Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to join colleagues here today to take this opportunity of the motion on natural disasters to reflect on the tragedies that have occurred across the whole of our nation in what we now will sadly remember as the summer of 2011. Words like ‘tragedy’, ‘devastation’ and ‘decimation’ have been used on our radios and televisions over the last month-and-a-half but when we physically see some of these scenes, either in person or on television, those words do not seem to describe the reality of it.

The fires in Western Australia are still posing a risk to people in that state. They have claimed loved family homes. I pass my thoughts to the people of Western Australia for the trauma that they are experiencing at this difficult time. The floods in communities in Victoria, Tasmania and parts of New South Wales have broken into the sanctuary of family homes. I recognise the sorrow and the sadness that people will be experiencing at this time.

In my state of Queensland, and in southern Queensland in particular, the destruction is almost incomprehensible. We have lost 35 good, loved lives. It is a very sad experience for those families. We have the incredible torture for those whose family members are still not accounted for. There has been massive personal loss. Homes and items that are loved—possessions that can never be replaced—will never be retrieved and I share the sorrow of the people going through this personal loss. I also acknowledge the enormous infrastructure cost that this disaster has caused in the South-East Queensland region. We do not yet have a figure on that but it will take years to replace the necessary infrastructure for those many communities to operate effectively and efficiently.

I pass on my condolences to the families and to the communities more broadly where significant loss of life has occurred in South-East Queensland. But I also commend the people of Toowoomba, the Lockyer Valley, Ipswich, Goodna and Brisbane for their strength, for their resilience, for their plain hard work and for the love and care that they have so openly shown for each other. I also thank the so many willing volunteers who so cheerfully and willingly gave of their labour in order to deliver the first tidy-up—let us call it that because there is a long way to go before we get to the reconstruction.

I would like now to turn to the events of last week. Last Tuesday morning, after we had been tracking this horrid cyclone called Yasi for some three or four days, people of my city of Cairns woke up with the BOM map showing that it was heading for our city—a category 5 cyclone, larger than any ever experienced in the history of recorded meteorology in Australia. Not only was it a category 5; it was also the largest-ever system that we have measured—almost as large as Hurricane Katrina. Its spread in the end affected communities from Wujal Wujal in the north down into the Burdekin. That is a six-hour drive by car. It is a long way, and all of those communities have been affected in some way. Fortunately for my city, Tropical Cyclone Yasi changed its tack, but our relief has turned into devastation again for the people of the Cassowary Coast area. It was almost the same landing point as 2006, with Cyclone Larry. Those poor people have once again been devastated—a little bit more to the south this time but the devastation in that area is almost beyond words.

Families from Ayr, Home Hill, up to Mossman and out west through to Mount Garnet and Innot Hot Springs have had to make some dreadful decisions: what are the things that we still want to have after this event; what things are so important to us as families that we have to put them in a plastic box in the car—or under the house in my circumstance—and hope? It is not just my story; it is the story that we as North Queenslanders have to deal with regularly. It is a tough decision that families have to make. We all got out a plastic box out and filled it with those special treasures and we put it in the car downstairs or in the bathroom, and we found a place where we could hide from this storm. We readied homes—and people did that so well. People shared the task and helped across fences and through the streets, and we waited for this horrid storm. We all pitched in.

When it hit its force was not terribly bad to the north of the cyclone centre. It particularly hit the Cassowary Coast areas of Mission Beach, Cardwell, Tully and smaller communities like Hull Heads, Tully Heads, Euramo and Silkwood—small towns that have not experienced a cyclone of that intensity for some time but received significant devastation this time. One in three roofs are off in Tully—or off to the point that the house is unliveable. That is just one example.

The damage to the south of the cyclone is also significant. The people of Townsville are still suffering significant loss of power, they had problems with their water supply and there are still ongoing difficulties for people in that region. The cyclone then tracked west. Never in my life has anyone considered that a tropical cyclone would hit Mount Isa. When the people of Mount Isa were told to go inside because they were going to get a tropical cyclone category 1, to their grand credit, according to the ABC radio announcer, they did what they usually do when it rains—that is, get in their car and go for a drive. They are actually okay. There has been significant damage in communities like Croydon, Charters Towers and to the west in Cloncurry. This cyclone has really affected half of the state of Queensland—in some places dreadfully; in other places to a lesser extent.

There is a large-scale effort underway to establish power, water and phone supplies. I thank all for doing that. Many of our troops are providing an extraordinary service with their hard labour. Seeing men and women in Australian Defence Force uniforms on the streets gives residents enormous strength. I thank our Defence Force people for their presence, their good cheer and their plain hard work. There is much community infrastructure that has to be rebuilt. It will have to be prioritised. Lots of work is being done in family homes.

I reflect also on the impact that this will have on the people of North Queensland both now and into the future. We learnt lessons when Cyclone Larry went through, particularly Innisfail, five years ago. At the moment the effort is in the clean-up. In the weeks to come there will be work done thinking about rebuilding and that sort of thing. There is a task. There is a job to do. I want to make it very clear that in about two months we need to be very aware of our fellow Queenslanders. We have to very aware that the trauma these people have lived through will bubble up in their lives. That is what we learnt from Cyclone Larry and we need to be prepared for that event. We need to look out for our children. Some people say it was terrible that the cyclone crossed land in the night. In some cases that was actually a blessing because many children slept through it, and that is good. But we still need to look out for those young children. They got up in the morning and saw what had happened to their homes and they will need support.

We need to look after those stoic women who will just get on with the job and keep working and keep doing what they do. We must look out for them and make sure that they know that they have help wherever they need it. Very importantly, we must look out for the ‘teflon’ blokes, who think they are invincible and are currently out there working so hard. We must be careful of their mental health in the weeks ahead as well. I encourage us all to continue to contact friends, particularly in the highly devastated areas. If you have friends in the north, thank you for all the emails, texts and messages you have been sending, but send them again in about six weeks. Make sure you make contact to find out that we are all okay.

Our part of the world has done it tough in the last two or three years. The global financial crisis particularly hit the Far North Queensland community of Cairns, the tropical north, because of our reliance on tourism. We have had another hit through Cyclone Yasi. But it is a hit that will hurt us more if we do not get on top of telling people that we are open for business. Tourism operations are happening now as we speak out to the Great Barrier Reef, up to the Daintree and onto the tablelands. I plead with my colleagues in this place to get that message out. If we allow the perception that the Far North has been trashed, we will continue to lose bookings as we are doing now. I really encourage people to spread the word, ‘The Far North is open for business and please come.’ We will have to work with the tourism industry in the short term and in the medium to long term. We have to get the message out that we are open.

The other wonderful asset that we have in the north is our agriculture. We grow the most bananas in Australia. Everyone knows that because of the devastation from Cyclone Larry. This devastation is not so bad because the cyclone did not go onto the Atherton Tablelands where there has been a diversification of the banana industry. We will not see the lack of supply that we saw in 2006, but there are plantations in the Tully and Mission Beach areas where not a single tree is standing. Those farmers and their workers need to be supported and I intend to continue doing that. I want to thank the Australian Banana Growers Council for keeping me updated about how we can assist them.

I also recognise that the banana industry is a very large employer. We have some 3,000 people who are currently employed in the banana industry. We need them to keep working. They are picking up bananas off the ground at the moment, so the bananas are a bit bruised but they are beautiful to eat—keep eating them. But come next week, those bananas are not going to be available to be picked up. That means we need to redeploy that workforce into the cleanup of the plantations themselves. All of that material has to be moved off property quickly so that we do not have infestations of pests and diseases. That work needs to continue.

We have some 300 people who are employed in the banana transport industry. They are basically dedicated banana transporters that hub out of that Cassowary Coast region. Those are 300 jobs we also have to look out for. My best wishes go to those in the banana industry. We will be with you. We will be part of the rebuilding and we will get there.

Sugar has also suffered significantly. The Canegrowers of Australia, the peak body for sugar growing in the area, the Sugar Milling Council and Queensland Sugar Ltd have kept me informed about the impact on this year’s crush. There are significant problems in the Tully area. The Tully mill has sustained considerable damage. I look forward to working with the people from the Tully mill in order to do what can be done to assist them.

Tropical fruit is a growing agricultural industry in Far North Queensland. The really tragic part of this cyclone is that some of the crops were just about to come to fruition. Rambutan takes about eight or nine years to get to production and it was about eight or nine years ago that the rambutan industry really ramped up in the Far North. But there is a range of tropical fruits and we need to work with the tropical fruit industry. It is not a massive employer in the region, but it is a significant employer.

Finally, the other attribute that we have in Far North Queensland and in North Queensland generally is our environment. Our environment in particular areas has taken a significant hit. There is some reef damage—it is not ascertained yet—but that will recover. As I said, the tourism industry is open for business and our beautiful reef can be seen. We need to work with the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority to replace water monitoring equipment and other monitoring equipment out on the reef.

The rainforests in the Mission Beach area and in the mountains behind there have suffered very badly. We will need to establish a rehabilitation program again. We need to ensure that weeds, particularly vine weeds, are kept at bay so that they do not reach the canopy before the new trees can be established. Of course, we are concerned about cassowaries. The Mission Beach area is an enormous refuge for cassowaries. I am advised that the feeding stations have started already, so that is good, but we will need to ensure that everything is done to maintain the cassowary population that is there because it is at risk.

I want to thank a whole range of people. I want to thank the Prime Minister for her support during this difficult time. I want to acknowledge the leadership of Anna Bligh and her government in providing sensible, calm and direct leadership and information to our people. It is my view that people’s lives would have been lost if we did not have that clarity of information in the north. I want to acknowledge every local government in the cyclone-affected area. Every local government put together their local disaster management group. They put their district disaster management groups together and fed their information through to the state disaster management group. Every mayor put in well and truly above what was expected, along with all their councillors. So I thank all of you—there are too many to mention by name.

I again thank our ADF troops for evacuating the Cairns Base Hospital and the Cairns Private Hospital so calmly and efficiently. My thanks also go to the Royal Flying Doctor Service for undertaking that task for the first time. The SES have been brilliant. To the volunteers and the personnel who are employed by the SES, you have done everything. I am really pleased that Chief Superintendent Mike Keating has been appointed to lead the rebuilding task force in the north. He knows it well. He has worked through the region in Cairns, in Innisfail, in Tully and in Townsville. He is an excellent choice.

I particularly want to thank the Centrelink team. They have been working very hard. The ABC have been brilliant. But to all of the people in North Queensland who pulled together, who looked out for each other and who made sure we were going to get through this thing, now we are going to work together to rebuild it. My thanks also go to the Bureau of Meteorology for their constant hourly updates. I think their website has probably got the best hit rate of any in the country at the moment. It is extremely comforting to know that you are getting accurate information.

In conclusion, we will get over this. We got over Larry and we will get over this. Together we will rebuild our part of the world.