Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The government supports Senator Lambie's proposal for the Select Committee into Australia's Disaster Resilience, and I congratulate the senator for her passion and drive on this critical issue.

We know how devastating the impacts of fire, flood and drought can be, both in terms of the economics but also in terms of the impact on people's lives. Losing a home, your school or your workplace; being unable to find your pets; and losing your favourite photo and the memorabilia from your family and your lifetime—items that cannot be replaced—is tragic. And while communities pull together in these situations, which is excellent to see, the impact that it has on their lives is tragic.

In my home state of South Australia, we're holding our breath at the moment—waiting, but not knowing, how the floodwaters are going to come down. How will they impact on us? How high will the water go? We had a report today that it's going to be much higher than we thought it was going to be last week. People wait, and prepare and wait. It's a terrible situation and a terrible fear about what is going to happen next. The modelling shows us that it's going to be the highest flood since 1975, and everyone's concerned.

What we've seen in other states in the last couple of months is that we rely on the herculean efforts of our emergency services personnel and our Australian Defence Force personnel. They work to support our communities when they're at risk and when they're in crisis. In recent months the ADF has stepped in, responding to natural disasters, as they always do. For those communities, seeing the ADF roll into their region is a welcome sight—it's a sight that tells them that help is there. It is a relief to know that there's someone there to help prepare, to help clean up and to help protect their community. At the moment, as we're all in here, the ADF personnel are supporting the local authorities with flood related tasks across both those areas that are waiting for floods and those areas which are currently in flood. They're also in those areas where the floods are now receding. They're assisting with flood preparations, relocation support, community engagement and sandbagging. They have helicopters assisting with reconnaissance, and the evacuation and relocation of communities are also on their list. They're lifting and moving heavy equipment, and they're providing support to locate and deliver supplies. They're filling sandbags and they're supporting those communities. They're supporting our farmers with provision of feed for livestock and also relocation of livestock, and the other critical issues that need to be covered on a farm that's looking down the barrel of a flood.

Earlier this week I was talking to some farmers who were telling me what the impacts were on their properties. I spoke to one who said they were looking at a bumper crop—I know this, I've heard this for months from a range of farmers telling us that this was going to be one of the best crops they'd seen in a very long time. They were saying that they had lost everything and that the only thing for them to do now is to plough that crop into the ground and start again next year.

We have to acknowledge that our increasing incidence of fire, flood and drought are placing a corresponding increase of pressure and reliance on our emergency services and the ADF. As these things happen more frequently, a one-in-100-year flood happens every 10 years.