Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I don't know about everybody else, but I love summer. I can remember the feeling of Christmas coming and singing a beautiful hymn at my Catholic school in the lead-up to Christmas. The words were written by John Wheeler and the music was by William G James:

The north wind is tossing the leaves,

the red dust is over the town,

the sparrows are under the eaves

and the grass in the paddock is brown,

as we pick lift up our voices and sing

to the Christ-child the heavenly King.

Well, I'll tell you what we're not going to get for Christmas. We're going to get the heat but we're not going to get the protection that Australians deserve. And we're not going to get it, even though it was recommended to this government, because Mr Morrison is a phony.

He'll be there for all the photos, but when it comes to delivering the things that really matter he is a man constantly missing in action. There is plenty of announcement, but when communities across this country will be looking to the sky and praying for aerial firefighting support, there will be none because Mr Morrison decided that we didn't need it. That's the sort of Prime Minister that we have—a man who ignores the experts, a man who ignores the evidence and a man who treats Australians with contempt. I guarantee that there will be Australians this year who are standing in their street and fighting for their community, fighting to save their own houses and the houses of the community that they serve through their firefighting efforts. They will be looking skyward for a missing-in-action aerial firefighting fleet, and there can be only one person who has to be held accountable for that. It is the Prime Minister, Mr Morrison.

We've heard all the announcements. There was such a hope amongst Australians, after we saw the terrible fires of last summer, that when there was an announcement by our Prime Minister of $4 million for the Emergency Response Fund we all thought, 'Oh, how wonderful that our taxpayer dollars are going to help people in the community—our fellow Australians who really need the help.' But Mr Morrison hasn't spent any of that money. There's a long way between announcement and delivery with this government, and they're failing us every single day.

On the beautiful Central Coast, where I live, there was a huge effort—an heroic effort—by Rural Fire Service volunteers who fought the Three Mile fire. I was up in Mangrove Mountain recently and I know that the connectivity issues that plagued their capacity to save that community are still happening today because Mr Morrison doesn't think it's worth investing in proper connectivity for fire services and for that community. How can this Prime Minister pretend to stand up for bushfire affected communities when he cannot provide them with even the most basic infrastructure? There is a lack of telecommunications capacity in this 21st century—in the year 2020. This is putting lives at risk, the lives of both the residents of those areas that will be attacked by bushfires and those who want to serve our community by fighting the fires that will always come when those hot winds blow.

For years, leading up to the last bushfire season, the National Aerial Firefighting Centre has pleaded with the federal government to increase their annual funding, warning that bushfire seasons were only going to get more intense. And they were right. This is not a new request of the government, this is a longstanding request, but all this government has offered to our brave service workers is sophistry and spin. I can tell you that when Christmas comes around this year, Mr Morrison—the Prime Minister who had to hire an empathy consultant for nearly $200,000 so that he could learn to sympathise with drought affected farmers—will be calling on those pretend skills once again.

He's so dodgy—so dodgy!—that you cannot trust a word that comes out of his mouth. And when fire hits our communities across this country this summer, remember the man who has ignored pleas for an aerial firefighting fleet for years. Remember the man who is sending us into debt to the tune of $1 trillion but who couldn't find enough money to provide aerial firefighting. That's who Scott Morrison is, and no announcement regime and no amount of sophistry will be able to pull the wool over the Australian people's eyes indefinitely.