoria who have endured weeks of slow-moving floodwaters which have isolated communities and starved businesses of their lifeblood; I speak of those in Western Australia whose homes just in the last few days have been destroyed by bushfires, against the ironic backdrop of flooding across much of the rest of the nation; I speak of those in flood-affected regions such as Tasmania, whose crises have been very real but who have been largely overlooked by a nation distracted by bigger tragedies; and I speak of countless small businesses, not necessarily inundated by floodwaters but just as certainly crippled by the impact of the floods on their communities and marketplaces. I speak most particularly of the people of Queensland, whose state has been battered and buffeted in a way without precedent in my lifetime. I speak of Queenslanders, going about their business, travelling in their cars, sitting in their homes, asleep in their beds, who suddenly were caught in the jaws of a watery death. These people were doing things in places where they might have expected to be safe. Sadly, they were not. It is a reminder of the capricious nature of our environment, our capricious climate and the need for us to be aware at all times that as Australians we may be called upon to assist people in extraordinary circumstances.

There are many sobering statistics about these natural disasters. This is the biggest natural disaster in Australia’s history. The cost of cleaning up and repairing the damage, not just to public infrastructure but to private infrastructure, will no doubt be well in excess of $10 billion. It will take years to restore damaged infrastructure and repair the economy. In some places an entire recovery may not be possible. In the last two months we have had at least 35 people confirmed dead and another half-dozen or so are not yet accounted for. In Brisbane, at the flood’s peak, 11,900 homes and 2½ thousand businesses were completely flooded, and another 14,700 homes and 2,500 businesses were partially flooded throughout 67 suburbs of that city. Eighty-six towns and cities across Queensland were affected. We had 500,000 square kilometres of Queensland, at one stage or another, threatened with inundation—three-quarters of the state, an area larger than France and Germany combined. It is extremely concerning to face a challenge of that kind, and at least as concerning to know that it will take so long and so much effort and money to restore to the people of those communities what they have lost, if that is ever possible.

I want to put a couple of points on the record in today’s debate. I express my appreciation and gratitude to the many people who contributed to the response to the crisis. Many have spoken in this debate already about the work of emergency service workers and volunteers. We have a tremendously professional resource in these people, and I acknowledge that as well. I thank officers of government, particularly people in the federal government offices of the Attorney-General and the Minister for Human Services, who kept a flow of information to my office, in my capacity as the coalition spokesperson on emergency services, allowing a good level and quality of information to be available to colleagues in affected parts of the country and giving them accurate information to pass on to their constituents. I also thank officers in the federal government for being responsive to a number of issues raised by local members who were affected and who had members of their communities affected directly. It goes without saying that a disproportionate number of coalition electorates were affected by these tragedies, particularly in Queensland, but the assistance dealt to my office was quite exceptional, and I thank the officers and the ministers responsible for making that happen.

Senators in this debate have mentioned some of the good things said to have come from this tragedy—the binding together of Australians in times of crisis. I want to note the extensive use of social media to allow people to stay in touch with each other. We witnessed many people getting information on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. There was an explosion of information and support through those media, and even authorities used them to get important information out to the community. It is an important development in the way in which we meet the challenges of our, as I said, capricious environment.

I pay tribute as well to the many people mentioned already in this debate who committed enormous acts of dedication and selflessness to deal with a crisis that they were not expecting. Earlier today the Senate honoured Corporal Benjamin Roberts-Smith for his courage and heroism, which deservedly earned him the Victoria Cross. We have heard witness in the last few weeks of many, many acts of heroism, but in very different circumstances—heroism displayed by people who, in many cases, were not expecting, were not trained and had no demonstrated capacity to deliver acts of bravery and courage in the face of danger but who did so almost without thought in order to deal with the situation confronting them. I do not know much about the people Senator Joyce spoke about, who rallied around the family who were trapped in a car in Toowoomba, but I am sure none of them were particularly well prepared or trained for the task that they suddenly found themselves with. I think we would all hope that if we were confronted with such circumstances we too would have the courage and the tenacity to deal with that situation to the best of our ability.

To conclude, the test of our sincerity about these terrible disasters is not so much what we say today in the course of this debate but what we will be doing, let us say, three months from now when that tragedy will still be unfolding on a day-to-day basis in the lives of a large number of Australians. There will still be houses as yet unreconstructed; there will still be businesses struggling to survive day by day; there will still be people grappling with legal issues arising out of the death or injury of loved ones; there will still be people struggling with the loss of possessions and family members and perhaps even their homes. At that point, Australians, the Australian government, agencies of government throughout the Australian system of government, will need still to be responsive to what is going on even when the headlines in news bulletins have ceased to mention these tragedies.

There are important lessons to be learnt from what has happened and we do a disservice to the many people who have been victims of these natural disasters if we do not critically analyse what has taken place and be prepared to change the way we do things in such circumstances in response to what we have learned. There is a great deal to be learned from what has happened in the last few weeks and I hope that a spirit of serious inquiry and examination of those issues will not be allowed to be swept away merely because the issues are sensitive and tread on dangerous ground in some respects. We need to ensure that we learn from this experience to minimise the number of people who are victims of such tragedies into the future.