Cameron Caldwell (Fadden, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I take this opportunity to rise to speak in relation to Tropical Cyclone Alfred, and then ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred as it continued to cause devastation across the Gold Coast. Firstly, I think it's worthwhile mentioning that I really think this was one of the best prepared-for disasters that we have faced in the Gold Coast region. I put that squarely down to the leadership of Premier David Crisafulli and his team, who took a genuinely fresh approach to the way that they communicated the need to prepare.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 11:55 to 12:07

I was just saying how wonderful our Premier of Queensland was particularly in the lead-up to this natural disaster, Tropical Cyclone Alfred. There was a noticeable change in tone and language. I think that the confidence that the premier gave to the people of Queensland really resonated, and they acted and followed his leadership. I'm very fortunate that the premier is also a local member within my electorate, and we were able to go and visit some businesses in Paradise Point just to see how their preparations were going. Everyone was being very earnest in what they were doing to prepare.

With the next layer down, I've got to say that the work by the Gold Coast Disaster and Emergency Management Centre was absolutely outstanding. For the majority of the time, Councillor Donna Gates, who's the deputy mayor at the moment, was acting mayor and was chairing the disaster coordination. She did an absolutely outstanding job during that period of time. When Mayor Tate returned from leave he then took over that role. Councillor Gates; CEO Tim Baker; the Gold Coast Disaster and Emergency Management Centre manager, Mark Ryan; and local recovery coordinator, Cath Drinkwater, all did an absolutely stellar job. I was fortunate enough to visit the disaster management centre with the Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton, and also my colleague the member for Moncrieff and see the operations in full swing. For those of you who are familiar with the way that disaster preparedness, recovery and response activities are, you can ramp up from virtually no staff in that building to hundreds of people working in a coordinated and very effective way in a quick period of time. To see the level of activity, the level of energy and the way that the teams were going about doing their work was extremely impressive.

I also want to give a shout out to the Energex workers and the first responders: the police, the ambulance and the SES. They all played an enormously importantly role in responding to this event and in the recovery that followed. As I walked around the disaster management centre, I was fortunate enough to see many of my old council friends there, because the council staff are effectively the backbone of what goes on, including our planners and engineers. For example, I saw Trish Apps, who was there in the deputy role; Jeremy Wagner; and Alisha Swain, who's one of the senior managers, all doing their bit to contribute to the way that this disaster was prepared for and responded to.

I went out to the car park and bumped into some of the work crews who'd been out all night for many nights in a row, putting out road closure signs, cutting down debris and trees and making roads and pathways safe. To those guys and girls who were out there with chainsaws, signs and sandbags in the rain, thank you for what you do, because that makes an enormous amount of difference to the way that all of our residents feel as these events unfold.

We were very fortunate, because the impact probably wasn't as severe as what was expected. But that's not to say we weren't impacted. We were still struck by major flooding and erosion. We had days and days of loss of power, loss of internet, loss of mobile phone services and, of course, school closures. For many people in my electorate, this was only just over a year after a very nasty tornado ripped through on Christmas Day. To be quite honest, this was all too much, too soon for many of my residents—but we got there. We got there together. People got through the power outages. They got through the school closures. We went for days where there was no milk and bread on the supermarket shelves.

I must say thank you to my dear friends, Sam and Greg, who are our neighbours, who split a generator across the dividing fence between our two properties. That is the kind of thing that got everyone through this time around. People took the preparation very earnestly, and I think that paid off.

We shouldn't lose sight of the impact that this event had on many of our schools and our schoolchildren. I visited, for example, Biggera Waters State School for a cleanup working bee. Kylie, the principal, and her team were doing a wonderful job to get the kids back to school as soon as they could.

Later in the week, I went to Woongoolba State School, which is one of the oldest schools on the Gold Coast, formed in 1878. It's a small school, but they had pushed so hard to try and get back to normal in the cane lands, where we had water across many roads. Jacobs Well village was still without power for a couple of days, at that point. To the principal, Michael, thank you for efforts and leadership, because that means a lot to our local community out in your part of the world. To all of the people in our community, thank you for preparing so well and for being so good about it.

We've seen vision across our country and probably across the world in relation to the erosion on our beaches. I was fortunate enough to visit the beach last weekend. It looks bad, but we will get through that as well. It has been scarped along the beaches previously, from other weather events. We can get that back to being the beautiful, pristine Gold Coast beach that we're famous for. But they're still usable. Credit to the Gold Coast city council, who were able to get those beaches open—most of them on the following weekend—for some sort of safe use by the public.

That work will continue for many months, but I know the objective is that those beaches be back to tiptop condition in time for the Easter school holidays. We look forward to welcoming many people from around Australia to our neck of the woods.

Finally, I wanted to mention that Queensland is an incredible state with an incredibly diverse range of events. Right now, there is a huge amount of water lying across parts of inland Queensland and up north. I think the rain will continue to fall for a few days to come, and the flooding will likely worsen. To those people affected by current events, all of us Queenslanders are with you. We've seen that when these things happen, whether it be cyclones in North Queensland, flooding in Townsville or rain events on the Gold Coast, we are able to all band together to make sure our communities are looked after as best they can be. To those impacted by the current events further north, we're thinking of you, and, if you need anything, we're here to help.

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