Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is almost without exception that this chamber echoes with, I think, a common purpose and goodwill. Of course all Australians have watched their television sets over the summer and seen the terrible fires and floods that have occurred in Western Australia, Victoria, the Territory, the Hunter Valley and Tasmania and have watched with a great deal of concern and consideration to all those affected. For me, 2015 started with bushfires at Sampson Flat and it ended with bushfires in Pinery and the Adelaide Plains.

I think it was Ms McGowan who said that it is different when the community affected is the one that you grew up in, the one that you live in and the one where you know people. That gives every fire and every flood a greater resonance, and so there is a common bond between Australians but it is made deeper through our experience of and vulnerability to natural disasters such as flood and fire.

The communities affected, particularly by the Pinery fire, a place that very few people had heard about, included Mallala, Owen, Balaklava, Templers, Wasleys, Hamley Bridge, Freeling, Pinkerton Plains, Greenock, Daveyston, Kapunda and Tarlee—these are all communities that I know very well. I grew up in Kapunda. I currently live close by to Greenock. I can see the fire scar from my front yard.

These were devastating fires and they had a devastating effect on all of those communities, but particularly on those who have lost loved ones. I would like to offer my condolences to the Tiller family and to the family of Janet Hughes. They have suffered very devastating losses, and it is very humbling to meet those who are mourning for loved ones. I have met Jennifer Tiller. I know I have felt very deeply her loss, and it is a loss that stays with them every hour of every day. It is very difficult to deal with the loss of such a respected person and such a loved family man. I would like to extend my condolences to their friends, their families and the communities that they lived in.

With these recent disasters, we must be reminded that it does not just stop once a fire has swept through. Residents have to deal every day with the consequences of the damage to stock, fencing and soil. In my own electorate we have had massive dust storms over the summer—a constant reminder of the devastation—cleaning up after every one of these dust storms. We know that recovery is so much more. It is an emotional journey but it is also a practical journey, dealing with insurance assessors and arguing out each item sometimes.

I was speaking to one of my neighbours in this building earlier today, in Aussies; he was having a bit of an argument with the insurer over a rainwater tank. Fortunately, the insurer did the right thing but constantly having to go through that process is enormously difficult for people. I know one farmer who left a very expensive truck off the list of items to be insured—a simple administrative error that normally would not have been an issue. Of course the insurer has done the right thing, but it is a moment of worry—a $60,000 truck—and I am sure he will not be the only farmer with a long list of assets that the insurer has to go through. It is a difficult process. It is a laborious process.

One of the real issues of the Pinery fire was that the devastation was such that the stubble had burnt the loam out of the soil—and in many areas there was just dust left on the side of the road and in paddocks. Farmers have had to resurrect technologies that they had thought had passed by them by—they have had to get ploughs. Some of the young farmers had never used discs—I am showing my ignorance, I suppose—and they had to remind themselves of those processes, reacquaint themselves, and re-equip themselves with all of those reasonably old technologies. Recently we have had big rains in South Australia, and you have never heard farmers say this before but they are hoping weeds will grow to hold the soil down. I guess there are a whole lot of land use questions that come out of these devastating fires. I know there are many farmers who are thinking about land use in the future, particularly the use of fire breaks and the like. Of course there is an efficiency trade-off there, but I think that we are becoming more and more aware of the fire risks in these areas, particularly around harvest time.

There is the demolition of buildings, and I heard other members talking about the perils of asbestos used in houses, with higher demolition costs, and of course there are all of the disposal issues that come with the destruction of houses. It is not just asbestos—asbestos is a serious issue—but also in South Australia we have had farmers wanting to dispose of rubble and they have had to crush it to a certain size and bury it in certain places. There is a whole lot of regulatory interaction with the EPA, and sometimes just agents of the EPA, and that can be very frustrating, as dealing with any bureaucracy is, but getting that information out and having the practical application of that information is very important. We need all of our regulators, I guess, to be cognisant of the emotional journey that those affected are having.

Then there are utilities—not just mobile phone towers, although mobile phone towers are very important and the collapse of mobile phone towers in my electorate was a serious issue. Often people only got messages hours after the event and the problem with this is a late message can be more dangerous than not getting the message at all. So many people got evacuation messages when it was actually dangerous to evacuate. I think we have to look at not just making sure that that infrastructure is up, but if people do get a message it has to be timely. If it arrives late it can be more dangerous because one of the things that came out of the Pinery fires is that it is terribly dangerous to be on the road. People are probably safer within a town than out on the road, but of course people have to have their bushfire plans. Owen had a bushfire plan and activated it, and it worked very well not just in protecting people but also in giving people a sense of confidence. Confidence, and being calm in what is an extremely devastating and terrifying situation, having some order, is terribly important. So we do need to learn the lessons of all of these fires, and their impact on communications, and remind people to have a battery-powered radio—at the very least a battery-powered radio is very, very important.

In the wake of the devastating fires in my electorate I did make some comments about the need, I think a desperate need, for a national water bombing fleet. We have now state governments who are doing the right thing and leasing water bombing aircraft, and we know that many of these aircraft are working in both Australia and the United States. They are leased aircraft. I think we have to have a very close look at a national fleet because these aircraft do make a massive difference.

But we have to have national coverage because, as we have learnt from Western Australia, Tasmania and South Australia, it took some hours to get those planes to South Australia. They flew over my neighbour's house, so I know how effective they are at protecting towns. I think it is a matter that the national government has to have consideration for. I am not saying that as a partisan thing, but I think—and I know the member for Ballarat also has some expertise and knowledge in this area—this is something we should work out as a bipartisan national project and it would go some way towards responding to these terrible and devastating fires and floods that affected our nation over the summer.

See this speech in context