Tony Crook (O'Connor, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Natural disasters like those in the Prime Minister's speech and those mentioned today by members in this place have also been affecting Western Australians, particularly in my electorate of O'Connor, where we lost a volunteer firefighter in the Two Peoples Bay bushfire west of Albany last October. Wendy Bearfoot suffered horrific burns to more than 60 per cent of her body when her truck was engulfed by flames caused by a freak wind change and, sadly, she passed away as a result of injuries. 25-year-old Charlene Hordyk was also badly injured with burns to 20 per cent of her body along with five other fellow firefighters.

I take this opportunity to acknowledge the bravery of these Australians who are risking their lives to help protect other people's lives and property. I would also like to offer my sincere condolences to Mrs Bearfoot's family including her husband of 30 years and her three children. To Charlene and the other injured firefighters I wish them a very speedy recovery and thank them for the outstanding contribution they have made to our community.

The Two Peoples Bay fire was only one of several bushfires around my electorate, with other major fires in Esperance on the South Coast, Bremer Bay on the mid-South Coast and Northcliffe last month. In all of the stories that members have contributed to this discussion there is a common theme and that is the remarkable work of emergency services personnel and the thousands of volunteers who support them.

Bushfires are not the only disasters to hit the O'Connor electorate, although they are the dramatic events that catch our attention most vividly and that demand our vigilance. Freak weather events are becoming more common across this vast electorate such as the storm that devastated the small community of Dudinin in the central wheat belt. While the east coast of Australia has been hit by similarly dramatic flood and fire, Western Australians and particularly Western Australian farmers have been suffering the much slower and less striking effects of drought and other unpredictable weather patterns.

I have been contacted by many of these farmers who are currently in dire straits. They have said that this season has been particularly difficult. In some parts of the state it is the culmination of five dry years in a row. Others are experiencing unseasonal rainfall patterns and freak storm events. WA farmers are under some of the most difficult agricultural conditions in the world, which appear to be getting more difficult with changing weather and increasing incidences of natural disaster.

As with all disasters there is one critical factor that enables us as individuals and as communities to prepare in advance, to manage the event while we experience it and to react to a worst-case scenario when it happens. That critical factor is information. Information is the key to working together in difficult situations. Information is the tool that allows us to assess past disasters and to plan for future disasters. The availability of information is a service we rely upon in the modern world to keep in touch with our loved ones, to make sure that they are all right and to check whether they need our help.

Information is critical for emergency services responding to big disaster events. It is also critical for farmers and communities struggling to cope with a series of lesser, progressive events that combine to create a disaster for their lives and livelihoods. Information is important for local governments, for health services including the Royal Flying Doctor Service, for the main roads, for industry, for tourists and travellers, and for people in their homes when these disasters strike. However information is the one thing that the firefighters at Two Peoples Bay were working without.

On 12 October 2012 Wendy Bearfoot and her colleagues were working in an area with limited radio network coverage and no mobile phone reception. There was little or no means of conveying critical information about changing conditions. There was little or no means of calling for help. In a dangerous situation where rapidly changing weather can make the difference between life and death, how can this be an acceptable set of circumstances for our emergency services to operating under? Yet this is the exact situation in many regional areas. In the Great Southern region around Albany, the local Chief Bushfire Control Officer, Mr Ross Fenwick, has been working with state member of the Legislative Council Mr Colin Holt to identify nine bushfire brigade sheds that receive no mobile phone coverage whatsoever and a further seven that can only access a signal via connection to an external antenna. These are the volunteer bushfire brigades that thousands of people are relying upon to protect them, their property and their livestock against bushfire events that are a serious threat, not just an outside possibility.

Again, it is not just the bushfire scenario we need to consider when we talk about the lack of critical information. The Bureau of Meteorology has recently decommissioned the Eucla weather radar on the Western Australian and South Australian border. I understand that the radio was old and that it was going to be costly to replace it, so it has been switched off. This is a service that provides critical weather information to emergency services, to the flying doctors, to the main roads, to the pastoralists and to the local and travelling community. It is a service that is seriously lacking in other parts of O'Connor as well, denying people the information they need to protect themselves and to defend themselves against weather events that can devastate their lives immediately in freak events or slowly over seasons and years.

My electorate offices have been approached time and time again by farmers crying out for government support. They tell me they need more information—critical weather information. They need to know when and where rain is falling so they can farm productively because, while the effects are not so obvious and not so immediately dramatic, drought is a natural disaster like flood and like fire. It has the power to take away people's lives and livelihoods. These farmers need to know what has happened in previous years so they can prepare for what seasons might look like in the years to come. They need weather radar so they can prepare for and respond to changing conditions so that those conditions do not become a disaster.

I understand that at least two weather radars are necessary, one in the wheat belt and one in the south-west. This is in addition to the existing weather services, which need to be protected and replaced when necessary. But what I am hearing is that the weather radar is being decommissioned, and it is not only Eucla that is getting the chop. I understand that the Bureau of Meteorology has undertaken a review recommending the enclosing of aerodrome forecasting equipment at 78 regional aerodromes around the country. This equipment, like the Eucla radar, is old and needs upgrading. I understand that the costs of upgrading these services is somewhere near $7 million. What I want to ask is: what is the cost of not upgrading this equipment? What is the cost of switching off these services and taking away this source of vital weather information for remote and regional areas? What is the cost to these communities that can no longer rely on the Royal Flying Doctor Service, because the flying doctor does not have the information required to get in and out of a particular aerodrome safely? What is the cost to the communities when the viability of their aerodrome services is questioned by operators that cannot afford the extra costs of contingency fuel supplies to make it into the next aerodrome in case the weather is found to be inclement upon arrival? And what is the cost of further isolation from emergency services, from essential services and from help? The cost is similar to that experienced by communities whose fire brigades cannot communicate effectively. It is a drastic and dangerous cost.

I implore members of this House to think more broadly about natural disasters, not just about how we help people to clean up and support them with crisis response initiatives and not just about how to assist communities struck by dramatic events. These communities are very worthy, and they must receive our help. But I implore the government and future governments to help and support the people on the ground who are preparing for, managing against and battling with the effects of all sorts of natural disasters, big and small, on a daily basis. In Western Australia this means that people in regional areas in O'Connor and across rural Western Australia must be provided with more information—equip them with the tools they require, arm them with the information they rely upon, provide them with critical information services and information communication services so that when things do go wrong they have the very best chances to survive and to carry on battling in the years to come. These people need mobile phone towers. They need weather radar and weather stations. They need to know that they will have the information they need when they need it. And they need to know now that the government takes the natural disasters they are experiencing seriously and will help them to protect themselves.

In 2013 in Australia, one of the most advanced, prosperous and privileged nations in the world, how can we justify denying a significant proportion of our population this kind of information? It is information that is so much more critical to those people living in remote and isolated communities amongst harsh and dangerous environments and far from major service provision centres. This information is taken for granted by the rest of the population and by populations across other developed nations. It is time that we brought our regional Australians up to date and provided them with these basic services. Australians in the regions need information and services for communication for their survival.

There is a huge anomaly in talking about supporting people in the face of weather driven natural disasters when we are taking away weather monitoring data services. There is a huge contradiction in providing services for emergency situations if those services cannot communicate effectively when the disaster strikes. The bottom line is always going to be very important, but in this instance the bottom line must not cost lives.

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