Perin Davey (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise with mixed feelings to support this motion today, with grief for those who've lost their lives and their families—the 33 innocent people, including nine firefighters, who paid the ultimate price; with sadness for the thousands of people and families who've lost their homes; with despair for the loss of livestock and the wildlife; and with concern for the regional communities that have been impacted by these devastating fires and now face the very long road to rebuild and recover. But I'm also filled with pride at the way our nation has banded together to support each other. I'm humbled to witness the generosity and spirit shown by the communities and the volunteers and the people of Australia, and I am filled with hope for the future of the regions as they rebuild.

The support for our communities has been overwhelming and global. Indeed, just today, I received a message from my relatives in the UK. Seven-year-old Robin's Yorkshire Primary School held an Australia Day event with cake stalls, kangaroo-hopping races and a 'guess the koala's name' competition. That little school in the north of England raised 11,000 pounds for the Australian Red Cross bushfire recovery. So my thanks go to Robin and his classmates for their efforts to help us. My thanks go to all the international celebrities who have given so generously and, in doing so, have helped raise the profile of this issue, leading to further donations and support for our nation and our people. And of course I thank the thousands of Australians who have given to the multiple charities—the Salvos, the Red Cross, the Rural Fire Services' trust and all the others who are working together to help our people and our communities recover and rebuild.

Recently, I had the privilege to see this generosity firsthand, when I visited the South Coast in January. I helped unload a truck of unsolicited donations of food, water and necessities in Cobargo. This was just one truck of literally hundreds that were showing up in bushfire-affected communities right across our east coast. I spoke to people like Ange, who took it upon herself to become the carer for the horses of Cobargo region so their owners could focus on evaluating their own loss, repairing fences and whatever was needed to help them get back on their feet. And Ange reached out to her network in the horse community and got donations of stockfeed, which she then distributed to the many dairy farmers of the region whose pastures and paddocks were burnt beyond a crisp but who still had cattle to feed and dairies to run. This includes the family who lost their own father and brother to the bushfires, who woke up the next day and had to then milk their dairy herd to make sure the business continued, but whose community came out in force with help and fence posts and wires to help them rebuild. When asked by the Deputy Prime Minister on the day, 'What can we do to help you?' their first response was, 'Help my community.' It was heartbreaking, humbling and inspiring all at the same time.

I have also seen the dedication of the service providers and professionals—people like the NBN mobile unit team, who set up by the surf club at Malua Bay to provide a charging station and free wi-fi to get people connected. Some of those they connected had not been able to contact family and friends to tell them they were safe. My thanks go to the Centrelink staff who fielded thousands of calls for emergency payments; to the vets who've been on the ground to assess livestock and wildlife; and to people like the team and students of Charles Sturt University Equine Centre who took in and treated burnt horses. This is truly an example of Australia at its finest.

The giving is not just financial or material. There have been thousands of volunteers giving their time, be it through volunteer fire crews, through the people who've set up and manned donation and evacuation centres, like those I met at Kildare Catholic College in Wagga Wagga, and those who are volunteering right now for charities like BlazeAid to help people rebuild and recover.

I also want to thank our defence forces, who've been in the field since September helping with the response and recovery. As one evacuee at the RAAF base in Wagga Wagga told me, 'The ADF personnel were like angels.' They gave them a place to stay and all the support they needed and food for their dog. Everywhere I have travelled that has been impacted by fire, when people see those uniforms they see calm. As a former Army reservist myself, I was not surprised at all by the response to the call-out last month and the dedication and commitment displayed by all of our defence personnel.

But it is really important to remember that, when the last ember is out and when the fires are gone, it will take months and years to recover. Many of these communities had already been doing it tough through drought before the bushfires. The drought has been devastating enough, and the bushfires have compounded that. I have always been an advocate for regional tourism. This year, I put out a calendar celebrating country festivals to encourage people to get out and about and spend their money in small regional communities. And now, more than ever, these communities need your support. We need to get out of the cities and we need to spend money in drought and bushfire impacted areas to help them on their road to recovery.

With over 18 million hectares of land burnt, it is vital that we work together to do what we can to prevent this level of devastation ever happening again. We must not only investigate these fires but also review recommendations of previous inquiries and commit to acting. It is not good enough to produce a report and carry on with business as usual. We must look at all of the contributing factors that made this fire season so prolonged and intense. So, yes, we need to talk about climate change. But, yes, we also need to have the conversations about back-burning, fire trails, land management, the management of our eucalyptus-heavy national parks and the fuel loads that accumulate there, and climate change. But we also must do so respectfully and with a focus on ensuring that the devastation that we have witnessed this fire season does not happen again. We must take practical steps to do so while ensuring that our economy and the economies of our regions are strong and robust and will thrive. We must do so because there are lessons to be learnt and because we owe it to those who've lost their lives and those who've lost their property, and we owe it to our own future in this land of droughts, fires and floods that we actually like to call 'the lucky country'.