Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It's 2025 and here we are again—can you believe it? I realised, to my horror, last year that it was exactly 50 years since I started uni in 1974. That was certainly a big year for Brisbane and for me personally. I started studying at University of Queensland that year. The Brisbane River had flooded the week before we were meant to start university. It was the first huge Brisbane River flood that I witnessed in my lifetime and I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember just how devastating that flood was for all of Brisbane but especially for my electorate of Ryan. It was truly devastating, and the memory lingers.

Those memories have lingered a long time, and little did I know then that, as devastated and exhausted as we were, we would need to experience that over and over again—three more times so far in my life. There have been four devastating floods in my lifetime, and it is exhausting. In 1974, much of the UQ campus went under, and in every riverfront suburb people shovelled out the mud, threw out their furniture and possessions, and started the heartbreaking process of cleaning up, repairing and rebuilding. We architecture students were dispatched—this was our first project in architecture—with clipboards to record housing type, construction materials, flood depth and observable physical damage. I went straight to an area in my electorate called Fig Tree Pocket to smell the mud, to talk to people and to see the terrible damage. What we registered, beyond the physical damage, was the personal damage, the loss and the heartbreak that such catastrophic climate events can week. It was devastating and it has stayed with me. It produces PTSD every time we have reports that we might have another climate disaster event coming, every time that rain starts pouring down. I'm not only one in Brisbane who experiences that. In '74 it wasn't the last time that we smelt that Brisbane River mud and saw the devastation.

This deep appreciation of the power of nature and the importance of climate on life in Brisbane has really been one of the drivers for me in my previous career and in this new one. Fifty-one years ago, in the face of unprecedented disaster, neighbours became friends and worked together to weather the storm. We know that, unfortunately, that '74 flood was just the beginning. That was the year of the first big Brisbane flood in generations, and there have been too many since: in 2011, when I was looking after my aged parents; in 2022; and now, just weeks ago, in 2025. Each of these floods brings their own challenges. The 2022 flood was during that election year, and now, in another election year, we have just experienced another devastating climate event. It's not a natural disaster. It should be considered an extremely unnatural disaster.

We're tired. We're over it. We have to rally each time something like this happens, and it's the community that has to carry the burden of it. We knew 51 years ago that climate change was making floods worse. We knew it. What will it take for politicians to get it? How many more times will they show up for a press conference as the floodwaters recede, patting people on the back like they're in it with us. That is just a slap in the face. That is offensive—shaking broken people's hands with their right hand, while taking fossil fuel donations with the left. It's outrageous—fitting in an SES visit between corporate lunches and new gas approvals. How many times will we have to pick up the pieces again before this government stops supporting coal and gas? We've had it.

While the major party turns up the heat time and again, the community has to pull together to help each other. This year, again, that amazing and marvellous community spirit, borne out of the of the adversity of '74 and continuing unbroken, helped weather those storms. My amazing team and I helped thousands of people in Ryan. We all pulled together, as did all of my Greens colleagues in the various adjoining seats across Brisbane. We all pulled together and helped wherever we could. We must keep working together as a community for a better future—not just cleaning up the mess, but actually striving to stop these messes happening.

Let me tell you what actually happened during Cyclone Alfred. While both the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister were at fundraisers in Sydney, we were on the ground in the community. I'm so incredibly grateful for everyone who helped out down at the Toowong temporary sandbagging depot. My colleague from Brisbane was there. We were able to mobilise many Greens volunteers down there for the whole time that that sandbagging depot was open. They weren't just there for the photo-op. Their efforts, and the efforts of other volunteers from the community, reduced the wait time from several hours down to around 30 minutes, because we got organised there. Many of those volunteers there were doing 10- or 12-hour shifts, multiple days on end. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of people in Brisbane who got sandbags thanks to the efforts of those volunteers. We also coordinated deliveries of sandbags to those who couldn't otherwise get them.

I was really struck by the story of one man who lives along Moggill Creek, and who was flooded in 2022. He left his property in Brisbane a few days before the cyclone was predicted to hit—and we had more warning this time—resigned to the fact that his property would inevitably be flooded again. But he heard that our volunteers were able to get sandbags to him, so he came back to Brisbane to place them around his property and protect the entrances to his house.

There are countless other stories like that. My office alone responded to about 100 call-out requests. Some of them are still happening. We're helping with the clean-up to this day. That simply would not have been possible if the community hadn't mobilised so well during this time. There were incredible shows of solidarity as well. One example is of a woman who came back, after celebrating Iftar with her family, to give all of the volunteers sandbagging at Toowong homemade fried rice to thank them. People were so grateful. A group 30 people from a nearby apartment block came and sandbagged together. Apparently one of the residents asked if anyone wanted to help out over the apartment intercom. Someone had a ute, so they came down and filled up three loads for their neighbours. It was this amazing community spirit that was brought out in this disaster.

This is climate change. We are living it. The science is clear: climate change is causing warmer oceans, which in turn, means more frequent high-intensity rain events, more frequent floods, and it means more intense cyclones that are fuelled by warmer waters, as my colleague from Griffith just outlined. These weather events are directly fuelled by the major parties approving more coal and gas mines that will continue to warm our planet and our oceans. That is a disaster, and we need to deal with that disaster right now.

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