Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Six months ago on the Central Coast we were battered by devastating storms that few will forget. We saw howling winds of up 125 kilometres an hour; driving rain; and trees, some more than 60 metres high, ripped from their roots. At the peak of the storm's damage, around 80,000 homes across the Central Coast lost power for up to 10 days. It was a very challenging time, but it was also a time when our community really came together. We saw it as our brave emergency services personnel hit the ground to minimise damage and to help keep people safe. Their response and the response of our community was really quite extraordinary. I would really like to again honour those, many of whom were volunteers, who worked around the clock to help keep people safe.

Today, six months on, I am pleased to say that we have not forgotten the sacrifices made, even though we do know that there are still many people working to restore their own homes and there is still much damage on the ground. We are planning for our future. The coalition has announced a special Natural Disaster Recovery Round of the Australian government's Green Army program. This includes a team of local young people who will work specifically on rehabilitating areas damaged by the April storms. These projects, hosted by Gosford City Council, will assist vital environmental clean-up and rehabilitation to tackle the serious impacts that the storms had on our local environment.

Thanks to this special Green Army program, teams of young people will work to improve the resilience of our sand dunes in case of future storm events. They remove debris and litter, rebuild and repair fencing to help manage better public access, get rid of invasive weeds, and help with the dune system revegetation and also with erosion control. We have two teams working on the peninsula. The first, starting next month, will work with local community groups between Ettalong and Umina Point. The second Green Army team will also be on the peninsula and will work in partnership with landcare groups. Our third team, to commence next year, will do much-needed clean-up and repair in Killcare, Putty Beach and Avoca Beach.

This is actually an addition to our other Green Army initiatives working on the Central Coast, doing some great work, including vital national park restoration and conservation at Killcare and at Putty Beach reserve, and also at the Five Lands track in Winney Bay. I recently saw some of this work firsthand, when I joined Graham 'Jonno' Johnson from Clean 4 Shore. This time, though, we were out in West Gosford, picking up rubbish and really seeing a hands-on experience of the Green Army program. Can I say that is actually a great thing about the Green Army program: by engaging our young people in such a practical, hands-on way, it really helps to challenge perceptions and also to create a new culture of respect and appreciation for our local environment. These are projects that will help make a great difference to our environment, particularly in the aftermath of the storms, and I commend the coalition government's initiative.