Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to associate myself with the comments of my colleagues on both sides of the chamber on this motion on natural disasters. My Victorian colleagues referred to the Victorian fires two years ago where 173 of our fellow Victorians died. The events of the last three months are well known to all honourable senators.

It is worth remembering that as we talk there are many people in Queensland, Western Australia and Victoria who are still at risk from flood waters. The Victorian flood waters have not gone. The Victoria flood waters are still very much there. I would like to pay tribute to Premier Baillieu and the Deputy Premier of Victoria. They moved quickly and showed a level of expertise and maturity that you may not necessarily see in a very newly elected government. The moved with great speed and Victorians thank them for that. A number of my colleagues—Dan Tehan, John Forrest, Sophie Mirabella and Sharman Stone—worked very closely with their communities. One of my colleagues referred to the towns of Creswick and Clunes, just out of my home town of Ballarat. Certain parts of Creswick have been inundated on three occasions now and of course they are finding it extraordinarily difficult. A lot of the local government areas have responded very quickly. I understand from colleagues that Mayor Matt Makin and his council have worked very, very hard.

We have seen Queensland ravaged by both the floods and the cyclone over two to three weeks, but we have also seen communities supporting communities. We have seen the state government and the state opposition supporting communities. We have seen many of our colleagues on both sides of the political fence supporting their communities. I had the opportunity this morning at our Tuesday party room meeting to speak to the new member for Wright, Scott Buchholz. I spoke to him about what his community has been through and the support the newly elected member was providing to his community. It reminded me that while it is easy for those sitting above this place to attack members and senators about the way we interact with our communities, there are no people closer to their own communities than elected members and senators. We have seen comprehensive evidence of that in Victoria, Western Australia, New South Wales and Queensland over the last month.

I will close on this note: I will not dignify the comments of Senator Brown in this debate, but I can assure Senator Brown that I will have a lot more to say about his comments in due course.