Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to thank everyone who kept the communities of western Victoria safe over this summer and who are still doing so. We have had an incredibly difficult period since Christmas in western Victoria. We've had the Otway fires, which still continue to burn, plus we've had fires in particular at Skipton, Streatham and Carranballac which destroyed homes and vital infrastructure. We saw not only that but also flooding. This was flash flooding, the like of which we hadn't seen for years, and it led to serious safety issues. Yet, in the end, fortunately no-one lost their lives. For all the natural disasters that we've been through, that has been the telltale thing. Fortunately, we haven't seen any loss of life. We have unfortunately seen people lose their houses and key community infrastructure lost. That can be repaired and needs to be repaired. The fact that we haven't had loss of life in western Victoria from these fires and from the floods is nothing short of a miracle.

That goes to where I want to start today. That is thanking everyone who was involved in fighting the fires and dealing with the floods. There were local heroes who warned people about the flash flooding that was coming. That saved people's lives. We saw, whether it was through our professional firefighters or through our volunteer firefighters, their willingness to put themselves on the frontline save lives and save even more damage to housing, to property, to livestock and to key community infrastructure. I say, again, thank you to our CFA volunteers, to our professional firefighters and to everyone else—all the community groups who came together to help and support those who had to move out of those homes, where relief centres had to be set up. Organisations like the Lions Club moved in and made sure that they were helping and supporting those people who had to move away from those homes. Then, of course, there's the support for those who have lost their homes.

We're not out of danger yet. We've still got a potentially trying six to eight weeks to go. But what we've done in the face of such adversity in western Victoria is an absolute credit to everyone and particularly to all those hard working volunteers.

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