Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise as a Victorian senator to add my support to the Senate condolence motion on the devastating effects to date of the Victorian bushfires over the weekend. The state and the Senate are grieving the loss of over 180 lives, and we know that the death toll continues to rise. On Sunday, we awoke to the front page news that the toll was 14, and that was a shock. But the real shock was to come. The fact that these lives were lost essentially within 24 hours adds to the bewilderment. While the damage to property now seems secondary, over 800 homes have been burnt to the ground. My colleague Scott Ryan, who is in the chamber with me, put the matter in perspective this afternoon when he said that he never thought that he could hear such good news from a friend when he told him their family had lost everything but their lives.

There has been the obliteration of towns like Marysville and Kinglake. The homes did not so much burn down as explode because of the sheer heat. If you look at the pictures, you see these homes are completely flattened. Adding to our bewilderment is the chilling story in today’s Australian newspaper about the last fire truck to leave Marysville before the township was consumed. It was a picture the firefighters will no doubt never get out of their minds as people ran to the truck thumping on its sides. The experts and even the most seasoned firefighters were shocked by the sheer speed of the occurrence. The devastation happened so quickly. The film footage was breathtaking as lips of fire moved as fast as bullets across the ground. I have seen grass fires speed across paddocks, but I have never seen anything like this. The emotion of anger will follow now that we know many of the fires were deliberately lit. These arsonists have caused these deaths and they are terrorists.

While country towns are no strangers to bushfires, and live through the summer on watch for outbreaks, this is an unprecedented event in our history. It was beyond the people’s ability to fight, no matter how prepared they were. The member for Gippsland made a point in his address this afternoon that is worthy to note—that is, we need a more heightened early warning system for days such as last Saturday, because these days are beyond even the most prepared and fully alerted CFA to tackle. We need to have degrees of alertness, not dissimilar to the terrorist alerts that we have, with days like last Saturday at the top of the list. These alerts would denote days when it is almost impossible to fight these fires—in short, get-out days.

Past events like the 1939 Black Friday fires and the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires have entered our Australian lexicon. We now witness Australia’s worst natural disaster, worse than Black Friday and Ash Wednesday—Black Saturday. The lives lost are unprecedented outside war. While that is the tangible measure of the Victorian bushfires, the emotion is almost inexpressible. Speakers in the Senate and the House have grappled with trying to explain it, as of course have those at the fire-front. They have spoken of the human fear of seeing the fire roll over the hills and catch people totally unaware; the thunderous noise that preceded it, which seems to be the single greatest impact upon the survivors, and the sheer heat that melted steel and sucked the oxygen out of the air; the horror of thinking of those trapped and, equally, awaiting news of those families and friends that were missing; the shock of learning that family and friends had died; and the sheer jubilation, as expressed by colleagues in both the Senate and the other chamber, on hearing of people who had survived. These are the inexpressible emotions all rolled into one.

I was in Whittlesea on Saturday morning just as the fires were breaking but, like everyone, I was unsuspecting of the devastation that lay ahead. But it was obvious in Whittlesea that Saturday morning that there was great menace in the air. You could feel it and almost touch it, and it turned out to be so. The property I was visiting was burnt out but home and life were not. The owners consider themselves greatly fortunate.

My home district of Gippsland has not escaped the tragedy of death by fire. In fact, the district has been ablaze for several weeks now. Boolarra and the surrounding districts made the news a few weeks ago but, thankfully, no lives were lost. But this time over the weekend the Churchill district and Callignee hills were ablaze, and lives tragically have been lost. There are a lot of farmers in the Callignee hills, people I would describe as salt of the earth, who have been doing it hard and who now must face the almost impossible challenge of starting again. Again, the member for Gippsland addressed the other chamber today. He has spent several days visiting the affected areas, and he has captured the events and feelings very well.

Like my fellow senators, I pay tribute to the Country Fire Authority. ‘Thank you’ seems almost trite, given the magnitude of their tireless efforts to help other human beings. The CFA, as my colleagues know only too well, are such a big part of the country communities. The CFA grew out of the 1939 fires, when it was recommended that what was needed was on-the-ground volunteer firefighters who knew their district. The CFA have grown to the extent that they are not just heroes of fire fighting but very much a part of every level of the local community. So, when the reviews of this disaster are undertaken, they must include a recommendation of greater resources, funding, help and support for the CFA. Without the CFA at full strength, where would we be? And then of course there is the Red Cross, the Salvos and all the other charity organisations that have been with us for decades and even centuries. To all the community organisations and helpers who are manning the halls and caring for the thousands of shell-shocked evacuees, please accept my thanks and the thanks and gratitude of this chamber.

Australia is the envy of the world in terms of its volunteer networks and organisations. We are not only the envy of the world; we are the model for the world. No country has more voluntary organisations at different community levels than Australia. With regard to our volunteers, we have much to be proud of and grateful for. Where would we be without all these volunteer organisations, particularly in the rural and regional areas? They make up the very fabric of a district. Again, any review undertaken must include fully funded support and help for the voluntary agencies. To the hospitals, the burns units, thank you for your professionalism. To the patients in the burns units, we wish you well. We pray for your strength and grace at this time.

It is a very rare occurrence when the parliament suspends business for a day, but it is fitting to do so. Equally, it is fitting for the parliament to unanimously support the motion of condolence and the government’s efforts to help and send long-term aid to the victims. I thank the Senate.

Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too would like to add a few comments to those made by the Victorian parliamentarians and our leaders on the condolence motion for the Victorian bushfire victims. I was recently musing with some English friends about the extraordinary mobility of Australians. Unlike the English, who it seems are still wont to not move too far from the village they were born in, Australians are just as likely to move across a continent—their own or someone else’s—as they are to move to the next village or township. I think this mobility has been shown to be a great part of our strength at times of crisis like this. Like me, thousands of Queenslanders have lived a part of their lives in the fire devastated parts of Victoria. Equally, there are many Victorians who have lived, worked and holidayed in the flood devastated areas of North Queensland, not just on the eastern coast but inland and in the gulf as well. Unless you are there—inundated with water in the north or threatened by fire or worse in the south—you cannot really know what it is like. But you can empathise, especially if you can bring to mind the same countryside in better times.

Three days ago I wrote: ‘By the time these bushfires are over, I imagine that almost everyone in Victoria and many people throughout Australia will have been touched.’ Three days ago that was likely; unfortunately, it is now a banal truism. The scale is far worse than any of us could have imagined. To make sense of it, we need to focus on the individuals affected. Even in flood devastated North Queensland, especially in Ingham, there are people who are more worried about family and friends in the south than about themselves.

I spent 23 years of my life based in Victoria, before returning to my native Queensland in 1994. In the 1980s and 1990s I lived just outside Whittlesea. My children went to school at Whittlesea and Kilmore, and we ran cattle at Murrindindi, so I know much of the area destroyed by fire very well. In summer the grass around the Whittlesea area takes on a particularly wonderful golden wheat colour, a colour I have not seen anywhere else. But, beautiful as it is, this wheaten colour masks a dangerous dryness that causes many minor, and some major, fires every year. The people of Whittlesea, Kinglake, Kilmore and all the surrounding areas live with the threat of fire every summer. Maintaining and testing the pumps and other firefighting gear is just a normal part of the rhythm of life in this part of the world. But this time the fire was, in many cases, too great.

Like so many others, I have waited while family and friends have waited to hear about their loved ones. So far, the news has been relatively good for us. Houses, cars and livelihoods have been destroyed, but the people we know are okay. I acknowledge the many people whose family members are not okay, the 181 killed, the many injured and hospitalised and the many who are still missing. As I said, the people I know are okay, including the father of my daughter’s partner, Peter Rowe, from Hazeldene, near Flowerdale. For well over 24 hours, his sons knew that his house was destroyed, that all the houses in his street were destroyed and that all the houses in the local area were destroyed, but they did not know their father’s whereabouts. They were delighted when they finally heard from him on Monday morning.

Murrindindi, so often referred to today in the news in conjunction with Yea as one of the most worrying fire fronts, means ‘place of mists and mountains’. It is a perfect name for a beautiful and wild part of the state, but again there is a downside to that beauty when fire strikes. The valleys around Murrindindi are full of surprising twists and turns. It is easy to become disoriented, even in good weather. Nearby Toolangi is best known as the home of the late CJ Dennis, author of The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke. His home is or was—I do not currently know whether it still stands—a very genteel and surprisingly middle-class place for the man who promoted himself as Australia’s No. 1 larrikin.

Two people who work for my family’s company have also been touched: Craig Penna and his family at Whittlesea, for whom the danger now seems to have passed; and Neville Roberts and his family at Yea. At last report today, Neville was preparing, along with firefighting volunteers from Tasmania and New South Wales and ADF volunteers with bulldozers and generators, to defend his home and the township of Yea. The equipment and the numbers of people that were there to help were very reassuring, but that was not the case last Saturday.

Probably the story that for me best illustrates the unexpected ferocity of these fires is that of Kinglake park ranger Natalie Brida. Natalie was raised in Whittlesea. Her family were our neighbours and friends. Natalie is to be my daughter’s bridesmaid in April. Up until last Saturday, she owned a home and a car at Kinglake, just 200 metres from the national park where she worked. On Saturday afternoon Natalie and seven other park rangers were trying to save the park compound, their machinery depot, the visitors centre and other buildings and equipment. The fire was such that late in the afternoon the decision was taken to evacuate from the compound to Kinglake. Remember that these are experienced firefighters who had decided they could not stay and fight.

Natalie recalled to her father that the tyres of the park’s Range Rover were burning as she drove. As the convoy drove, it became clear that they were unlikely to make it to Kinglake. They pulled up in a bare paddock, pulled the cars into a triangle, dug a ditch and covered themselves with blankets. They waited like that for more than an hour for the firestorm to pass. In the interim, most of them lost their homes, and all of them lost their cars. Since then, they have returned to what passes for normal duties for park rangers at the moment—every day going to fight the fires.

If this was the experience of eight experienced park rangers and firefighters, many of them also locals of long standing, how much more difficult must the situation have been for those with less experience and less local knowledge. It is something that we here can only imagine, but imagine it I think we must. I cannot find the words to pay sufficient tribute to the firefighters and the many other workers and volunteers who have helped each other and the people of Victoria in the past few days. Unfortunately, their work will need to continue for a while yet.

I would like to finish by adding that I am aware there have been some criticisms of Centrelink which the government has moved to quickly fix. But I hope that we will have no reason to have similar criticisms of insurance companies, in relation to either the Victorian bushfires or the Queensland floods. I am heartened, and I was somewhat surprised, by the very responsive and prompt service that I received recently from an insurance company in relation to damage caused by the severe storm in Brisbane just a few months ago. I fervently hope that that prompt, responsive, caring service will be the experience of all Victorians and all Queenslanders who need that assistance now. I would like to join the Governor-General, Ms Quentin Bryce, and others in encouraging all of us to do everything that we can to help in Victoria and in Queensland.