Perin Davey (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to thank Senator Lambie for bringing forward this motion and this inquiry. I think it covers a lot of really important areas. I also want to take the opportunity to thank Senator Sheldon who, since he's taken on the role as special envoy in emergency management, has been out on the ground meeting with our communities. He's been to Lismore and he's been to communities in the Hunter region. He's been on the ground talking to people and he's really listened. I genuinely appreciate that because that's what our people in the regions want to see. They want to see that they are being heard. They don't want to see us playing political games and partisan games. They want to know that we are actually trying to ensure that we can make things better in the future, that we are learning from each and every disaster, because we will not always get it right. The expectation that somebody could have had a crystal ball in March and had the ADF out in affected communities a week before the rain actually fell is ludicrous. But we are learning, and it is in everyone's interests for us to work together to understand, from what we have done in the past, where we've gone wrong and where we've gone right. We need to develop the best systems going forward, and they must always be evolutionary because every disaster is different.

Thinking about my home area, I'm from the Deniliquin, in the southern Riverina. I moved there in 2010, and we had floods in 2011, floods in 2012, floods in 2016 and we are now flooded again, as we speak. Not one of those floods has looked the same and not one of those floods has had the same impact or the same results, other than that every single one of those floods brought the community together, with neighbours helping neighbours, volunteers coming out to fill, shift and stack the sandbags. We've seen it across the board. We've seen it in Lismore earlier this year. Unfortunately, Broke, in the Hunter, has been flooded five times in the last 18 months. In the Rochester, Shepparton, Echuca and Moama areas I hope the river has peaked and is now going down. And obviously it's flooded in my home town.

We've seen it before—we've seen it through bushfires and we've seen it through previous floods. One thing we are learning more and more is that once upon a time disasters were a regional thing—it was something that happened in Far North Queensland when a cyclone hit, and it didn't really impact us, and it was all, 'She'll be right'—but I think the flooding disaster in Brisbane in 2011 really brought home that natural disasters are not limited to the regions. This year we've seen it multiple times in Western Sydney. This is no longer a regional issue; this is an issue that impacts every single one of us. That's why it is important that we do look at how we address these issues and that we do look at how we respond.

I've been meeting with SES volunteers and SES coordinators in the various states, and they have told me there is no consistency in training and there is no consistency in call-out methodology. There are limits on what someone in one state can and can't do in their SES role compared to what someone in another state can do. One thing we are in Australia is good neighbours, and when there is a disaster in one state we do have volunteers from other states—other rural fire brigades or other SES services put their hands up and come to assist, but they're talking different languages. They're coming together for the same purpose, with the same good hearts, but they've got different training and different languages. They don't even use the same hand signals when directing vehicles, which is a real work health and safety issue.

One area where the ADF does have it over those other volunteer organisations is that in the ADF it doesn't matter whether you joined up in Western Australia, Queensland, New South Wales or Tasmania—as Senator Lambie did—you are trained in exactly the same way. If you are in their transport unit, your hand signals are exactly the same as the hand signals of someone who joined NORFORCE in Darwin. That is why in times of emergency when the ADF are called in you know that it doesn't matter where they come from; they have the same level of high-quality training, they understand logistics and how to move it across state borders. They haven't got those issues because they are a federal force.

One of the issues is that responding to natural disasters is not the ADF's core business. Their core business is to protect Australia, but not from natural disasters. When I talk to my colleagues in the ADF they are so proud of what they do in times of natural disasters but they are concerned that it is becoming more and more common, and instead of it being the exception for them to be called out, it is now almost the rule.

I note that now Senator Watt is the emergency management minister he has changed his tune a bit. When he was on my side of the chamber, in my role as shadow emergency management minister, he never missed an opportunity to play politics with this. He never missed an opportunity to sit here and heckle and say, 'Call in the Army.' Now that he's on that side of the chamber he realises that actually there are processes that must take place and that it's not for the federal government to swoop in, over and above the sovereignty of the states, and declare martial law.

The Army should not be our first port of call. As much as we appreciate the Army's assistance and as much as I want to acknowledge that when our communities are in crisis and they see that uniform walk into their communities it is a morale boost because they see it, they recognise it and they go, 'Someone's listening.' So I want to thank the ADF. I am so proud of the ADF for having that reputation in Australia.

But let's look at when we have used them. Back in 2004, when Canberra was surrounded by bushfires, we didn't have a call-out for the ADF. A call was put out for volunteers in the reserve forces in Canberra, and many of them took up that call and came because they had the right training and they could come in. But it was not a call-out. Since then, we have had them called out during the Black Summer bushfires, we had them called out during the Lismore floods and we had them called out during COVID. We called on our defence forces during COVID-19 to knock on people's doors, for lockdown, to man border patrols and to staff aged-care facilities. This was at the request of the state because the federals cannot march in and say, 'Here's the Army; you will use them.' And now they are in hospitals. So we really need to look at what we're doing.

We also need to look at our volunteer organisations. If we continue to rely on a professional outfit like the Army, we are actually undermining the willingness of people to volunteer, and we don't want white ant these fantastic volunteer organisations that have fantastic volunteers. We also have to look at the charity models we have. I note in the budget that Disaster Recovery Australia has received funding, and I welcome that because they do really good work. There are similar charities out there, like BlazeAid, the Salvation Army and the Red Cross. These people man the recovery centres, they provide assistance, they provide advice and they help point people in the right direction.

But the one thing that I hear from them is that there is no coordination. They are often flying blind. They are using Google as much as anyone else to try and find out where to go for information. We hear that time and time again when we investigate natural disasters. Most recently, both the bushfire royal commission and the New South Wales flood inquiry pointed out the need for streamlined processes and consistency so that we do not have the double-ups, the duplication, but we also do not have the confusion. The ideal would be a single portal for all information, a single call-out mechanism and a staged call-out mechanism.

At what point do we say that we will call in the ADF? It should not be our first response. It should be our last response, because we do have the volunteer organisations and we do have the state organisations. This may mean that every state emergency management minister should get together around the table—and I would happily accept being your wingman, Senator Watt, because, as I said before, this is not about politics; this is about getting the systems right so that we do it better and we do it better for all of our communities.

I think it is fantastic that strangers, friends and families all work together. That will never change, particularly in the regions. If you see someone on the road with a flat tyre, you pull over and say, 'Do you need help?' That's effectively what we see. I actually don't like it when people say, 'Why was it left to the community to have their dinghies out and be helping people?' I don't want to live in an Australia where we don't help our mates. If they are the first people on the scene and they know somebody needs assistance, then I say, 'Thank you for getting in your dinghy and going to help.' I say, 'Thank you for not waiting for the wheels of bureaucracy to turn and for all the boxes to be ticked so we can have the call-out.' This is exactly why we have the volunteer organisations in situ. This is why we've got a Deniliquin branch of the SES and a Lismore branch of the SES: because you can't have an Army base in every single town, and you can't wait. Even though the Army is very efficient, and they can get things moving in a very short amount of time, those hours that you may have to wait could be the difference between someone getting off that roof and not. That's what it comes down to.

How do we do it better without white-anting and undermining the systems and people we have in place? We don't want to undermine our communities. We want to make sure our communities will always be there to pack the sandbags, to hold the hose, to drive the fire trucks and to support their neighbours. At the end of the day, this is what it's about. It's about neighbours, it's about communities and it's about doing it better. Thank you, Senator Lambie. Thank you for listening.