Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the motion of condolence and the tragic loss of life, homes, wildlife and livelihood in the 2019-20 bushfire season. As Labor's duty senator for the fire ravaged communities in the electorates of Lyne, on the New South Wales mid-north coast, and Calare in western New South Wales, I want to pay respects to those communities and all the communities across New South Wales who have endured a very stressful and challenging summer. I want to pay tribute to the bravery and heroism of hardworking members of the Rural Fire Services, State Emergency Services, the National Parks and Wildlife Service, our Ambulance Service, ADF personnel and professional firefighters, all of whom have worked above and beyond to help protect communities and wildlife.

We've heard many stories of personal sacrifice, like Paul Brown from Tuross Head, who is a self-employed carpenter, a builder and a long-term RFS volunteer. Paul volunteered way back in September last year to be part of strike teams to travel up to the North Coast fires. He signed up for seven of 10 payday deployments, away from work and income. In September, nobody thought that in February he would still be putting fires out. For Paul, and the thousands of RFS volunteers like him, there's been months constantly at the front in the heat and smoke, away from their families and sources of income, and four months of breathing particle matter through substandard face masks brought with their own money from Bunnings Warehouse.

We've all heard stories of bravery and heroism this summer, like the members of Lawson Fire and Rescue NSW Station 359, who were stranded inside their fire truck after it broke down inside the fire front during an ember attack. They were trapped with no cabin sprinkler system and no radio communication inside a massive inferno. Miraculously the four men, Adam Southers, Bruce Stuart, Aydin Phipps and Tom Doyle Byrne, were able to calmly wait out the fire front and walk to safety. Too often this summer, RFS volunteers and fire and rescue workers have sacrificed their lives in service to their communities, including in the tragic crash of the air tanker near Cooma. As of this date, at least 33 people have died, including 25 in New South Wales.

I pay tribute to the professional and volunteer firefighters who have fought these fires—people like union member Stuart Glanfield, a Jetstar baggage handler for over 15 years, who has served his local RFS for 36 years. Stuart and his wife, who is also a volunteer with the local RFS, are raising their two children in Engadine and giving back to the community they love so much. Stuart volunteered on the recent bushfires, leading a truck in Buxton and Balmoral as the smoke made it impossible to see. Stuart and his team went from home to home, saving the ones they could. Sadly, these fires took so many homes. Six million hectares of land have been burned. Over one billion animals have died, driving many species to the brink of extinction. Thousands of people are out of their homes or have lost their businesses.

But throughout this tragedy there have been some genuinely miraculous stories. A family in Batlow thought that everything they had worked so hard for was to be lost in the bushfires. Douglas and Berlinde Rand moved to a 200-acre property near Batlow over 30 years ago. Berlinde worked as a nurse at Batlow Hospital and Douglas as a trained teacher at Tumut High School, while raising three children. Everything they earned they poured into building their farm. Over time, they developed a sustainable organic enterprise growing garlic, lemons and figs and grazing sheep. They are now in their 60s and had enough of an investment in their farm that they wouldn't need the age pension. That all changed when the fire ripped through Batlow. They left their property the night before, when the town was told by the RFS that it was undefendable. Douglas and Berlinde prayed for the next two days while they waited for the fire to pass. When they arrived back in Batlow, the scene was eerie. They described it as like Chernobyl. They couldn't drive straight up to their property. There were trees scattered all over the driveway. They hiked in, preparing themselves for the worst. When they got over the hill through the smoke, they could see that, miraculously, the home was still standing. Douglas and Berlinde will need to spend at least the next five years getting themselves back to the position they were in. But the Rands are some of the lucky ones: they still have a roof over their heads.

As we move on from the tragedy of the fires themselves, the next step is to determine what lessons we can learn from this catastrophe and what we can do better next time. We are, after all, only eight months away from the beginning of another fire season, when we might be in exactly the same position we are in now, giving the same speeches of condolence. We need to be prepared.

The first lesson we've learned is about the resilience of the Australian people. It has been proven yet again that Australians are brave in the face of disaster, compassionate towards their communities and able to display the very best of themselves when enduring the worst of circumstances.

The second lesson is something we learn every time there is a crisis or a significant event: our systems are not perfect. These fires have demonstrated a deeper issue with volunteer firefighting across Australia. Over the past decade, we have 18,000 fewer volunteer firefighters. The volunteer firefighter associations of Victoria and New South Wales have argued that an inability to recruit and retain young firefighters has been a significant factor leading to these reductions. Other research, out of the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre, backs up those changes in the economy that have made volunteer firefighters harder to find. There is also an ageing volunteer force, with only one in 10 RFS volunteers aged 25 or younger and a massive proportion of volunteers over 50.

In the Australian economy, there is an increasingly casualised workforce, living pay cheque to pay cheque and always on call for their employer, who don't have the time or spare money to commit to a volunteer organisation. When casual employees get the call-out, it's not just the employees themselves who lose out but the organisations they work for. The consequence is that an older generation, the people who have freshly retired or are in a traditional nine-to-five job, are the primary source of volunteers for the Rural Fire Service. We should be listening to stakeholders like the Fire Brigade Employees Union about how state governments must ensure there are enough professional firefighters to deal with a fire season that is getting longer and more intense with each passing summer. Leighton Drury, the secretary of the FBEU, has called out the New South Wales Liberal government for its failure to adequately invest in our fire services for almost a decade.

But we in the federal parliament can also work towards creating the conditions that will support people to have the time and energy to volunteer for their communities. This parliament can, in the period of reflection, consider new methods to increase the number of volunteers available in times of crisis, to help lighten the load on our emergency services. One such method would be to legislate an award system—the industrial relations system—that encourages the employment of people who volunteer, giving those that serve the communities as a volunteer with the RFS or the SES a leg-up when applying for jobs. We could apply a simple system such as where two people with the same skills and the same level of knowledge apply for the same job, if one is a volunteer firefighter, the volunteer firefighter gets the job—a preference clause. Such award clauses once existed in New South Wales, in bygone days, for defence personnel.

We also need to take the pressure off businesses that employ our volunteers. With the bushfire season growing longer and fiercer, our volunteers are spending extended periods away from their families and places of work. The more extended season hurts pay cheques and hurts businesses. We must continue to make public money available to people who take leave to volunteer in times of crisis, and we need to consider making new funds available to businesses which release their staff to fight fires, assist with evacuations and support our emergency services. We already have an efficient scheme that provides financial assistance to the employers of reservists and self-employed reservists with our armed services. The Employer Support Payment Scheme provides a weekly rate to companies whose staff are away on eligible periods of leave. Such a scheme could become a staple, supporting companies who employ our volunteer firefighters. These reforms reward selflessness and encourage volunteerism. These are reforms that should be considered in depth by the royal commission into the bushfires.

I want to leave you with a story I received in an email from a doctor on the South Coast. Dr Michelle Hamrosi from Broulee wrote to me, saying:

I'm a local GP, and we re-opened our practice last week, without power, phones or internet and operated a walk-in clinic.

Since then, I've seen many patients suffering the impacts of smoke exposure.

I've seen countless patients suffering from acute anxiety, panic attacks or grief from the loss of their homes or businesses or from the stressful impact of the emergency itself.

She went on to say:

Clean air, clean water and a liveable climate underpin our very survival.

These are the rights of basic health, and they're being eroded before our eyes.

Many politicians are telling us that right now is not the time to talk about climate change.

I cannot think of a better time.

There is no denying the scale of this disaster. There is no denying the wake-up call it presents to governments at all levels, of all political persuasions. While I welcome the government's announcement of more funding, grants and concessional loans to businesses affected by the bushfires, many of these same businesses are still waiting on access to the government's drought assistance loans for small businesses. Announcing money is easy; delivering it is hard. Let's get on with it.