Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this matter of public importance, which has a very important topic that affects so many people who have gone through so much across our country. It has become customary to talk about the 'black summer' bushfires. We saw horrific scenes across much of the country through summer but it is worth remembering that these bushfires started well before summer. They started in my home state, Queensland, back in July, and we saw them in parts of New South Wales as early as September and October, which reflects again the unprecedented nature of these bushfires and the damage they inflicted across such a wide part of the country over such a long period of time.

It is for all of those bushfire victims, whether they are on the New South Wales South Coast, in the Blue Mountains, in the Snowy Valley area or as far north as Central Queensland, that we speak up today again about this government's, and in particular this Prime Minister's, failure to deliver on the promises they have made to bushfire victims. Everyone will remember the Prime Minister scurrying back from his overseas holiday in Hawaii, caught out trying to pretend he wasn't away initially and then finally having to admit that he was. What did he do when he came back to the country? Well, in early January this year, he called one of his hurried press conferences and pledged immediate support to bushfire victims. That was in the first week of January. Immediate support is what this Prime Minister promised to bushfire victims, and yet here we are, months down the track, in the middle of winter in some of the coldest parts of this country, where people continue to live in caravans, and in some cases in tents, in other forms of temporary accommodation or in sheds, and in many cases are still waiting for debris to be removed so that they can just begin the rebuilding process.

I know this government and this Prime Minister don't like Labor, community groups, journalists and a whole range of other people continuing to speak up on behalf of these bushfire victims, but we will continue to do so. We are not going to let this government forget these bushfire victims. We are not going to sit by and let them continue to suffer in their caravans, tents or other temporary accommodation in winter while this government fails to deliver on promises that it has made. It's deeply unfortunate that, in relation to these bushfires, we see a continuation of a pattern from this Prime Minister which is that he's all about marketing. He's all about the headline and he's all about the press conference, and he actually doesn't really care, once he gets that run in the media, whether the promises that he makes are delivered and whether the people he's made promises to receive the support that they very much need.

I have listened to Senator Molan object to Labor pointing out that only four per cent of bushfire victims in bushfire-hit communities have received the support that they have been promised. Last week when I asked Senator Ruston, as the minister representing the emergency services minister, about this, she also took umbrage and accused me of being loose with the truth by using the four per cent figure. I am happy to table, for Senator Ruston's benefit, the article in The Canberra Times from 3 June this year from which that four per cent figure is drawn. It actually comes from evidence that the National Bushfire Recovery Agency gave to a committee of this parliament. So, before the government accuse people of being loose with the truth with figures that we cite, they might want to do their research and make sure they have got the correct figures themselves. As I say, I am happy to table that article for the benefit of the minister and the benefit of the Senate more broadly. I seek leave to table that document.

Leave not granted.

You don't want to know, do you? The government don't want to know. They want to come in here and accuse people who are speaking the truth about bushfire victims of making it up. But, when they're actually offered the opportunity to read the document that proves the point, they don't want to see it. Again, that is symptomatic of this government's approach to the bushfires. They don't want to believe the truth. They want to get out there and make these marketing slogans and tell us that it is all going brilliantly and everyone is being looked after, but the minute the truth is revealed—whether that be about an individual in Cobargo or someone outside Taree who's still waiting for their property to be cleared—they just don't want to know about it. As I say, that is very symptomatic of this government's approach to the bushfires. This article in The Canberra Times of 3 June, which the government doesn't want tabled, states that only four per cent of bushfire victims living in bushfire affected regions have managed to get access to government support. So 96 per cent of those people have not received the support that this government has promised.

This is not the only time that the government have tried to cover up figures in relation to their support for bushfire victims. If you go back about a month ago, we were asking questions of the government about their bushfire recovery efforts. We made the point that the government's own answer to a question on notice—their own documents and their own figures—showed that, of the $2 billion national bushfire recovery fund that they announced in January, only $250 million had been spent. The government responded: 'No, no, it's not true. It's not true.' It came from their own documents, their own figures. They then hurriedly released some new figures, which showed that the number had increased, and I acknowledge that. It's now $529 million. If you look at the documents the government have released to prove that point, they're very keen to throw in all sorts of other figures to try to make out that they're spending more than they actually are.

I could give you more and more figures, statistics, data, such as that one in 10 bushfire victims who've applied for the government's disaster recovery payment has been rejected, and one in three bushfire victims who've applied for the disaster recovery allowance has been rejected. I could give you figure after figure, number after number. But it's important that we don't think about this as numbers. This is about people. This is about people I have met, everywhere from Cobargo to Central Queensland to the Blue Mountains to the Hawkesbury and everywhere in between. It's people Senator Molan has also met, to his credit, and they are the people who are still waiting for this government to get its act together and actually deliver the support that has been promised. These are people who have suffered unimaginable loss—of life, of property, of belonging. They're now having to navigate a complicated system of bureaucracy and red tape, and, sadly, many have just given up because it's too hard.

My office has spoken to many families who've been waiting months for loans and grant approvals. One was recently knocked back because of a mistake on a form, and they are now waiting through an even more complicated appeals process to get back on their feet. Why do these people have to continue suffering through this government's ridiculous processes and this government's obsession with marketing over delivery, when they've already been through so much? For months we have been pointing out the need for case managers to help people navigate the grants process, but unfortunately the government has still not taken up this suggestion, and it's bushfire victims who are the poorer for it.

To his credit, Mr Andrew Colvin, the Coordinator of the National Bushfire Recovery Agency, in his evidence to the royal commission only a couple of weeks ago acknowledged that the government's requirement for bushfire victims to keep retelling their stories over and over again to different government officials was retraumatising individuals. My simple question is, if the government knows that its processes are retraumatising individuals, why doesn't it fix them? You're the government. You've been in power for seven years. By now surely you can work this stuff out and actually treat bushfire victims with some respect. I really hope that this government can get its act together and support bushfire victims and just deliver what it has promised. Is it really so much to ask this Prime Minister to think about more than just getting the headline, to think about delivering on what he promises, to keep faith with bushfire victims? (Time expired)