Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President Barnett, I am in your grace, again, and I do accept your generosity, as always, in taking the chair. Tonight I want to talk about the celebration called New Farm Recovers. On Sunday, 27 February the New Farm community gathered at the wonderful Powerhouse precinct on the Brisbane River to remember, to share, to have joy and celebration and, most importantly, to have hope for the future after the devastation of the floods in the region. My friend, Councillor David Hinchliffe, said:

It’s very important after a major traumatic event like this to come together and help re-build community. ... There’s a lot to learn from an event like this. There’s also quite a bit of community spirit that has emerged. We don’t want to lose that.

This day was coordinated by many people in the New Farm region as well as businesses and the schools—both the New Farm State School and the Holy Spirit School—who came and gave their usual wonderful song performances. Their parents were singing every word and dancing every step along with them. To the Principal of New Farm State School, Virginia O’Neill and the Principal of Holy Spirit School, Nick Gallen, I congratulate you and your school communities who were so public and evident in the work that was done in the recovery around the New Farm area.

I also commend the work that is being done in those school communities by the young people, some of whom had never seen the kind of destruction that occurred, not just in New Farm, though we were spared much of the devastation. Through the media they saw what had happened in their city, and both of those schools and school communities are working with the children and young people to ensure that they understand and acknowledge the trauma caused to young people in these circumstances.

The day was a great success. There was so much joy. There was a real sense that the community understood what had happened. They also wanted to thank so many people who had been involved in working through the issues. We saw those images in Brisbane of the volunteer army. They were known as the mud army and that was a truly appropriate name when you saw how they emerged at the end of a day of labour. On the streets of New Farm on the day after the floods had moved through, hundreds of people were there who came to our region to help. Many of them had never been in the region before; they were there to help. Many of them had great memories of the wonderful New Farm Park and the facilities around the Powerhouse; they wanted to come and give back and to help share so that we could rebuild. So there was a great sense of appreciation and gratitude.

The day after the floods hit our region, there was an immediate call to action, coordinated largely by the local councillor David Hinchliffe, the local state member, Grace Grace, and a number of the local businesses, such as the real estate agents from the local area, came together because they wanted to help. They wanted to identify where there was a need. In this case, I really want to express my great gratitude and appreciation to the wonderful New Farm Neighbourhood Centre. We often have to say thank you to the New Farm Neighbourhood Centre. It has been around since 1986 and it is a real hub of community spirit in our region. It is also a place of safety for so many people who go there to share and to get support. They also know that is a place where they will have someone with whom they can speak. This established process was extraordinarily helpful during this time of crisis. Much of the local community activity came through the New Farm Neighbourhood Centre. To the board of directors led by president Michael Drummond, CEO Fiona Hunt and community development coordinator Robyn Lawrence, who actually only took up her role the week that the floods occurred, and to the amazing group of dedicated volunteers at the New Farm Neighbourhood Centre, thank you. You are the heart of New Farm. You provide us with hope and you come together to help us all.

In the days immediately after the floods there was so much activity going through the New Farm Neighbourhood Centre. A local fund was set up to help people who were in that region. Over $4,000 was distributed to over 60 people who came and got some immediate help. They were also able to use the facilities at the centre and, as I constantly restate, benefit from the sense of security and support that is so important in our centre. The New Farm Neighbourhood Centre was there in force on our day of recovery and it was there once again surveying the people around us, asking them what future help it could provide and what their needs were, because the New Farm Neighbourhood Centre will be with us into the future providing that help.

On New Farm Recovers day we were also very privileged to have the launch of a fantastic document: Silver lining: community development, crisis and belonging: exploring the role of community development in Queensland’s recovery from the January 2011 floods. This was actually coordinated by the Under 1 Roof, Community In Action group. This group is truly remarkable. It was set up under the leadership of the Rotary Club of Fortitude Valley and works to facilitate the involvement of community agencies, residents and businesses in ending homelessness. It has a real focus on the issues of homelessness in our community, which is very prominent in the areas around New Farm and Fortitude Valley. This is a group that draws people together, builds professional knowledge and commitment and engages realistically at the local level.

They actually had a very clear strategy on the day. They were there to explore:

• Strategies to build on the community spirit already demonstrated during the flood crisis.
• Strategies to help restore and strengthen the social fabric and create an even stronger foundation for future challenges and crises.
• Community building ideas to help people with residual trauma, fears for the future and grief for what has been lost.
• Strategies to strengthen the community’s ongoing capacity to show leadership, plan and engage with government, business and other stakeholders about solutions to the problems created by the floods.

This program actually engaged with people who were there, who knew their community and who had immediate knowledge and professional skills to build for the future. Sixty-three people attended this workshop in their own time and they did not waste that time. A large number of recommendations came out around those key strategies that I identified. Again, the core feature was building and developing local community to actually work with people—not on people and not for people, but with people. These recommendations will now be considered at the local level and also I think at the city council through David Hinchliffe and at the state level through Grace Grace.

On the day of recovery there was a remarkable unity amongst the community, and local government, state government and federal government were all there, not just to talk about the future, but to share their own experiences. The councillor, the state member, the local federal member, Therese Gambaro, and I were there together. I think it is a great message for people that times of need and crisis are not the time for political difference; they are the time to share, to build and to work for the future.

There will be a strong future for our region. There will be a strong future for our community because the basis was already there. Places like the New Farm Neighbourhood Centre and organisations like Under 1 Roof are already part of the dynamic community that could see what had occurred, could work with the people to identify their needs and, as I think has been stressed, particularly work with people’s vulnerabilities, because fear and worry were most evident in people’s responses to what was an amazingly traumatic event. When we saw the issues and talked with the people at the local evacuation centre at the exhibition grounds, we saw a large number of community organisations: the wonderful Micah organisation, Lifeline, the Salvation Army, the Muslim community, and local Christian groups were all there together. They were there to provide personal support, to listen to people’s stories and to ensure that they would get the support, immediately and into the future, that they need.

I am proud to be a resident of New Farm. It is a wonderful place and stories like those I have described briefly tonight were reflected all across Queensland. I congratulate and thank all the people who were involved and I want to end with another quote from Councillor David Hinchliffe because he was so active in the whole event:

As we face the future, we need an open mind and the same spirit of goodwill and commonsense that all the volunteers showed immediately after the flood.

Let us hope that, in the years ahead, we will look back and speak not only of the “Great Flood of 2011”—

and we do like talking about great floods in Queensland—

but equally of the “Great Recovery”.