Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

No, it is not that. I think it is the gravity of the situation.

From a personal perspective, my daughter's home went under. She survived the 2010-11 flood in Rockhampton because it went under the slats of the house. This time, it was about two feet deep throughout the house. The kids from Shalom College came out and helped her on the first day to get all the muck out. The worst thing is taking out the damaged furniture, the linen and the carpets. It is heartbreaking pulling all that stuff out. There is the piano that will never be used again, and the fridge, the stove, the washing machine and the hot water system that you have to just chuck in the street. There were piles of stuff. I travelled down Skyring Street in east Bundaberg with the Governor-General. There were piles of refuse, 2½ to three metres high, on both sides of the street. You had to see it to believe it.

My daughter's place went under, as did my sister-in-law's place. In fact, I went down at 11 o'clock at night knowing that the water was coming up fast—it caught us all by surprise, though I am supposed to be right on the ball on these things. I went to my sister-in-law's place with an idea that in the morning I might go down with a few sandbags. When I got there, there was four feet of water. I said to Margaret, 'I'm prepared to wade through water in daylight, but I'm not going into waist-deep or shoulder-high water at night.' That is how quickly came up.

My son, who is a builder, came up from Brisbane and we gurneyed out the houses and ordered the cabinet-making. We were the lucky ones.

Tony Abbott and Barnaby Joyce came up, and they said: 'Look, no point in going around just inspecting things again; everyone's inspecting things. How about we pick a house somewhere and get into it?' So, we got on to a house. The council referred us to a Mrs Margaret Bullpitt of East Bundaberg—just near the distillery, for those of you who have been to Bundaberg, up on that hill that normally does not flood. And there were Tony Abbott, Barnaby Joyce, myself, the guy who is endorsed to follow me, and some staffers. They all brought their galoshes and old clothes, and we went through that house and got out the muck, got out the furniture. We had to gurney it out four times to get it right. Then we went up to the distillery for lunch; they put on lunch for us which, just for the record, was bread rolls and soft drink—none of the local product! Nevertheless, it was a little bit of local colour on top of everything else.

As I said, the management of the flood has been quite remarkable. The Bundaberg Regional Council was well practiced from that last flood. The new mayor, Mal Forman, a former deputy mayor, was very much in the leadership role, as was his deputy, David Batt; and the CEO, Peter Byrne, who was virtually executive officer of the show. And then there was the infrastructure engineer, Andrew Fulton. I have enormous respect for his opinions. He almost picked the heights that this river was going to hit and the hour it was going to hit. To have people with that sort of expertise on a committee is just remarkable. Then we had Major Patrick O'Neil from the Army. He directed the operations not just in Bundaberg but, as I said before, in Burrum Heads and also out at Gayndah and Mundubbera.

People generally get impatient at times of floods. Ergon, in reconnecting people, did a remarkable job. The Salvation Army and the Red Cross, at the peak, were doing up to 1,000 meals and, as I said, taking other meals across the river by helicopter. All the service clubs were involved. At its peak there must have been close to 1,000 people in three evacuation centres—one at the civic centre, one at Agro-Trend and another small one at the PCYC. And of course, as I said, there is this unofficial one at North Bundaberg, at the Oakwood school. We kept those people there because there was no point pushing them across the river, because they were in the parts of North Bundaberg where the floodwaters were going to go down earliest, and they could get back to their homes, whereas the ones down on the flat were going to have to wait a lot longer.

So it was a remarkable event. It is not finished yet, as you know. The flood and the drama fires up your adrenaline, and you make sure things happen. The real thing is going to be the reconstruction. I am coming to the conclusion that we have to do something different across Australia. We are doing it to some extent now with bushfires; we are much more expert in how we handle them than we were, say, 10 years ago. But when we see places go under repetitively to floods, I think we have to do something like what has happened in Grantham. Councils have land banks. They can cut up land. Some of the worst houses can be moved. Houses that are aesthetically pleasing can be put up on stilts, with garage doors underneath. I notice that some were done like that in Brisbane after the floods; that can be done. I think there has to be some sort of buyback program or a transfer program. If you are prepared to go to the new estate you will get perhaps a three-bedroom brick home to the level of, say, $115,000 or $120,000—not a mansion, but certainly better than some of the houses that some people are coming out of.

I think we have to look at this, as a nation, in a bipartisan way, and look at a 10-year horizon. I do not know what the right figure is, but I would guess that it would not be less than $200 million a year—so probably $2 billion over 10 years, where state governments and councils made a contribution as well. But we looked within that 10-year horizon at doing many Granthams, getting some of these towns to a point where it does not happen again.

It is false economy because when it does happen—and I am not saying this with any complaint—we all hop in and do it. But there are costs involved in helicopters, rebuilding roads, getting people there, emergency services, cleaning out houses and rebuilding houses. There must be a better way to start eliminating floods from some of those places that go under. That is my appeal.

I salute all of those who did just remarkable work. I salute all of those people I just referred to and there were many more, far too numerous to name. But I think, having been through this myself many times, and this probably being my last flood in this place, that we need to look very seriously in future to some form of flood mitigation and flood replacement.

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