Chris Pearce (Aston, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today on behalf of the people of Aston to offer my support to the condolence motion relating to the Victorian bushfires which was moved by the Deputy Prime Minister. Mr Deputy Speaker, as you would know, the electorate of Aston is not all that far from the beautiful electorate of McEwen, where most of the tragedy at the moment in Victoria is taking place. I am sure the comments that I want to make today will in no way be able to convey the horror of those who have faced the bushfires and survived, the despair of those who have lost loved ones to the inferno or the devastation of homes and farms and indeed whole towns. But I hope the contribution I want to make to the condolence debate today will go some way to touching the hundreds and hundreds of people who have been affected by this terrible event.

Of course, many colleagues on both sides of the parliament in recent days have been making contributions about this dreadful event. My contribution to this debate can, I guess, be summed up by saying that it is all about hope—a solemn hope that the men, women and children who have faced this atrocity will be capable in some way of returning to lives of peace and fulfilment; a solemn hope that those who have lost their loved ones can find it within them to continue on that journey with the love and support of all the people around them. It is the voice of hope that many survivors of this catastrophe employ when they are talking to people in the community at the moment. When asked by the media what they will do now after their families have been ruthlessly taken from them or their property has been decimated, they often say that it is hope that they are holding on to. For our fellow Australians who have been directly affected by the bushfires to have hope under such circumstances shows courage of the first order—a courage which few are ever asked to display and which even fewer should ever need to draw upon. It is that very courage that I have been humbled to witness again and again as men and women—some young and some old, yet all tired and drawn—speak with a sense of purpose about rebuilding their lives and, as one victim remarked, getting back to normal.

It is this truly indomitable spirit, this strength of will, that reminds me of the great character Australians lay claim to, a character which is on display even in the face of unspeakable horror such as that we have been seeing. There will, of course, be those who have witnessed this unspeakable horror, and they will carry the psychological impact for the rest of their lives. I acknowledge the first-rate commitment of the many people who are providing immediate support to those who understandably need help in tolerating the hell that they have experienced.

I am not going to attempt today to chronicle the suffering of our fellow Australians but I want to reflect on the hope the survivors have quietly nurtured and the hope that imbues all our respective communities. Communities, of course, take many forms and this place is as much a community as any other. It is one which more often sees its members drawn to debate rather than deferring to each other, but the hope of the survivors permeates us as we stand together in response to this crisis. We talk about communities; this crisis has impacted upon many, many communities, all communities across Victoria.

I particularly want to talk about my community of Aston. I want to pay my respects to the CFA volunteers that are based in the electorate of Aston: the volunteers of the Rowville CFA, the Scoresby CFA, the Bayswater CFA and the Boronia CFA. I have spoken to each of the stations in the last couple of days, and all of them are deployed in various locations throughout Victoria doing what they can to support the fires. I also want to pay my respects and give my thanks to the many charitable organisations, and others, who are providing wonderful assistance and support to the victims of these fires. There are hundreds and hundreds of people involved in these organisations. An organisation which is very close to my heart is Anglicare Victoria. I am a director of Anglicare Victoria; I sit on the board. They are doing wonderful work right now throughout regional and country Victoria, offering their support and their services to the many, many people that need help.

At this time, I also particularly want to encourage and to mention our parliamentary colleagues, and their constituents, who are directly affected by this crisis: the member for McEwen and her constituents, the member for McMillan and his constituents, the member for Gippsland and his constituents, the member for Indi and her constituents, the member for Bendigo and his constituents, the member for Mallee and his constituents and the members and constituents of the neighbouring electorates of La Trobe, Casey and Wannon, who have also been impacted. As I say, Aston comes very close—it is a neighbour of La Trobe and Casey—and so we are very close to where this crisis is happening. In my own electorate, I have encouraged all people of Aston to do whatever they can to support people in their hour of need. I have encouraged them to do that by contributing as much as they possibly can to the many funds that have been established to support the victims of the fire and also, if possible, by giving blood to the Australian Red Cross at this time.

We stand here united as one parliament, as one community of representatives, seeking to understand, to truly comprehend, what has happened—indeed, what is still happening and what is yet to happen—in the communities of Victoria that have been touched by the bushfires. This crisis is still unfolding before us, and temperatures this coming weekend are expected to increase across Victoria. That is very concerning for all of us. Every single one of us is committed to working in the best interests of those communities who have been devastated by this fire storm. We do that by putting in place immediate measures to assist those most in need. It is in a spirit of bipartisan camaraderie that this parliament tends to the first principle of government: the protection of its citizens. Of course, this applies to threats domestic as well as foreign, both of man and of nature. And diligently, ever so diligently, we foster the hope that those individuals who have been touched by this disaster can regain some semblance of normality and that the victims know that we are thinking of them, we are indeed working for them and we will never, ever forget them.

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the condolence motion on behalf of all the people in Maribyrnong, whom I know would wish to have voice and express sympathy and, indeed, their helplessness at the tragedy that has unfolded. At this time it is hard to know what to say exactly. Fires are burning still and people are suffering still. I understand that no words can compensate for the loss of loved ones or fill the holes of horror that people are experiencing. We have all seen the pictures and the footage and heard the anguish in the voices of people caught up in this unexpected disaster. We are in a state, I believe, of disbelief at the fatalities, the injuries, the scale of the destruction and the speed and violence of the fires. This is a tragedy that started with nature but finishes with people. There are too many people today who are grieving the loss of irreplaceable individuals. Despite this, I am amazed also by the courage that people have shown in the face of this disaster. The desire to help and the willingness to risk life to save neighbours that has surfaced during this disaster are a tribute to the human spirit.

I know this area. I have spent time there throughout my life, both for work and for pleasure. I attended school camps at Marysville and I remember the beers I had as a university student at Flowerdale and St Andrews. To witness the beautiful town of Marysville destroyed has shocked me deeply, as it has others. As a young AWU organiser I tried to sell union tickets at Lake Mountain and throughout the district. I have handed out for Labor at Alexandra, the town that is now at the centre of the evacuation effort.

Like most Victorians and many Australians, I have spoken to friends and colleagues who have lost their homes or suffered worse. To face the catastrophe of losing your home is a dreadful, bewildering shock. This is a feeling being experienced by at least 5,000 people in Victoria right now. People have lost so much: clothes, books, photos, the school lunch boxes, the children’s water bottles, pets, livestock, mementos, the old sheds full of the archives of lives richly lived—all the things that together add up to a life. There are the lost homes, which were a testament to life savings and future plans, and the lost lives, which are a testament to things that can never be.

My sympathy goes out to all of those people, but amongst them I wish to record some whom I have been friends with for a long time and who have been caught up in this: Perci and Mala Pillai, who lost their house in Kinglake on Saturday night; Cesar and Jane Melhem, who had a fire come within metres of their farm at Glenburn and who reported to me today that the fire is again within two kilometres of their farm; Denise Power and the others helping out at the Diamond Creek community centre; and Barbara Stephens, who lost her house at Kinglake and experienced a harrowing drive to safety past scenes of death and destruction. The parents of Annette Hibberd, who works in my electorate office in Melbourne, had prepared themselves to lose their home in Bendigo, only to be saved by chance and the help of neighbours and the CFA. Annette has written to me:

My father, Eddie, woke up on Saturday morning to weather conditions he had never experienced in a lifetime in Bendigo. The intense heat and blustery wind conditions made him and his wife, Maureen, question the possibility of fire, question their safety and the safety of others.

The police had swept the area asking locals to evacuate, unless they were prepared to stay and defend their homes. Maureen started to pack together some valuables and load up the car, preparing for the worst by packing torches, blankets, food and water. With the power out, Maureen and Eddie decided on where she should evacuate to, and a meeting place if things got worse.

At this stage Eddie’s friend Yilmaz arrived, and his wife, Mijgam. They had just fled their property and at this stage thought it had been ruined. Mijgam was traumatised as the crowning fire had engulfed their street.

Yilmaz is a 73-year-old, born in Turkey, who had recently suffered a heart attack, and who thought he had just lost his home and his life’s work. Still he automatically helped to defend my family’s property. For this, my father and family will always be grateful. He was a true Aussie mate.

The fear of the unknown was crippling, without communication and the unpredictable nature of fire, only time could tell what lay ahead.

The men on the street then proceeded to defend their properties against the falling embers and erupting spot fires. In a time of the unknown, the street came together to help each other. Neighbours who barely knew each other fought to save each other’s homes.

The men could see the fire getting closer, but fortunately for this area a massive cleared section was holding off the flames. Then the wind changed and the fire quickly began to move away from their homes.

In the bigger picture of the last few days, this is a minor story and one with a happy ending, but it is one of thousands of cases of people selflessly helping each other through the disaster. Many of the stories of heroism will perhaps never be told. I would like to acknowledge all the fire and emergency services and all those volunteers and others who support them in the community. I would like to mention members of my old union who were constructing the north-south pipeline, who turned into firefighters over the last three days.

I particularly wish to draw attention to the efforts of the green-overalled DSE firefighters, who I, along with Ben Davis, Cesar Melhem and Sam Beechey, represented during my time with the union. Sometimes they do not get the coverage which their efforts deserve. These firefighters who are tasked with defending national parks are employed by the state government of Victoria. They have been working 30-hour shifts during this disaster. They have routinely been in highly dangerous and unpredictable situations. They drive bulldozers, trucks and other heavy machinery. They do hot refuelling, chainsaw operation and rake-hoe trails. In short, they are at the frontline of all major firefighting operations, cutting fire breaks, protecting houses and guiding people out of danger. Indeed, cutting fire breaks involves rappelling out of a helicopter, down into four-storey walls of fire and cutting away the vegetation at the front of the fire.

With the severe wind changes on Saturday, it was reported to me that the fire front would often jump over the control lines, leaving firefighters to shelter on the lee side of their trucks while the fire roared overhead. One firefighter reported that the external fittings of his vehicle melted as he outran the fire near Kinglake. All of this was done in the knowledge that their own homes were in harm’s way of fire and could be lost. Indeed I know that the DSE firefighters in Marysville, as many others, have lost their own homes while saving others. Two of my old delegates—Rod Lynn and Mick Appleton—fought to save other homes while not knowing if their own homes were safe. I am pleased to say that in the case of these two gentlemen their homes have survived.

On top of physical risk, the frontline firefighters carry the psychological burden of dealing with a tragedy of this scale. The project firefighters from Warrandyte were among the first into Kinglake and found dead and profoundly injured and burned people. I record my sympathy and give thanks to the team and their crew leader, Con Kosmas. They saw scenes that they will never be able to forget. They share this with all firefighters and volunteers, shire and council workers, hospital workers dealing with burns victims and traumatised people and indeed funeral workers. These people do not leave when the media leaves but are left dealing with the aftermath of the tragedy for many months and years to come.

These marvellous people—both the volunteers and the professionals—do not do their good deeds for money or recognition but because they are professionals who want to do the right thing for the community and for their mates. Thousands of Victorians have gone above and beyond the ordinary over this weekend and will continue to do so in the weeks and months ahead. All of them are heroes. As a community we cannot thank them enough but we have obligations to them which we can honour. We must ensure that all are supported in dealing with this catastrophe. We need to ensure the workers have proper equipment, proper conditions and proper wages. We need to ensure that there are enough staff in winter as well as in summer to do the clearing and the fire prevention measures. Many employers are extremely supportive of their workers volunteering, but this can still be improved and strengthened.

Those who have lost loved ones or homes in this tragedy must get support from their insurers, who must be encouraged not to take the low road of litigation and cost saving. In the future we will need to again look at building design, not so that we can avoid the peril of bushfires, because that cannot be avoided, but so that we can ensure that to the extent humanely possible we minimise the damage that fire does to our communities. Just as the schools in the Dandenongs were rebuilt in the 1980s after Ash Wednesday, we need to look at whether and how we can make homes safer, whether we need to look at the role of fire bunkers in private homes in bushfire prone areas. I am also aware that we need to incorporate the needs of people with disabilities into our evacuation and fire management plans. Premier Brumby, who has been decisive in this terrible hour, has called a royal commission into the Victorian fires. This will follow the line of inquiries into Ash Wednesday in 1983, Black Friday in 1939 and other inquiries held after tragic events. Let us ensure that we line up all the lessons we have learned from our history in this fire-prone country and ensure that the next time fire strikes we have done all we can to save lives and our homes. I believe that by learning from this and from lessons of the past we will simply be repaying our debt to the victims and the heroes of these terrible fires.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, 16 months ago I stood in the compound of the Australian consulate in Bali. That was the fifth anniversary of the Bali bombing. I spoke with families—the mothers and fathers, the sons and daughters, the husbands and wives and the brothers and sisters of those who were lost on that terrible day in 2002. On that day I did not expect that the day would come when the 88 Australians who were lost in Bali would find their numbers doubled on our own soil. As we speak, double that number have been lost, and the sad and tragic expectation is that there will be more. The sons and daughters, the mothers and fathers, the brothers and sisters and the husbands and wives in Bali now, sadly, have cousins in Victoria.

No Victorian is untouched by this. As a member representing a semi-rural seat to the south-east of Melbourne I know that 36 fire brigades from within our area have been or are currently fighting these fires. They have picked up their lives and themselves, taken their trucks and been at all the different fire fronts in Victoria. So we see at this moment that, where in Bali I had not thought it possible that we would face such a peacetime tragedy in Australia, it has been surpassed in all the worst possible ways. So to Black Friday and Ash Wednesday we now add our own Hell Saturday. To all those who have been lost, we will take care of those who remain. To all those who remain, we will help you. To all those who have helped—to the CFA, to the SES, to the volunteers from the Red Cross, to the churches, to the service clubs and to the police, whom I know from talking to others close to them have faced terrible and horrific sights and circumstances in their own towns—we say our greatest thank you. So we find the best and worst of Australia: the worst that nature delivers; the best in our humanity. And the best is something fine. There is no doubt about that. It tells us that as a society we are perhaps a little better than we had realised. Unfortunately, we have found that out under the worst circumstances.

I have spoken with many of the CFA group captains in my area, including Tony Brown from the Peninsula Group. Of the 36 CFAs in our area, his contingent alone includes Boneo, Dromana, Flinders, Main Ridge, Mount Martha, Rosebud, Rye and Sorrento. They have been fighting fires right across the state. We know that they have been in the Kinglake complex area. David Gibbs, a board member of CFA Victoria, who is the group officer for the Westernport Group, told me that, at Kinglake, there are firefighters from every one of his 13 CFAs: Balnarring, Baxter, Bittern, Crib Point, Hastings, Langwarrin, Moorooduc, Mornington, Red Hill, Shoreham, Somerville, Somers and Tyabb. They have seen it all. They have been in Gippsland, they have been at Bunyip and now they are at Kinglake. He said, ‘For those who are at Kinglake, we will need to help them.’ He knows this because he has spoken to them. He knows of one senior CFA officer who, in saving other houses, is likely to have lost his family. He said that every one of these firefighters will need special treatment when they come back. He said: ‘You put your hand to the wheel. That’s what they do. These guys just say to me that you put your hand to the wheel.’ His only joy in all of this is that, as the controller for the Westernport Group, he did get to close EastLink twice, and that brought him a certain measure of delight. But, at the end of each conversation that we have had, he remembers that this is as painful as it gets.

The other groups who represent the Mornington Peninsula and the Bass Coast come from the Bass Coast region—Bass, Corinella, Dalyston, French Island, Glen Alvie, Kernot, Kilcunda, Phillip Island, San Remo and Wonthaggi. In some cases, the CFAs have come from the smallest towns to protect the smallest towns. They have been in Mirboo North, Cranbourne, Bunyip and Churchill—names which we will remember. The CFAs from the Casey Group come from Clyde, Pearcedale, Warneet, Blind Bight, Devon Meadows and Tooradin. They have fought fires at home in Casey and they are now fighting them at Gembrook. The people in our local brigade from Cardinia come from little towns such as Bayles, Koo Wee Rup and Lang Lang. These are the people who have gone to the fires, who have faced the fires, who have protected people and property and who have done all that they can to help their fellow Victorians.

So, very simply, there has been no lack of short-term preparation. The day before the fire on Saturday, David Gibbs told me at length of the horror day that he thought they would be facing. They were forewarned and forearmed. They were prepared and deployed. Yet still this fire was too great. There may be long-term questions, which are questions for another day, about fuel reduction, building standards and the places in which we build. But that is for the future. For now, I say very simply: to those who are lost, we will take care of those whom you have left behind; to those who remain behind, we will support you; and to those who have fought the fires and to those who have supported those who have fought the fires, we thank you.

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to express my deep sorrow at the devastating, tragic loss experienced by my fellow Victorians. We now hear that 176 people have been killed, in excess of 5,000 people are homeless and some 750 homes have been destroyed as a result of what has now become known to all of us as Black Saturday. I join with my colleagues in offering my condolences in this parliament, and I do so on behalf of my constituents in Calwell who, like every Victorian and indeed Australian, would have been profoundly touched by this catastrophe.

What makes this tragedy especially hit home is that my electorate borders the federal seat of McEwen, which has sustained some of the greatest loss of life. We have many similar historic and picturesque semirural townships, and it could easily have been us. In fact, when I woke up on Sunday to awareness of these tragic events, my thoughts went to the township of Sunbury with its rolling hills, the quaint and picturesque town of Bulla and the vineyards of Wildwood, Goona Warra and Craiglee, to name but a few, as well as the historic Emu Bottom Homestead and the Woodlands National Park. When I think of these towns, I cannot begin to imagine them not being there. Tragically, this is the reality for townships such as Marysville, Kinglake, Churchill, Flowerdale and many others. I want to take this opportunity to express my sympathy to the member for McEwen, Fran Bailey, and to other members whose electorates have sustained such tragic losses.

When we left here last week, Victorians, including me, were going home to a warning from the weather bureau that we must prepare for extreme temperatures on Saturday. We had already experienced three consecutive days of extreme heat the week before, so I, like many, spent most of that day at home indoors, unable to venture out because of the oppressive heat and strong winds. It was a very ferocious and ominous wind; I guess it was a foreboding of something very evil that we were about to be hit with. Of course, none of us could possibly have anticipated that on Sunday morning we would wake up to the news of deaths, the beginning of an unthinkable death toll that continues to mount.

The announcement late Sunday night that former newsreader Brian Naylor and his wife, Moiree, had perished I think initially put a face to the tragedy and to the mounting number of deaths for every Victorian, because Brian was someone we all knew. Brian Naylor lived in Kinglake, a popular location—one well known to me, anyway, and many others. In recent years, Kinglake had become a preferred destination for families to build their homes, and many did. Today, as newspaper photographs emerge of those who have perished, we are becoming even more painfully aware of the people who have not survived this tragedy. Entire families have died, children have been taken from their parents and many more remain missing and unaccounted for. Most tragic of all, though, is the extinguished lives of the young children, with so much to live for; it touches us and leaves a most lasting impression.

Like many others I have listened to people talk about their experiences—the stories of miraculous escapes and the stories of those who did not make it. Survivors have spoken of the speed and ferocity with which the fire raced through their communities, and we grieve with them because they are our community and we share their pain and we most certainly feel their loss.

We always marvel at the selflessness of our emergency services personnel, but it is also important to acknowledge those men and women who represent our volunteer contingent. I want to pay special tribute to these people who choose to provide this service to the community. We are grateful to them. We are dependent on these volunteers at times such as these. Often we take them for granted because we expect them to always be there and we do not appreciate the magnitude of their work, nor do we fully understand the dangerous environment that they operate in, often at great personal cost. We therefore praise their efforts and offer them our deepest gratitude.

In particular, I want to acknowledge the contribution of my own local Craigieburn CFA staff and volunteers who are helping to battle the fires around the state. I know them well. Their members come from a long family tradition of involvement in CFA activities. My local paper, the Hume Leader, reports one of the many examples of the dangers Craigieburn CFA staff and volunteers face, and I just want to record that for the purposes of this debate. On Saturday many of the Craigieburn CFA volunteers had a very lucky escape when their official five-seat ute went up in flames at Kinglake. Craigieburn CFA volunteer John Payne, who helped fight the fire in Kinglake on Saturday, was grateful that no-one had been hurt but reflected on the experience as being ‘the worst day of my life’. Despite this near miss, he has pledged to continue to serve the community, saying:

“… while they need us we’ll be there for them.”

CFA fire officer Joe Cardamone, also reflecting on the impact of this tragedy, said:

We are trained to fight wildfires but when it comes to dead bodies, you just can’t train for that … but we have a community to protect.

My other local paper, the Sunbury Leader, reports of the involvement of the Macedon Ranges and Sunbury CFA volunteers attending the fires in the townships of Wallan, Kilmore and Wandong. Sunbury First Lieutenant Steve Riley reported that two trucks with 10 Sunbury members went into the devastated areas on Saturday night. He said that 30 Sunbury members were now being rotated with the capacity to keep going for another week. The station had received about 15 to 20 calls on Saturday night due to the heavy smoke. He said, ‘Our volunteers are making an enormous effort.’ He also said that, even though they were seasoned firefighters, he describes the fire scene as ‘horrific’, with no-one being able to anticipate there would be so much devastation in so little time.

The Premier of Victoria, John Brumby, and the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, have rightly said that we will rebuild these communities—and rebuild we will. We will rise to this challenge, as Australians have done many times before. Of course, it is easier to rebuild buildings, but you can never bring back those who have died. The best we can do is support their loved ones and help them deal with the emotional trauma that inevitably follows such a horrific event.

It is not just Australians who have been horrified by this tragedy. The international community has also seen the devastation through lead stories in news bulletins across the world. Our expats and Australians who live abroad share our grief. They have family and friends here in Australia and they are also anxious about the events unfolding in Victoria. I have had a number of phone calls from my friends and families who live abroad who want to know how they can help and what kind of assistance they can offer. Many of them are making contributions through the Australian Red Cross.

The reality is that our community is in deep trouble but the reality also is that all of us are pitching in. We see this through the actions of the Australian government and the Victorian government but we also see this outpouring of support from the corporate sector. I am talking about the banks, the supermarkets, the insurance companies and other organisations who are donating considerable amounts of money to the bushfire appeal fund. Everyone is rallying to provide whatever support they can to the victims of such unspeakable devastation. As a people, we have always been generous in coming to the aid of other disasters abroad, and now that same generosity and support is overflowing for our fellow Victorians. But even with this support, we can never replace the more precious loss of life and memories, and we therefore grieve for those who have lost their lives.

While most Australians have come together to help at this time and support each other, it really defies comprehension that there are people amongst us who could have willingly and wilfully set in train some of these events, and this hurts us even more. Being overpowered by the forces of nature is one thing, but succumbing to a deliberately instigated disaster is incomprehensible. It is, as the Prime Minister said, an act of murder.

Finally, when the dust settles, we have to feel for the people who are going to have to make decisions as to whether they stay and rebuild their homes and their lives. Whatever they decide to do, whatever their deliberations, they should be certain and secure in the knowledge that the Australian community stands with them.

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This has been an awful week. It has been an awful week for our community and our state, and we are hurting. We are hurting as much as we have ever hurt before, with the greatest loss of civilian life from any natural disaster in Australia’s history—a death toll over 170 and still rising; an extraordinary loss of life which will touch so many people in Victoria and beyond. We are bewildered that these events could have happened on such a devastating scale and we are bruised by these events.

The events of the last 72 hours have caused a horror not just in Victoria but in Australia and around the world. There is something particularly gruelling to know that young children have been killed and to see families who have huddled together and died in their homes or been incinerated in their cars in communities that we all know well and have all visited. This has occurred amongst us with a ferocity that, with all our technology, we were unable to stop.

Our hearts go out to those who have lost friends, neighbours and relatives. I received word last night that David Stokes perished while defending his farm at Upper Plenty. I shared many camps with him when working for OAC Ministries. I want to say to Jenice and his family that our thoughts and our prayers go to you. He was a loving father, a faithful husband, a committed Christian and a hardworking farmer. We do not know why he was taken but our hope and our consolation is in our faith and his faith. These are questions that we will never be able to answer.

I spoke yesterday to Ray Evans, who will be known to many in this parliament. He was at Marysville on Saturday morning. He woke up and said it was so hot at 8 am that he decided to leave. There was no threat of bushfire. He said it was just too hot and he went down to Melbourne. He has seen footage on the news of his home, which has been destroyed, but his life was saved because he took that fateful decision to leave on Saturday morning. This is how capricious a fire is. Some lose their lives and some do not; a house is burned and another one saved; a wind change takes a fire around one farm and into a neighbour. It is completely capricious, untameable and unstoppable.

Those of us who were in Victoria on Saturday knew it was going to be a bad day. When you got out of bed you knew that it was going to be one of those scorchers, and eventually it peaked at 46.4 degrees, the hottest day that Melbourne, anyway, has ever had. We knew that after a month where there had been no rainfall this was a tinderbox. The week before we had had almost a whole week of temperatures above 40 degrees. But there was something even worse on Saturday, and that was the wind—the north wind; the wind that sets the fires off. And anyone who has lived through bushfires in Victoria knows that that is an ominous sign. They were the conditions that we lived through on Ash Wednesday in 1983; the conditions when we had the big bushfires in the 1960s; the conditions that our parents had lived through with the Black Friday fires in 1939; the conditions that we were all warned about and raised on. It is captured in novels like Ash Road by Ivan Southall. When the north wind blows on those tinder-dry days the whole of the state is at the mercy of natural disaster. It is a cruel climate. We live very precariously in this environment, in this country. It is a beautiful environment but it holds great terror under these conditions.

As is always the case when we have these enormous calamities, we see the best and the very worst of human nature—the very worst of human nature, to think that some of these fires could have been deliberately lit, but the very best of human nature, when we see people risk their own lives to save houses, neighbours and friends. The stories of heroism make us marvel that there are those who are prepared to place their own lives on the line in a voluntary capacity for their friends, their neighbours and their community. Like so many others, I pay tribute to the volunteer brigades of the CFA, the SES, the Victoria Police, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army and all of the thousands of volunteers who, as we speak, are still in the field serving their fellow Victorians.

This is going to be a very difficult, long, drawn out period for the state of Victoria. Fires continue to burn as we speak. There will be the coronial inquests. There will be the funerals. And then there will be the investigations as to how and why this occurred. The grieving will turn to anger and loss. Of course, there will be some people who will never recover because the trauma is so great. Our thoughts and support are with the communities in Victoria now, but we have to make sure that they are still there in months and years to come, because it will take years to put many of these people’s lives back together and to put the communities back together.

I welcome the announcement that the government has made in relation to the new authority that will be charged with reconstruction. That authority has the great responsibility of putting communities back together and it will have a lot of support, but it will not be done in weeks and it will not be done in months. I welcome the announcements in relation to the emergency payments, but of course more will be required. The government knows that, and I have no doubt it will attend to it and will have the full support of the opposition in relation to it.

Then we will have the royal commission, which I also welcome, which will have to look at the steps that can be taken in the future to minimise loss of life and damage. On a continent like this, we will never be able to take away fire nor the risk of fire but we will have to determine how to minimise the loss and damage in the future. Until now the policy has been to have a fire plan and either to evacuate or to stay and fight. What is clear is that there are some fires that are so great, where the intensity and speed are such, that to stay and fight is impossible. How we are to distinguish those fires where there is no hope of staying and fighting from those where it is a reasonable strategy will of course be a matter for the royal commission to look at.

We live at the mercy of this environment and, as many people seek, for lifestyle reasons, to move to the country, to the outer fringe, the number of people that will be exposed to this kind of risk will increase. We need to think about what we can do to secure the situation for those people, how to minimise those risks—whether it is going to be necessary for houses to have fire bunkers in certain areas so that those people can be protected even if their properties are not. All of that lies in the future. But all Australians will want to say to all their fellow Australians who have perished and to their families that the nation turns in grief, turns in understanding and turns in support. We want to do everything that we can individually and corporately for those who have suffered such losses, to grieve and then to rebuild, to move on but to never forget those who have suffered these losses.

I want to say on behalf of my constituents, my electorate, who will know many of those who have perished—we will all know many who have perished when the final lists are published—that we stand together to face this terrible ferocity of nature. We stand united, we stand bewildered and bruised, but we will rise again. We owe it especially to those who have lost their lives, and to their families.

Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment Participation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the condolence motion moved by the Deputy Prime Minister yesterday and I offer my sincere condolences to the families and friends of those killed and injured in what is the worst natural disaster in Australia’s history. Though my electorate of Gorton mainly incorporates the western metropolitan region of Melbourne and therefore has not been directly affected by the fire, many of my constituents have family and friends who are among the dead, the injured and the homeless as a result of these fires.

In line with the sentiments expressed by the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Premier of Victoria, the Leader of the Opposition and others over the last few days—indeed, the member for Higgins just now—I repeat that the Australian government will do everything in its power to alleviate the suffering of those who have lost family, friends, livestock, pets and property. The government response will of course evolve with events and as much more information comes to hand, but we will be helping not only over the days and weeks ahead but also in months and years from now.

In relation to the efforts of those in my own electorate, several emergency services units in Gorton have been busy working to save lives and properties. As we know, SES units around Victoria remain on alert, and many have a major role as support crews to firefighting units. The Brimbank SES unit worked around the clock on Saturday and Sunday. They were busy attending to damaged homes, fallen trees blocking roads and supporting fire crews in Kinglake, in Warragul and at the Longbrook staging area.

From 9 am on Saturday, two crews were on the road attending to damaged homes and removing fallen trees. From 9 pm a crew was deployed to assist in the Kinglake area, ensuring power supply and lighting and providing assistance to the relief centres. That crew returned home at approx 1.30 am on Sunday, with a replacement crew returning only a matter of hours later. This crew of five was deployed to manage the CFA staging area at Warragul, with a further deployment later Sunday night transporting fire trucks and crew to the Longbrook staging area, staffing roadblocks and clearing roads. That crew returned at 11.20 pm.

Yesterday, another crew travelled to the Kinglake area for a two-day deployment, clearing roads for fire crews, assisting police with loss and damage assessments and the heartbreaking job of checking door-to-door in search of undiscovered bodies. Even when not required to attend to the major fires in Victoria over the weekend, other emergency services crews were still on high alert and were required to undertake their regular duties as temperatures reached the high forties. Brimbank SES unit controller, Brad Dalgleish, has talked of the heartbreak of dealing with survivors of Kinglake. As he told local papers, these hardened men were ‘brought to tears’ after witnessing the devastation on Saturday.

My electorate also incorporates a large section of the Shire of Melton, whose volunteer CFA unit has been at the forefront of the action fighting fires across Victoria. On Monday, several units also attended grass fires in Melton South, no doubt exacerbated by the historically low levels of rainfall in the area, combined with the punishing heat over the last several weeks. A Melton SES crew attended Kinglake on Tuesday and Wednesday for chainsaw and other support services to other emergency services units. Though today I represent a primarily outer suburban electorate, it was not always the case. Between 2001 and 2004 I represented the electorate of Burke—a large and unusually diverse electorate, including several areas whose residents have fresh memories of the loss of life and property by fire. Residents of Macedon and Mount Macedon, in particular, are still haunted by the memory of the infamous Ash Wednesday fires of 1983.

Since Saturday, several regions I once represented, now ably represented by the member for Bendigo and by the member for McEwen, are mopping up after fires destroyed houses, livestock and property. The community of Redesdale, north of Kyneton, has been threatened over the last several days. The fire was estimated to be over 10,000 hectares in size. Large sections of containment lines have been built and firefighters are continuing to consolidate those lines, but wind changes have resulted in even more loss of property. Other fires in the area have threatened Baynton and Barfold. I have been informed that 10 to 12 houses have been lost, but numbers are yet to be confirmed. Even though these fires are not currently posing a direct threat, those communities need to be aware that there is still fire activity in the area. They need to be alert should conditions change unexpectedly. My thoughts are with these communities.

I am pleased to say that local governments around Victoria, including Brimbank City Council and the Shire of Melton in my own electorate, have been taking steps to make a major coordinated contribution to emergency relief funds. Brimbank and Melton are both contributing council resources, including contingents of staff to assist in getting the affected communities back on their feet. More than 450 Australian government personnel will be deployed to Victoria over the coming days to provide emergency services, logistical support and counselling to the hundreds of people who have lost family, friends and property. Centrelink workers are providing counselling and support as well as financial assistance to people affected by the fires. Two hundred Centrelink community recovery staff and 70 social workers will be at the centres this week. Indeed, the Prime Minister announced today that the government is putting together a jobs and medium-term income support package to assist those whose workplaces have been destroyed by the fires or whose businesses no longer exist.

On a personal note, I spoke today to a good friend, Barry Miller, who is currently in hospital. I have known him for more than 20 years and have worked with him at the Australian Services Union for 15 years. His family have lived in Kinglake for many years. He is currently in the Austin Hospital suffering from smoke inhalation and injuries from a car accident. He told me today that, on Saturday, the speed and might of the fire were simply incredible. He evacuated his home and was fleeing when he realised his son, Sean, who had been following in his own car, was no longer in sight. Barry turned the car around and headed towards the fire in search of his son. Unknown to him was that Sean had managed to escape via another route.

In the mayhem and panic, and no doubt owing to the fog of smoke, two cars collided with Barry’s car. He managed to escape through the passenger door just before his car exploded in flames. A driver of one of the other vehicles, a man known to Barry, was not so lucky, burning to death before Barry’s eyes. The emergency worker who then came to Barry’s assistance realised that the victim in the other car was his father. To most of us, this is unimaginable horror. Barry has lost his home, as has one of his sons, but his family count themselves lucky. I know that Barry’s friends and work colleagues at the ASU and elsewhere will, of course, support him, his wife Julie and their family in their time of need and help them recover. Barry’s story, as I say, on one level is one of luck—and when I spoke to him today that is how he saw it. He has lost everything when it comes to property, but all of his family are still alive and his physical injuries are not particularly serious. I do hope, however, that his emotional and psychological state will improve, because what he has seen is truly horrifically traumatic.

I extend my condolences, most importantly, to the families who have lost loved ones and homes. They will have a difficult task to rebuild their lives. It is incumbent upon the government—indeed, all members in this place—to do everything we possibly can to assist our constituents who have been directly affected and to help those families who have lost so much. I of course support the motion moved in this place.

Michael Johnson (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on this motion and follow the words of my friend and colleague the member for Higgins and other members. Few words can truly describe what happened in Victoria over the weekend. Far more eloquent speakers than I have used words such as ‘catastrophic’, ‘disastrous’, ‘tragic’, ‘horrific’ and ‘hellish’, but I think that few words really do capture the hell on earth that has touched the landscape and the lives of so many people. But I want to try as much as I can, as is appropriate for a member of parliament, to extend my deepest sympathies and condolences and the prayers of the corner of Australia—the constituency of Ryan—that I represent in the Australian parliament. I think they would expect it of me, and on behalf of my own family I take this opportunity to speak formally in support of this motion in our national parliament.

Last year, the electorate of Ryan tasted the force of nature when a storm hit the suburb of The Gap. I certainly do not wish to make any comparison at all—there were no lives lost—but it was a small insight, I think, into the sheer power of Mother Nature. On every day of that week I took it upon myself to visit people and destroyed homes and to witness for myself the emotion of Ryan constituents who had suffered at the hands of the storm. So I think I can see in a very small way how nature works. I can only imagine, as one who has not been in harm’s way can only imagine, the sheer ferocity, intensity and brutality and the sheer hell of these fires.

Yesterday in the parliament when the Deputy Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and other colleagues made their very touching and moving remarks, I put my hands to my face and I confess I shed some tears. I shed some tears not because I myself have lost anyone, not because I have had property loss, not because I am a Victorian, but because I am a human being and I am a father. I can only imagine the sheer suffering of anyone who has lost a loved one, any parent who has lost a child or anyone who has lost a dear friend. I can only imagine the absolute suffering and internal pain that one would have endured.

In Queensland on too many occasions the nightly news tells us that a baby has drowned or a little toddler has lost their life because they have fallen into a dam on a property. My wife and I always give each other a cuddle and bring our little 2½-year-old into our embrace and cuddle him with all the humanity that I think parents can muster. We look at each other and say a small prayer for those parents that have lost a child that has drowned in Queensland in a pool or a dam. We do this on too many occasions because it happens on too many occasions. My point on the loss of a loved one in such circumstances is that, unless one has been through it in a very direct way, I suspect one can never totally understand the depth of pain, the depth of anguish, the depth of suffering that one would endure.

On behalf of the many people of Ryan and the many families of Ryan, I extend their deepest condolences, their deepest thoughts and sympathies. I know that the people of Ryan will say a quiet prayer and I know that in their minds and hearts they will feel, both as fellow Australians and as human beings, the same suffering that has overcome fellow Australians in the state of Victoria. I understand that the latest death count is some 173 people but, as has been said in the parliament and by colleagues from both sides and by all who are in a position to know, this figure will certainly rise.

On Australia Day, on 26 January, I had the great privilege of conferring citizenship on new Australians. I also had the privilege of making some remarks. I said to those new Australians that wherever they came from, whatever part of the world, they were now coming to mark a future in this country and that they were living in a country that was full of opportunity and full of great options for them and their families.

They also made the point, which I agreed with as a migrant myself, that they were living in a country of remarkable magnificence and beauty, that this was a great country, that there was no other like it and that they should never let anyone, Australian or not, tell them otherwise. I quoted the words of what I guess is our national poem, Dorothea Mackellar’s wonderful poem—very eloquent and very moving words. I asked them, especially those from countries that do not have English as their first language, to let their kids read that poem—because, knowing Asians and in particular having, as I do, a mother of a Chinese background, I know that they would not necessarily turn their mind to the profound and beautiful words of Dorothea Mackellar. But I made a particular and very specific point in talking to the audience, many of whom were from Vietnam, China or Taiwan, of encouraging them to direct their child’s education to the words of Dorothea Mackellar’s poem because it said so much about the greatness of Australia. Much to my surprise, many of those new Australians came up to me afterwards and said that they would definitely do that.

I guess the point I make is that—as many of my colleagues have said, in a far more articulate way, yesterday and today—for all our beauty and for all our magnificence, we are also a country that is vast and that has a landscape where the elements of nature, such as fire, flood, storm and, of course, drought, can come upon us. We, as human beings and mere mortals, do not know why forces of nature such as these can destroy homes, destroy property and, more profoundly, destroy lives. Those of faith will be comforted by their faiths. Those not of faith might ask the question: why would God, for all his compassion and love of humanity, take away innocent life? Why would the Lord, who sacrificed his own son for us, do that?

As I said earlier, I am a father of 2½ years experience, and there is a thought that always comes through my mind whenever I see tragedy or catastrophe that takes away life. I always come back to that terrible thought of how parents could endure that suffering, and I say a prayer to thank God that it was not my son. All of us would know of the story of the little girl who was thrown from the bridge in Melbourne and would ask ourselves: how could one human being, let alone a father, commit such a despicable and unspeakable act?

As I said, few words can describe the tragedy and the catastrophe of the bushfires in Victoria. I end my remarks by saying to those who might have committed acts of arson which have resulted in much pain, suffering and tragedy: how could you do that? This is surely the worst of human nature. We have seen an act of evil if that is the case, but I am also comforted by the other side of humanity, where we have seen, really, the acts of the angels at work through mere mortals.

We must never forget this tragedy, this loss, this hell on earth. We must become a better people for it at an individual level and at a community level. As governments and those with authority, we must be better for this. We must unite and, in the words of the Leader of the Opposition, do whatever it takes to address and redress all the issues that surround such a catastrophe. Again, on behalf of the western suburbs of Brisbane, those Australians who live in the Ryan electorate, I extend my condolences.

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a terrible thing to have to participate in such a debate but it is also a great privilege after the inspiring speeches given by many of my colleagues—among them the member for Ballarat, who is in the chamber—and also by members on the opposition side. The Leader of the Opposition yesterday and the member for McMillan today made outstanding contributions. It is a privilege to be part of such a debate.

The weekend before last I went to the home of Jenny and Peter Beales just outside Kinglake. They are longstanding residents of Kinglake. Peter is a local councillor and Jenny has been very active in Labor Party and local community affairs for many years. They were having a lunch for Labor Party Kinglake branch members. My partner, Kerry, and I looked out over the picturesque forests at the rear of their property—forests stretching out as far as the eye could see. Now, suddenly, those forests are gone.

I rang Jenny on Sunday to check on her welfare. She told me a harrowing tale. On the Saturday night between 5.30 pm and 6 pm, some carloads of terrified men, women and children had screamed into their property, seeking urgent shelter. There were about 30 people in all and they stayed there the night. Their homes had been burnt down and they brought with them dogs, cats and even a rabbit. Some of the children were understandably hysterical.

One of their neighbours was also there. His property was ablaze during the night. Around midnight, Peter and the neighbour tried to see what was happening to his house but could not get through. They saw a building ablaze and thought his house was lost. A couple of hours later, they were able to get a better look and could tell that, while sheds had been destroyed, his house had not. It had been saved by a sprinkler system which had continued to function.

Jenny told me about the appalling devastation—schools, churches and community facilities all burnt to the ground. She also told me about the courage and selfless acts of members of the Kinglake community. She told me about the baker who came out on Sunday to prepare food for people who had none, although his own home had been destroyed.

The hearts of the people of Wills go out to the families and loved ones of those who have lost their lives, to those who have suffered serious injury and to those who have lost their homes, property or livelihoods. On behalf of the people of Wills, I acknowledge and praise the courage, heroism and sheer hard work of those fighting the fires—the Country Fire Authority, the metropolitan fire brigade and all the volunteers. We also salute the relief agencies—the Salvation Army, the Red Cross and others—both for everything they have done and for everything they will be doing in the coming weeks.

Many families and communities have been absolutely shattered. With thousands of lives reduced to square one, it is time for those of us who are in a position to assist to do exactly that. I encourage people to donate to the Victorian Bushfire Appeal Fund by phoning 1800 811700. Other important contacts I draw to the attention of the House are the Victorian Bushfire Information Line 1800 240667, the official Victorian government website of www.vic.gov.au and the Centrelink Assistance Information Line 180 2211.

One of my local residents, Nosrat Hosseini, contacted me to offer the spare rooms of her family’s home in Pascoe Vale to the victims of the blaze. I applaud her family’s civic mindedness, and I will be conveying offers of support from within my electorate to those who are carrying out the relief effort. We have all been moved by this disaster and there is much we can do to help.

Both the Australian government and the Victorian government are providing practical assistance to the victims of the fires—such as counselling, through Centrelink; Australian government disaster recovery payments of $1,000 for eligible adults, and an extra $400 per child for those people adversely affected by the fires; funeral assistance of up to $5,000 for the immediate family of a person who has lost their life as a direct result of the fires; and Australian Defence Force assistance. The Victorian government is providing some immediate cash assistance, through the emergency recovery centres, which will help tide people over until the Centrelink payments are processed.

In the months and years ahead there will be a lot of debate and discussion about the causes of the fires and the responses to them—whether there are things that could have been done better and whether there are lessons we need to learn. It is proper that there should be such a debate. I note that the Victorian Premier, John Brumby, has announced that there will be a royal commission into the bushfires, with a wide brief. That is deeply appropriate. For my part, I will be following the royal commission closely. The events of the weekend were so dramatic and demonstrated such a heightened level of threat that we all need to be willing to rethink our previous beliefs and assumptions and look at the facts and the evidence afresh.

With that important qualification, let me make some observations about bushfires and our response to them. Firstly, there is global warming. On Saturday, I and other Melburnians lived through the hottest day that Melbourne has ever experienced—46.4 degrees Celsius. Many other places in Victoria also got their highest temperature ever. That came on top of the second driest January we have ever had—a pitiful 0.8 millimetres of rain for the whole month—and that has come on top of a decade of drought for Victoria, which has been drying out since 2001.

These are of course precisely the conditions of extreme bushfire threat. Bushfires are increasing in frequency and severity around the world. We have seen this in Greece, we have seen it in California and we have seen it elsewhere. The bushfires in Victoria stand in sharp, ironic contrast to the floods and storms in North Queensland. But they are all part of the same phenomenon—global warming, climate change. Scientists have been warning us for years that, if we do not curb our carbon emissions, we will create more frequent, more extreme weather events—more droughts, more bushfires, more floods, more storms. Saturday was a foretaste of the weather that lies in store. We have a duty, a moral responsibility, not to leave to our children and grandchildren a world in which days like Saturday become commonplace.

Secondly, after an event such as this, there are always those who will see the bush, the forests, as the enemy. Their reaction is to want to chop the trees down. The member for O’Connor has been vocal on this matter yesterday and again today. These calls are understandable but, in my view, they are totally wrong. Far from the forests being our enemy, it is we who are theirs. The authorities have made plain enough their view that a number of these fires were deliberately lit by people. Another of the fires was the consequence of a cigarette butt discarded carelessly. Another was caused, we heard today, by a faulty power pole. The member for O’Connor says that we used to have roads and bulldozers through the forests. Well, those roads are still there but, sadly, they are precisely how many of the fires originated.

Furthermore, the CSIRO has given to the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, which I chair, evidence which shows that the parts of Australia which are becoming hotter and drier are precisely those areas where human settlement has occurred—the eastern seaboard, southern Australia and south-west Western Australia. Dr Clive McAlpine, senior research fellow at the University of Queensland’s School of Geography, Planning and Architecture, says it is because of human modification of the land surface through changes in native vegetation cover and land use. Modelling of the impacts of vegetation cover change on regional climate, done by Dr McAlpine and other researchers, shows that areas which have been cleared are 0.1 to 0.6 degrees Celsius warmer in eastern Australia than they were before clearing, and that summer rainfall is four to 12 per cent less. The analysis shows that land clearing has contributed to hotter droughts during El Nino years. Clearing of native vegetation appears to be accentuating the impact of recent El Nino droughts by increasing the number of hot days greater than 35 degrees Celsius and by increasing the number of dry days during drought events.

According to Dr McAlpine, the clearing of vegetation changes the way wind moves over the land surface and reduces the incidence of formation of rain-bearing clouds. This is yet another of those feedback loops where problems start out small and get quite out of hand. Cutting down Australian forests changes wind and rainfall patterns and makes the countryside hotter and drier. If we cut down our forests, we will turn Victoria into a desert. What we need to do now is to re-establish our forests. Indeed, we should be trying to re-establish our rainforests. These areas are much more resistant to fires than eucalypt forests. They bring much-needed rain and water for our dams and agriculture. I believe the way to build and secure a healthy future for Victoria and to prevent a repeat of Saturday is not by cutting down our forests; it is by having more of them.

Thirdly, there is arson. I totally support the remarks of the Attorney-General yesterday that committing arson carries within it all the ingredients of the offence of murder. The sentences for arsonists should reflect this. If the legal system is not delivering this outcome, it should be altered to do so. Whether this means increasing the sentences applying to arson or means charging people who commit arson with murder or attempted murder and making any necessary changes to the law about intent and the like, I have an open mind. But the basic legal principle is quite clear. If someone drops a brick into Melbourne’s Bourke Street mall from a tall building not caring whether the brick hits someone, the law refers to this as being ‘recklessly indifferent’. If the brick does hit and kill someone, they can be charged and convicted of murder. It is quite foreseeable that dropping a brick into a crowded place will kill someone. Similarly, if you light a fire on a day like Saturday, it is absolutely foreseeable that you could kill someone, and in my book it is murder if someone dies as a result. The people who light these fires are despicable, contemptible low-life, and the legal system must protect us from them.

Fourthly, there is the issue of staying or fleeing. As I said earlier, the Victorian government has established a royal commission to examine the fires and no doubt it will look in great detail at the number of deaths of people in cars and people in their homes and the advice that was given to them. One thing I will be particularly interested in is its findings concerning underground shelters or bunkers. I read one story of a couple who survived with their child because the mother had nagged her partner into building one and they were able to shelter in it. I will be interested in the way we are able to build effective underground shelters. It strikes me that they may have a key role to play in saving people who decide to defend their property but who are then confronted with a fire much larger and more terrible than they had imagined or people who have simply been caught out, being unaware of the fire’s sudden approach.

Finally, my thoughts are with the family of Jacinta Bartlett. She, her husband, Gary, and their youngest daughter died when a firestorm tore through their home in St Andrews. Her other daughter, Maddison, aged 12, is in the Royal Children’s Hospital where I understand she is being treated for burns to 40 per cent of her body. Jacinta Bartlett was a long-serving Moreland City Council employee and unit manager of contracts at the council at the time of her death. This family tragedy will hit the staff at the City of Moreland very hard, and my thoughts are with them. Indeed, Moreland City Council’s Chief Executive Officer, Peter Brown, and his family narrowly escaped the Strathewen blaze. It destroyed their home and cars. Peter and his family survived by holding wet blankets over their heads in their backyard pool as the fire went over the top of them. My thoughts are also with Peter and his family, as they are with all the families who have gone through this terrible ordeal. It is a nightmare we will all long remember. The suffering, the cruelty, the heroism and the steely determination to continue on and to rebuild: all of this we will remember.

Judi Moylan (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The malevolent course of fire and the subsequent tragic loss of life and destruction of property, stock and wildlife in Victoria have certainly galvanised this parliament and indeed the nation in an outpouring of grief, sympathy and support. It is indeed a tragedy of monumental proportions. Today I wish to add my voice to this motion and to support the comments of my colleagues in this place, many of whom yesterday and today spoke eloquently, with great compassion and with great sadness on the unfolding events in this terrible tragedy.

I would also like to take the opportunity to express condolences on my behalf, on behalf of my staff, my family and particularly on behalf of the people of the electorate of Pearce who I know would want to be associated with such a motion. Condolences go to those families whose neighbours, family members and friends have perished and we pledge our support for the rebuilding of their communities and for their ongoing support.

I know people in Pearce, as I said, would wish to be associated with this motion, as each year fire ravages parts of the electorate of Pearce. Fire looms as an ever-present threat in Pearce. In one of those infernos in the Avon in 2007, a local schoolteacher lost her life and many farms were devastated in that particular fire. The fire in this case was likely caused by an old power reticulation system, which in Western Australia is 40 to 50 years old. I heard the member for Mallee today speak in the House and also raise this particular issue. It is relevant because, although we in our parliaments throughout this country may need to deal with perhaps some unfinished business in terms of arson, we certainly need to deal with ageing power infrastructure, which I know in Western Australia has been the cause of many fires in rural areas, including the loss of life—certainly not to the extent that we have seen on this occasion in Victoria, but with terrible loss of property and all the heartache that that brings. This is something we can relatively easily attend to. We know it is a problem and it requires money to replace this ageing infrastructure of power reticulation systems.

Of course, lightning is often the cause of fires in my electorate as well. Before this House sat this year, for example, thousands of hectares of bush was burnt out in the coastal area of Yanchep within my electorate. Thankfully no lives were lost, but a great deal of damage was done to properties and national park and, of course, to wildlife in that region. Several thousand hectares were burnt out. Several years ago I sat in the burnt-out patio that was still attached to the burnt-out home of some of my ageing constituents, an elderly couple, who were grief-stricken to come back and find their property completely razed, everything gone—the sheds, the trucks, the tools, everything gone. But their grief was further exacerbated by having to go out and shoot 600 head of sheep that were seriously burnt in the fire. That fire in the Wundowie area was a result of arson and, if my memory serves me correct, that person was apprehended and prosecuted.

Each year, in the lead up to the summer season, men and women in the Pearce electorate give a great deal of time on a voluntary basis to prepare plans to manage fires and to provide emergency services. They put their lives at risk to look after the interests of others and they do it as a community service in a completely voluntary capacity. They do not ask for anything, they just pitch in and do what they know has to be done. They come from all walks of life and I take this opportunity to pay tribute to them and to their work, as Western Australia now faces the riskiest season for fire and that is a particular threat in the electorate of Pearce.

These people are our local heroes and I pay tribute to them, and particularly today to the brave, selfless and undoubtedly exhausted firefighters and emergency service workers in Victoria. To these men and women we owe a great debt of gratitude. May we never forget their selfless service and their courage. I understand, Madam Deputy Speaker Vale, that your husband has currently joined those firefighters in Victoria to add his voluntary services. We thank him for that.

We are equally grateful for the service of hundreds of volunteers caring for victims in the aftermath of the fires. We applaud the work of the health sector for the care of those suffering burns and injury. Our thoughts and prayers are with them for a full recovery. We also applaud the acts of courage and heroism of those in the community who took the time to look after neighbours and friends and family, putting their own lives often at risk. But long after the flames have been doused and the last embers have stopped burning, the people of Victoria and their communities will need our compassion and our support both at a personal and a financial level.

Once again through my Victorian colleagues, to whom I offer my condolences and my support, I express condolences to the people within those electorates, and particularly on behalf of the people in the electorate of Pearce, who I know from my past experience will be very generous contributors to the rebuilding efforts in Victoria.

Darren Cheeseman (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today with great sadness in my heart, like all of my parliamentary colleagues. I would like to offer sympathy to all those families of bushfire victims in Victoria, and of course to all of those communities that have been under siege for the last week I offer my heartfelt sympathies.

On Saturday morning, 7 February 2009 I got up and had breakfast with my wife and my son Isaac. Later that morning I said goodbye and headed off into my electorate to talk to people down the street in Colac. It was as hot as hell. It was 45 degrees where I was by noon. When I left Kirsty and Isaac we said a casual, ‘See you later’. I never realised that a casual ‘see you later’ would be denied to those in the high country in Victoria, who never got the opportunity to say a proper goodbye.

When I walked the streets of Colac there was a menace in the air. People were talking about the concerns and the risks of fire within my electorate in the Otways, a very spectacular place, a place where people moved to live and enjoy the bush. But the bush was extremely dry after a decade of below-average rainfall.

These were the same circumstances that prevailed in towns and hamlets such as Kinglake, Bendigo, Beechworth, Kilmore and those in Gippsland, just to mention a few. Some of these places lost one or two people. Some lost whole families. Some lost their whole community. At the last count, Carnegie had lost 11 people; Flowerdale, four; Humevale, six; Marysville, 15; St Andrews, 22; and, of course, Kinglake, 35 so far. The death toll is likely to be in excess of 200, and 750 homes have been lost. This is unimaginable, unthinkable.

A number of people from my own electorate were victims of these terrible bushfires. I will mention a couple. Danny Shepherd was a fitness instructor from Ocean Grove. He was renowned for his loyalty to his family. Mary McIver was a stalwart of the Torquay bowls club, known for her community-mindedness. Mary was recovering from a heart operation. The fire was so indiscriminate. It took the young, it took the old, it took the weak and it took the strong.

At times like this I feel so hopeless. Where do we start to help those who have to start all over again—people whose every possession has been totally erased? Where do we start to help those who have loved ones who are gone? People who were hale and hearty just a couple of days ago, and children with their whole lives ahead of them, are gone. Whole families: gone. Whole communities: gone.

In many ways, my electorate of Corangamite was extremely lucky. The situation could have been far, far worse. With the Otways in my electorate, there are many little coastal and hinterland towns that could have been in harm’s way, particularly given the enormous potential for loss of life and homes within these areas. We have in my electorate one of the highest fire threat areas in Victoria.

I understand that it is easy to be wise after the event, and I will not for a moment pretend that I have all of the answers or any of the answers. But I would like to say just one thing: we should look very carefully at the culture that has grown up in Victoria of saying that we will stay and defend our homes. We should look at the risks that this action may involve. I am sure that the royal commission will examine this very, very closely, and it ought to. Circumstances have changed. We are coming off a base of 10 years of below average rainfall. We will see more days, more often, like Saturday, where the weather is intolerable for living in the bush.

What can we do to help? We can start with an arm around those who have been affected. We can start with a hug. We can keep a check on our families and individuals as they go from shock to realisation to grief to desperation. We can support them emotionally. We can let them know that they do have mates. We can help them buy back into the real estate market. We can donate our time. We can donate financially as individuals. We can help as a state. We can help as a nation. We can all help our fellow Australians in this extraordinarily difficult time. We can be there for each other.

Finally, I would like to pay tribute to the firefighters and volunteers who are supporting these communities. I have no doubt that many lives have been saved by their incredibly brave efforts. They are probably very tired but too busy to think about that now—but I certainly am. In all likelihood, there are probably people out there now who do not know the fate of their friends and families. We can certainly thank the volunteers, and I am sure there will be an appropriate time to do so.

To the victims’ families and those on the front line, I say this to you: we will be here for you. We will be here with you. We are one big Australian family and we will do everything that we can as a government, as a nation and as a state to assist. I hope I never see the circumstances of Saturday ever again. It is a tragedy beyond belief; it is a tragedy that words cannot adequately describe. On behalf of the men and women of Corangamite I say to those communities who have been so badly devastated: we are with you.

Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this afternoon to commend and support this condolence motion. On behalf of my electorate, I wish to send the condolences of the people of Swan to the victims of the Victorian bushfire tragedy of 2009. The people of my electorate would want me to convey these sentiments, and I applaud and endorse the comments of all the previous members who have spoken. When the member for McMillan rose today in the parliament, I felt the passion and the hurt in his emotional speech. All of us in this place support his sentiments. This is a Victorian disaster that has national implications and will resonate around Australia. Since the events of Saturday, my office has been contacted by many people across the electorate. Some have offered to give blood and some have offered to donate money to the Red Cross Victorian Bushfire Appeal. I appeal to them to make those commitments a reality. The people of Swan are remarkably generous and I am proud to represent them.

Many words have been spoken in this parliament about the sheer ferocity of the flames, the horrific heat, the startling speed of the fire and people’s inability to escape. This was an Australian Pompeii. We must recognise the horrific nature of this natural disaster, yet we must not dwell on it. We now must devote our full energy and focus on providing the support to those who need it, making safe the devastated areas and rebuilding country Victoria. I commend the government on the initial steps it has taken and would personally like to offer help in any way I possibly can.

I, like many Australians, have a personal connection to the Victorian region devastated by the bushfires. As a child, my earliest memories of going on holidays with my family were of Marysville. I was to visit Marysville on numerous occasions during my life in Victoria. The last time was in the nineties for a business conference in this idyllic setting. I am sorry to see this beautiful town destroyed and lives lost, and my heart goes out to the people of Marysville and those of all the other towns that have suffered from this tragedy.

Before moving to Western Australia in 1981, I lived in the Yarra Valley and Seville East—a more beautiful part of the world would be hard to find. Yesterday the Leader of the Opposition mentioned the Yarra Valley Mountain District Football League, where I played football for four years from 1978 to 1981 with the Seville Football Club. On the field the football was played by uncompromising footballers, but off the field there was enormous community spirit and friendship amongst the rival towns. I am sure that spirit will not be broken and the people of these affected regions will combine to rebuild their homes, their towns and their lives like a phoenix rising out of the ashes.

I have an aunty in her 80s, Janet Murray, who lives in Yea, who is still at home waiting on advice to evacuate to the local recreation reserve. Her neighbours, in the spirit we expect in times like this, have offered to assist her to the centre when the call comes.

I have two sisters living in affected areas who are still both waiting for evacuation calls. I spoke to Helen only hours ago. Helen Ryan and her family live in Healesville, on the other side of the ridge of Chum Creek, where the fire swept through. As I spoke to her, she described to me the spot fires that she could see from the rear of her house. She is packed, ready to go with all her family memories and valuables that the family can carry, again waiting for the call to evacuate should the wind direction change or the intensity of the fires increase. Her sons insisted on taking their bikes and their kayak, a valuable tool in firefighting procedures. They are exhausted and have been taking turns in staying up to watch the progress of the fires at the rear of her property. They are on constant vigil to move at the earliest sign of danger and leave their family home to the whims of nature. My last words to her as we spoke this afternoon were, ‘Don’t be courageous,’ and, ‘Get out while you can.’ I wished her good luck. My other sister, Christine, was too busy to talk, as she was preparing to evacuate, and has said she will contact me as soon as possible. I wish her and all the other people in these affected areas good luck and that you stay safe and stay with us.

It is rare for a natural disaster to kill so many people in a developed country. There will in time be a need to analyse how this disaster was able to happen, how it started, how it was propagated and how so many people, young and old, were killed. Now is not that time. We must draw together our resolve and focus on supporting our fellow Australians in need. In the future, we will remember the destruction of the fire and the unfathomable loss of life. I hope we will learn from it. I also hope that we will never forget the extraordinary acts of courage by ordinary people and volunteers which saved lives.

In conclusion, I would like to say that I am overawed but not surprised at the enormous efforts of the volunteers of the CFA and all the emergency services, who are contributing their time and risking their own safety to avoid further loss of life that would affect many communities. They are to be commended for their unselfish acts of bravery and commitment to their fellow Victorians. On behalf of the people of Swan, I offer my deepest condolences to the people of Victoria.

Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the condolence motion before the Main Committee. Next month, I will have celebrated 18 years in this place. On a number of occasions, the House has come together. This is probably the most momentous of those times, given the vastness of what has happened and the human tragedy that is unfolding and will continue to unfold through this. I think the people of Australia would expect us to come together as one to offer solutions, not play politics.

The speech of Russell Broadbent in the House today is one of the finest that I have been able to hear in all my time in this place, a speech from the heart, a speech that I think both sides were moved by. The spontaneous applause by members at the end of that speech is something that I have not witnessed, apart from at the end of first speeches. It was spontaneous because I think it was a speech that captured the spirit of the moment. Russell represented his constituents and how they were feeling and placed before the Parliament of Australia, fairly and squarely, the views of his constituents and the way forward. His was not the only speech—I think each of the speeches in its own right was unique and added to the occasion.

I have already had volunteers putting their names forward wanting to go down to provide assistance through the trades that they specialise in. The clubs movement in New South Wales has already begun a fundraising event, and I know that the club of which I am vice-president, Revesby Workers Club, has put in $10,000. That is a small amount, but it all adds up, and that will obviously be added to in the future.

I think the way we have come together is very important because in some respects it will help those communities with the healing that needs to be done. It is very important to look after not just people’s physical wellbeing but also their spiritual wellbeing. I think when people see politicians from both sides—the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister—come together that sends the right signal. I think we also need to sit down in the future and look at ways to try and minimise the risk of this happening again. I know that some years ago, when fires raged through Madam Deputy Speaker Vale’s electorate of Hughes, the workers club was a safe haven for people who had been displaced, and it has also been a safe haven in other instances, such as when there have been storms. So this is a recurring feature in our country because of the nature of our country—floods and fires will be ongoing and continuing factors. I want to commend everyone on the way they have come together. But this has a long way to play out.

I suppose the only note of caution I will add—putting on my lawyer’s hat here, not my politician’s hat—is that we need to be careful about inflammatory language that might be used in this discussion. People will face trial and people are entitled to a fair trial, to be dealt with on the facts and not to be prejudged. I can understand the emotion of some people who are saying certain things, but as politicians we need to be careful to remain at arm’s length and not to undermine other institutions that have to deal with these matters in an appropriate way. So I add that note of caution, speaking not as a politician but as a lawyer, in relation to how these matters will eventually be dealt with. People will be dealt with. Let them be judged on the facts and on the evidence placed before the courts, and on the charges that the relevant authorities deem necessary to lay, not on what politicians say the charges should be. We lay down the statutes, and people are dealt with at a federal or a state level. So I just add that cautionary note, and I also repeat that the way we have come together over this is a very important part of the healing process and of the rebuilding process. What needs to be done, as has been said by the Leader of the Opposition, is whatever it takes to help these families rebuild into the future.

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not think anyone in this House or anyone in this country can have failed to be moved and deeply saddened by the scale of this tragedy. I guess fortunately, I no longer reside in Victoria—I used to live there—and thus I have not experienced firsthand the scale of this tragedy. But I cannot fail to be moved by the stories I read of the personal tragedies. It is those personal stories that almost always bring a tragedy where a lot of people have died back to a personal level where you can actually appreciate what is occurring. I have three children and I think the saddest stories of all are those that involve children. It would have to be devastating to have children die. With adults it is a tragedy, but with children who have barely embarked on their lives it is so much worse.

I lived in Victoria during the time of the Ash Wednesday fires. I think there would not be a Melburnian who was there on the night of those fires who would not remember the thick smoke that engulfed the city. I was working in Richmond at the time, doing part-time work, and I caught a train to go back to Mount Waverley. It was surreal, going through the very thick smoke that went for kilometre after kilometre. I can only imagine what people are experiencing at the moment.

I also note how absolutely fickle life and death can be. I joined the CFA in the late 1990s and was a volunteer with them for a few years before going to Western Australia. I was a member of the Ocean Grove brigade, which is very close to Geelong. Some members may remember the tragedy near Linton when two fire trucks went to fight a fire and one of them was hit by a fireball, which killed five people. That fire truck came from Geelong West Fire Brigade. I mention this because it relates to how chance can be involved in tragedies like this. At air shows in Australia the local CFA brigades man a lot of the firefighting equipment, and at the Avalon air show I was on one of the trucks. There was a mix of people from different brigades there, and one of them was from the Geelong West brigade—the brigade that had lost five people. This person related to me how the truck had been ready to move when his wife drove up with their kids. She said: ‘I have to go to work now. You’re going to have to look after the kids.’ That meant he hopped off the truck and someone else hopped on. Life and death can be that fickle.

The tragedy with fires, very often, is that lessons are learned but are very quickly forgotten. With the Ash Wednesday fires and so many other fires the findings invariably have been: you need to reduce the burden of fuel in the area. When I was living in Victoria, my wife and I bought a block of land in Anglesey, which was an area that had been very hard-hit by Ash Wednesday. The block of land we bought backed onto Angahook national park. The problem was that the only area of the block that we were allowed to clear was the specific area where we were going to put the slab down; the rest of it had to stay. That was 15 short years after Ash Wednesday. The Ash Wednesday inquiry had found that there should be significant reductions in fuel and certainly clearing around residences. This had been forgotten by the council. I do not want to apportion blame—it is not our job—but I would urge that this time we act on the lessons we learn, even if that means making hard decisions.

The thing I remember about joining the Country Fire Authority is the camaraderie that I had with that group of people. I can say with utter certainty that they were the single best group of people that I was ever involved with. They were people from all walks of life. I was a research scientist at the time, but there were tradesmen there, there were labourers, there was the owner of the local caravan park—a huge variety of people, which in effect was a microcosm of Australia itself. These people were all incredibly selfless—in other areas as well, not just firefighting. I remember that with the CFA you had a pager, like we have pagers here. Your pager would go off in the middle of the night and it was almost a race to get to the fire station first so that you could be on the first fire truck. It was like a competition. People desperately wanted to go and help. That attitude of volunteerism is something that holds Australia in such a great position. Those people really are the backbone of our country.

I recall that some of the people in the CFA were not exactly well off; in fact, they were quite badly off, yet they were putting all of their personal time and effort into volunteering. I wondered why people could not be given a little bit of assistance. I am not talking about everyone. I did not need it, but some really did need a little bit of assistance just for running a car to get from home to the fire station and back. There really should be support for these volunteers. They are not asking for pay or anything like that. In fact, they are not asking for anything, but I think they should be supported.

Something else I found when I was fighting fires, for people who have never fought fires or never been in major fires, was that the smoke is something you would not believe. You really cannot see and it is incredibly easy to become completely disoriented. It is all very well having a chart in front of you when you are driving through bush showing trails and so on, but if you do not know where you are and it is very easy to get lost, that makes things really problematic. In my view, GPS these days is ubiquitous. In Europe and parts of the United States now you have GPS units which not only give you directions for where you need to go but also there is real-time sharing of information so that it can direct you around traffic snarls. Why can we not initiate GPS units for those fire trucks that go into dangerous situations, where they can have all of the firebreaks, tracks and so on mapped and can get real-time information about what track is blocked, so that they can make adjustments? I guess you could have an emergency button to hit which would signal, ‘Get me out of here by the quickest means possible,’ and it would give you a route straightaway.

Another thing I think we should examine, something used in the United States, is fixed-wing water bombers. We do not have them here, but we need to have fixed-wing water bombers. I know the argument will be one about expense, but in the United States the insurance industry pays for those water bombers and pays for the running of them. There is a significant benefit to the insurance industry in having water bombers, because insurance companies do not have to pay out as much. Effectively, in purely revenue terms, this is revenue neutral, but in terms of human suffering they could be extremely beneficial. The thing you learn with firefighting is to attack early and to attack hard. If you can catch a fire right at the beginning you nip it in the bud; but if you wait for the thing to grow you get to a situation where you cannot put the fire out.

I would like to finish up by reiterating how extremely sad I am personally about what has happened and the scale of the human tragedy. I have to say that I have not been more proud of this parliament than the way it has behaved in the last couple of days and the attitude of all members to the scale of this human tragedy.

Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Support) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also pay tribute to all the members we have heard from in these last two days. They have been eloquent and moving and have shown real leadership in contributing to the healing that is so very necessary for the victims of these tragic fires. All of us are touched so much by it because so many Australians have had experience of bushfires. Even those in metropolitan areas like Sydney and, of course, Canberra most recently have tasted the devastation of rampant bushfires. It is something we all have some experience or knowledge of, but those of us who are members of rural and regional areas appreciated even more that entire communities, as we have seen, can be annihilated or threatened by fires.

Some members have referred to the devastation being comparable to that in war zones. As someone who has experienced many of those environments, I can say that that is a very accurate analogy. During the 2003 bushfires here in Canberra I was very much reminded of many of the war zones that I have served in. It is a quite common scenario for the roller-coaster of emotional and physical reactions to traumas that people go through to be very similar in each of these types of environments and situations. Before the bushfire you will see that impending, glowering, looming threat coming over the horizon and feel the smallness of humanity in the face of the awesome power of nature. It is a terrifying prospect and one that brings us closer to the frailty of humanity and reminds us of the respect we must pay to Mother Nature. That initial adrenalin rush from the fear and the threat is compounded by the indecision and the uncertainty as to what should be done. Do we defend the home? What do I do about my belongings? Which are the most precious? Which should I seek to save first? Should I save anything? What about my family—what is my responsibility to them? All of these terrible questions will pass through the minds of people faced with and confronted by this threat. Once they have made their decision and the consequences are known, if their homes are lost then there will be relief that their lives have been spared but then the realisation that they have lost everything. And that is going to be a long-term psychological wound because there will be times when there will be that little thing—that souvenir, that memento—that they will want to reach for or will recall that they now no longer have. The Prime Minister was very apt in referring to the fact that it does kind of cut you loose from your moorings in many ways—the sheet anchor of the things in your life has been cut away, and you feel adrift. That looseness, that devastation, has a big psychological impact and, of course, this can be magnified greatly by any consequent loss of family or friends that may also be associated with a disaster like this. In this case, tragically, we have very many examples of that. Consequent to that there will be other emotions, such as guilt, which is classic: ‘Why did I survive and my relative or my friend not? Is there something more I could have done to assist those who fell victim?’ There will also be the emotions associated with those questions we have heard posed: ‘Where do we go from here?’ and ‘Do we rebuild our community or abandon it?’ All these things play through the physical exhaustion which comes into play as the adrenalin washes out of the system.

So we should really feel for the roller-coaster that all of these people who have been involved in this tragedy will now be experiencing. Some of them will fall back on their faiths and find comfort and succour there. Others will have found their faith challenged by this experience: ‘Why would God select this or that house or this or that person? What is the answer to this question?’ There will be these sorts of challenges to their very fundamental beliefs going on. But, for all of these people, whether people of faith or not, it is important now for a very great reaching out to occur and for a healing to happen. We must provide them with all the comfort and emotional and psychological support that we can. That is why I am so proud both of this parliament and of the Australian community as a whole. It is just a hallmark of Australians that we understand that intuitively and reach out, and we have seen that happening in this situation.

Our nation has really been forged in this sort of crucible. It has made us who we are and shaped our national character. I heard a reference to this by the member for Murray, talking about the fact that our record and experience in war probably was shaped by communities having gone through these experiences, and I think she is completely accurate with that statement. We learned very early, especially in rural and regional Australia, the necessity of being able to support each other, of being able to fall back on a community, and of providing that support in times of crisis like this—of the need to be volunteers, of the need to rush to the call to arms to defend communities against natural threats. The survival of our communities in such a challenging natural environment as we live in has forged, in that crucible, a very tested and, I think, at heart an extremely strong society that is very impressive and awe inspiring.

Of course, the front line in that struggle has been our first and secondary responders, and many people have commented on them. We are intensely proud of them, and they are struggling out there as we speak. It has been my own experience as a youth, embedded in the bush as I was and working with the volunteer bushfire brigades, as they were then, in New South Wales, to have lived through many of these experiences with my community, to have had relatives burnt out by fires like this and to have come to their aid and rallied around them.

Also, I might add as a member of the ADF, quite often you will find in these circumstances not only that there will be those members of the ADF who are organised to get out there and assist but that there will be members of the ADF everywhere who will automatically don their DPCUs, get out there and contribute in whatever way they can. It is an instinctive thing for members of our ADF, and certainly that was my experience in 2003. We just gathered together at the RMC transport depot—there was no organisation and no overarching direction involved—and got busy with the rest of the emergency service providers. In that respect, I would also like to highlight the contribution that the ADF is making in this current crisis: hundreds of personnel—and, of course, not only the personnel involved with the fire situation but those who are providing very essential and magnificent support to those affected by the floods in the north of this country—and assets, from the tip of this country to its base, are out there doing wonderful stuff.

That includes, of course, the joint task force under Brigadier Michael Arnold, the commander of our 4th Brigade. I am very proud of these people, as one of my portfolio responsibilities is the management of our reservists, who are wonderful citizens in that they make so much effort in support of their communities during the day in any event—in their day jobs, so to speak—but also go that extra yard in serving their country by taking on the responsibility of serving as reservists. It is those men and women who are out there right now with the 4th Brigade, as well as our permanent members, who are rendering such incredibly important assistance. It is assistance that is vital. They bring very relevant and useful materials, such as, of course, the heavy plant that our construction engineers have available to them; the lower scale equipment of our combat engineers, such as chainsaws et cetera to clear away debris; the robust communications support that can be provided by our ruggedised vehicles and communications systems that are being sent out there now, the APCs that have been deployed and the signallers and others who are getting out there; and also our transport vehicles that are out there searching at the moment to find other survivors or casualties. There are about 160 reserve soldiers, headquartered in Kilmore, who are part of that search task group and who are out there right now looking for people. Even the company group that are now doing lead-up training to deploy to the Solomon Islands have stopped their lead-up preparation and got out there to assist; they are based out of the Puckapunyal area, which I know so well, and I salute their efforts. It goes a lot further than that, in relation to bedding, tentage, rations and all sorts of logistic, command and control and communications support that our Australian Defence Force is providing in this crisis and, as I mentioned, in the floods—as they always do. It goes to show that the investment that this community and this country make in the ADF has paid us dividends not only in conflict but in our own domestic need.

My thoughts are very much with my fellow members of parliament in the affected areas. We have heard of the member for McEwen and the travails she and her staff must be going through. There are the members for Indi, Ballarat and Bendigo. The eloquent speech we heard from the member for McMillan today was very moving indeed. I would also particularly like to send my best wishes to the member for Gippsland, my near neighbour, for whom I have a very high regard. I know that Gippsland has suffered greatly. Their fires can be seen from my borders, and certainly there are a number of fires burning in my own electorate right now, both on the south-west slopes and on the south-east coast. In fact, as soon as I have concluded this speech I will be driving down south to hook up with our RFS people in the Wyndham area. They are doing a wonderful job of keeping those fires under control. So far we have been blessed not to have lost property or life in the fires that are raging around Eden-Monaro, and it just goes to show the importance of the investment that we made during the course of last year in the fire trail work that was done.

The Volunteer Grants Program is a system I should highlight here. The last speaker talked about GPS devices et cetera. Support for such things is available under the Volunteer Grants Program. I am delighted that about 69 of our organisations in Eden-Monaro have benefited from making applications to the Volunteer Grants Program, which resulted in them being provided with funding for petrol for people to come for training, for GPS devices, for communications gear and training facilities et cetera for all our RFS, SES, VRS and other support services in the region. A combination of those things has set our region up well. Our RFS and SES teams are so professional. They are tired and they have worked extremely hard, but they have been very successful. Certainly everybody in Eden-Monaro salutes their service. We owe them so much. I will be passing on that message and the messages of support and salutation from this parliament to them tomorrow morning.

Communities have suffered great devastation, and we have all resolved that they shall be rebuilt. It brings to mind the words of the hymn about building a new Jerusalem. In fact, this devastation can be seen in some ways as an opportunity. We will need to use it as a way of building communities that are worthy of those whom we have lost but also that meet the challenges that climate change and living in this environment poses. When these communities are rebuilt, we should focus on the best that we can bring to them in terms of energy and water efficiency et cetera. This should be seen as an opportunity to build model communities to deal with the climate change threats that we face.

If you will permit me to, Madam Deputy Speaker, on a personal note I would like to pay tribute to my son, Ben. In the last several days of no sleep he has been centrally located in coordinating the efforts of EMA, Defence and other organisations in the federal-state response to this crisis. I am extremely proud of him. He has shown his commitment to duty and motivation in looking after his fellow Australians. My wife and I are very proud of him.

Finally, I would ask that Australians, as they are doing, continue to dig deep. Cash is what is needed now. It is very simple to donate that. The online service of the Red Cross is very efficient. It is the method that I use. Also, as the Minister for Health and Ageing pointed out to us today, the giving of blood will be necessary over a period of time. We have to sustain that effort. It is actually better if people make donations further down the track, in the next week or two ahead of us. I hope people will bear that in mind and, where they can, make blood donations.

Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Justice and Public Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Saturday, 7 February 2009, in the afternoon, I was driving along Burwood Highway. I stopped at the Dorset Road traffic lights. I think I was listening to an AM radio program, where they announced that the temperature was 46 degrees. It has never been 46 degrees in Melbourne before. As I looked up at the traffic lights, the gale force winds were actually shaking the traffic lights. I have only seen that occur in winter. I thought, ‘The last thing we want is to see any sort of fire today.’ At this stage, there were fires around but not in the Dandenong Ranges. As I drove further up, I could see ahead of me Upper Ferntree Gully, near the Shell service station. To my shock and horror I realised that there was smoke in the vicinity of Quarry Road, which is right beside the train line. At this stage I could not see any CFA units, but I suspect they may have been up at the train line. To give members some indication of how strong the winds were: the flames were going up the trees in a corkscrew effect. I could not believe what I was seeing. I had a flashback to 16 February 1983. That was the day of the Ash Wednesday bushfires. In an ironic twist, I had been at roughly the same location. I had just left the Ferntree Gully Technical School when I looked across and saw a plume of smoke coming from Belgrave South.

On Ash Wednesday my electorate of La Trobe was really badly hit by the fires in Belgrave Heights, Upper Beaconsfield and Cockatoo. Belgrave Heights and Upper Beaconsfield saw the loss of 21 lives and 283 buildings. The township of Cockatoo, as we heard the opposition leader, Malcolm Turnbull, mention yesterday, had over 300 houses lost and also six lives. Any loss of life is exceptionally sad but we saw on Ash Wednesday two fire crews, the Narre Warren crew and the Panton Hill crew, have the lives of all the members taken. And captain John Minett the day before had actually been named Victorian firefighter of the year. They went to Upper Beaconsfield and got trapped in a firestorm and all members were found dead. I recall that the member for McMillan, Russell Broadbent, in his very passionate and emotional speech to the House, said that he was only 10 minutes off following those members up there when he was, I believe, captain of the Beaconsfield unit.

At the moment in my electorate of La Trobe we have concerns about Gembrook, which is right beside Cockatoo, with a big fire at the Bunyip State Forest. There has now been a change of wind, so my prayers are for the people in Gembrook, which is beside my electorate of La Trobe. To give people an idea of the Dandenong Ranges, if you go from Upper Ferntree Gully to Gembrook it is approximately 20 or 25 kilometres and in that radius of, say, 15 kilometres there are probably 20,000 or 30,000 people living there.

I could not believe what I was witnessing at Upper Ferntree Gully, a fire on the 46-degree day with this amazing heat. I honestly believe that if that fire took off across the Burwood Highway and moved through up to the forest, the hills would have gone up and we would have lost an amazing number of lives. My special thanks must go to the CFA crews at Upper Ferntree Gully, Boronia, Belgrave, Ferntree Gully, Upwey, The Basin and Montrose. I have no doubt from what I saw that they saved hundreds of lives in the Dandenong Ranges, in the hills. My office has been in contact with Captain Peter Smith of Upper Ferntree Gully, who has been a CFA member for 35 years, and he is actually quoted as saying this was the best save he has ever seen. I believe him. I could not believe what I was witnessing. They did an amazing job.

I did not hang around because my parents live up in the hills and they, like many of the residents, have lived through the Ash Wednesday fires, the 1997 fires and 2004 and they have a lot of experience. Since the 1997 fires they have had two 5,000-litre water tanks. My father has been a member of the Ferny Creek CFA and is what I would call a veteran. He was prepared to stay and fight any sort of fire. Reluctantly I went up there to give assistance. We were very lucky with this fire at Upper Ferntree Gully that the wind was not pushing strongly to the national park. I believe that if the fire was two hours later we probably would have lost the hills. I cannot thank those crews enough for what they did. Captain Smith and all the troops there did an amazing job. I have to make sure we get the message out there to the residents of the hills that they were saved.

When I drove up through the hills, going through some of the back streets, I did not feel that I was in danger, because the wind was going across the Burwood Highway, but I saw a few things that greatly concerned me. One was the fact that there were a lot of residents in the traditional shorts and shirt holding a garden hose. As I was going past, I thought to myself: if this fire takes off, they are gone. Even though there are people who put the best fire plans in place, if a fire went up the hills that day, they would be gone, especially the ones who stayed there dressed in their thongs and shirts et cetera. To me it was quite bizarre. The residents of the Dandenong Ranges are very used to having fires, so they are prepared, but I have raised the question before—but we have never had this situation where we have had 46-degree days with 100-plus kilometre winds—as to advice about staying or leaving early, and maybe they can look at this in the royal commission. From what I saw that day, if the fire went through the Dandenong Ranges, staying would have been catastrophic.

I will just go back to the Upper Ferntree Gully crew. That day there were 22 members and subsequently they went to help in Drouin, Harkaway, Wandong and Yarra Glen. In my electorate of La Trobe, I think I have over 30 CFAs. Nearly every suburb—whether it be Selby, Menzies Creek or Ferny Creek—has a CFA and they are very prepared for fires. These men and women do an amazing job. We have world-class CFA firefighters in my electorate of La Trobe and in Victoria—and of course in Australia—but I would also like to thank all the support staff for the amazing job they do in supporting the CFA crews. Again speaking locally, I thank the local police who had to stand at the roadblocks in temperatures of 46 degrees, stopping people going up to the hills. The simple reason they did that is that if we did have a fire up there, it would have been absolutely devastating.

I did not witness this, but to the south of my electorate we had another fire at Narre Warren North, which sadly claimed three homes but, thankfully, no lives were lost. Again, from the feedback I have been given, if this fire was not stopped, we would have had a major tragedy down the south of my electorate. A big thanks goes to the sky crane Elvis crew. Residents have told me that they did an amazing job. I actually wrote to the Prime Minister last year suggesting that we have two sky cranes—one on standby in the Dandenong Ranges. I congratulate the Prime Minister because he made three available in Australia. From what the local residents are saying, they did an amazing job.

Last night in Upper Beaconsfield—where, as I mentioned before, a number of lives were lost on Ash Wednesday—there was a small fire on Lenne Street. Again, I congratulate the CFA crews. On behalf of the local community, I would also like to thank and congratulate all of the volunteers who attended the Narre Warren North fire—the crews from Narre Warren North, Berwick, Narre Warren, Belgrave and Upper Beaconsfield—and a special thanks goes to the crews not in the electorate, who have come from far and wide, from Hampton and Hallam and right down to Rosebud, Tooradin and Ballarat. One of the amazing things about CFA volunteers is that they actually move around the state. Tragically, we have heard that a number of those fighting the fires I will speak about shortly lost friends, relatives and homes whilst out there fighting the fires.

When I arrived at my parent’s place and we realised after a couple of hours that a cool change had come in—and it really came in; the temperature must have dropped 10 or 15 degrees—we were looking at Kinglake, which was some distance away, and I could see a glow there. At that stage, I do not believe a death toll had been announced or that it had been announced that anyone had perished. But, sadly and tragically, we have now lost over 173 Victorians.

It is disturbing to members of the House and the Australian public to see anyone die, but it is especially disturbing to see children die. It is the most awful thing to see. We have had the tragedy go through Kinglake, Strathewen and Marysville. The township of Marysville is normally regarded as being green and fairly open, not a high fire danger area. Obviously as you go through Blackspur it is. But the Dandenong Ranges are regarded as only second behind California in terms of being the highest fire danger zone in the world. Bendigo, Narbethong and Pheasant Creek have been devastated by fires. Our thoughts go to the families who have lost family members. We also remember the pets. I think we are coming up to nearly 1,000 homes lost and 5,000 Victorians who do not have accommodation at the moment.

There has been a lot of talk about early warnings. I know there is going to be a royal commission, but I do not know how many times I heard the Premier of Victoria, John Brumby, say Saturday would be the darkest day in Victorian history, with the combination of high temperatures and winds. So the warnings were definitely out there. But people in Victoria have had many fires and they have survived. After the 1997 fires, a lot of people cleared a lot of the trees et cetera from around their places. But still there has to be more done on removing the undergrowth. People in Ferny Creek had the tragedy of fires in 1997, but this time the fire would have ripped through there if it had gone up to the Dandenong Ranges.

I was fairly proud that I was contacted by Sarah Brown, who is a friend of mine and also a volunteer in the Ferny Creek CFA. Sarah contacted me a couple of years ago about the Ferny Creek bushfire alert. This was established after 1997, when three people died in Ferny Creek. I know that Ann Marie and others lobbied very hard, and we gave them funding to improve the bushfire alert system, which basically notifies residents when a fire is coming. In all honesty, though, when they have the royal commission, we have to write to the commissioner about this. This is a great system but, if a fire takes 10 minutes to get from the basin up to Ferny Creek, it would not have given people enough time to get out. So maybe they need to look at getting an alert the day before.

Sadly there has been a great loss of wildlife. I believe we have lost in the vicinity of 20,000 animals. We spoke to Tina at the Shangri-La Wildlife Shelter in Macclesfield today. She has received from Healesville Sanctuary only two animals—a wallaby, with burnt feet, and a tawny frogmouth. This is an exceptionally low number. What that means is the fire was so ferocious that the wildlife has just been getting killed. Tina also told us that, sadly, all the animals that were being looked after at a number of sanctuaries in Kinglake and other areas have tragically died. That is another thing we need to look at down the track—the location of the shelters and the means of moving the animals. Hopefully, that will be a subject for the royal commission. Some people say wildlife is not a high priority, but I personally believe that it is. The way we look after our most vulnerable animals is a great test for society itself. I believe we need to look at that.

I want to thank the Australian Defence Force personnel, especially the volunteers who have gone in to help. I can never mention and thank enough the CFA members for everything they are doing. I congratulate the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition for their positions on this. I thank the Premier of Victoria, John Brumby, and the Victorian Opposition Leader, Ted Baillieu. They have all been doing the right thing. I am very proud to be a member of parliament at this time. I thank all those who are searching for bodies and doing victim identification. As a former police officer, I can tell you that is an awful job to do, especially when you are looking for and come across children.

Finally, I believe some of these fires have been reported as being deliberately lit. Basically we have had arsonists unleash hell on their neighbours, on their suburbs and on other Australians. They obviously do not care about their actions, they do not take responsibility and they get some sort of enjoyment or kick out of it. I could use much stronger words, but, at the very least, they should hang their heads in shame for what they have done to our society. They have put such a black mark on our country and on the emotions of people. God help them if they get discovered by local residents, because I am sure they will give them the punishment they deserve.

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with great sorrow that I rise to support this motion and offer my deepest condolences to those who have lost their loved ones, their property, their precious keepsakes or their businesses or who have survived but with injuries. The past four days have brought natural devastation the likes of which neither Victoria nor Australia has ever seen. At last count, 173 people have died and around 800 houses have been destroyed. Thousands of people seeking shelter have left their properties, and either their homes are still in danger or they are a pile of smouldering rubble where their lives used to be.

The news bulletins have been full of stories giving accounts of survival, of loss, of heroism and of people who bear the pain of still not knowing the whereabouts or fate of their loved ones. It is excruciating to watch, to listen to and to read but, at the same time, it is impossible to turn away. One can only imagine the sheer hell that these fine people, in different regions of our state, have gone through. We all hope the worst of the fires is behind us but we continue to brace ourselves for news of more tragedy and loss. The death toll will continue to rise this week as volunteers complete the horrible task of searching homes, sheds, shelters and vehicles for remains. Some of those fighting for life and being treated by the hardworking and dedicated medical staff in our hospitals may lose their battle.

It is important to remember those who have perished, whether they decided to stay put and bravely defend their homes in places like Marysville, Wandong or Callignee or they were desperately trying to escape but were trapped on the narrow, tree-lined roads in places like St Andrews, Kinglake and Strathewen. The lives lost are young and old: they are children, parents and grandparents; they are fathers who sent their families to safety while they stayed and were taken by the smoke and flames; and they are entire families wiped out in the most tragic and fearful way imaginable.

While it is important that we remember those who have left us, it is also important that we recognise the efforts of the firefighters and volunteers, those who have mobilised in the last few days to fight the fires and to care for and tend to those affected. The incredibly brave men and women of the Country Fire Authority crews and the Department of Sustainability and Environment who have gone into territory that can only be described as hell on earth deserve every bit of praise and appreciation they get.

Some of these brave souls have been defending other people’s properties while their own have been under threat. Some have lost their own family members while trying to save the lives of others. This level of dedication and personal sacrifice is indescribable, but I can assure every firefighter and volunteer who has attended these fires that all Victorians are thinking of you and are extremely thankful.

It has been heartening to see in the background of news footage fire trucks with names of towns far away from the areas under threat. Fire crews from places like Portarlington on the Bellarine Peninsula and Patterson River in my electorate have gone and helped out at this time of greatest need. Each of the Country Fire Authority and Metropolitan Fire Brigade units based in my electorate has helped out either in Bunyip, Narre Warren, Gippsland or the Kinglake fires that have claimed so many lives. I would like to mention the Carrum Downs, Edithvale, Keysborough, Dandenong, Noble Park, Patterson River and Skye Country Fire Authority units and the Mentone Metropolitan Fire Brigade and thank them for helping out in those vulnerable communities when they were needed. I would also like to mention the contribution of firefighting units that have come from South Australia, the Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales, which itself has been battling major fires, as well as a group of around 100 firefighters who have flown from across the Tasman to help out on behalf of New Zealand. I am sure that when your area is next under threat, Victorians will be the first in to lend a helping hand.

I think it shows a great deal of care and community spirit that the response from Victorians has been to turn up to relief centres in places like Whittlesea, Diamond Creek, Alexandra, Traralgon and Chiltern with any clothes, blankets or food that they could fit in their cars and help out in whatever way they can. They have come in such numbers that some have had to be turned away. The response from people donating money, goods or blood to the Red Cross has been overwhelming. Corporate Australia as well is doing its bit, with substantial donations being made from some of Australia’s most well-known companies. I commend all the volunteers, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, St John Ambulance and many others who have sprung to action when they were needed.

As other members have done, I commend the ABC for its coverage of the disaster, particularly ABC Radio, whose non-stop coverage of emergency announcements from Saturday morning onwards I know was a lifeline for many. The radio coverage, with its precision and its immediacy, brought home to the rest of us the scale of the disaster as we heard town after town, community after community, added to the list of fires and fire threats.

Seeing the footage of entire towns being wiped off the map, it is difficult to grasp that the people who survived will have the drive to go back and rebuild where their houses used to stand. Some of the areas hit are extremely beautiful places. As a teenager in the Scouts I used to go camping and bushwalking around Kinglake, Marysville and Healesville. We took our young children for picnics in the area. I love the area for its beauty, serenity and the good people who call these places home. They will rebuild. These towns and communities will never be the same, but they will be rebuilt. For some the painful memories will be too much and they will not be able to go back. Places like St Andrews, Kinglake and Marysville have extremely tight-knit communities and many of the survivors will return and work tirelessly to bring these towns back to life. I hope these communities are reborn so that future generations can enjoy the peaceful tranquillity of the hills north-east of Melbourne, which many Melburnians, including me and my family, have had the privilege of doing over the years.

I give my condolences to the members for McEwen, Bendigo, Gippsland, McMillan, Murray and Indi in this place and to their constituencies who have had these fires hit them so hard. We have heard moving speeches from members with directly affected electorates—I say ‘directly affected’ because all of us are affected by these fires. I particularly mention the fine speeches of the member for Bendigo yesterday and the member for McMillan today. They were speeches which conjured up the horror and the terror of these fires and conveyed to all members of this House the losses that their communities have suffered.

I grieve for those who have passed, for those whose loved ones have passed and for those who have lost everything. I hope they can still have hope for the future. We are behind you. We will help you. As the Prime Minister said today and the Leader of the Opposition confirmed, the whole of this parliament is committed to doing whatever it takes to put these communities and all of those affected back on their feet.

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like you, Mr Deputy Speaker Adams, I represent a rural area. We have to deal with bushfires but, hopefully, never to the extent of the horrific events that people in Victoria have experienced and will continue to experience for some time. I can remember, as a farmer in the Adelaide Hills, experiencing the 1980 fires and Ash Wednesday in 1983. Indeed, in 1980 the flames got to within about 100 yards of my farm. There was not much grass on my neighbour’s property to fuel the fire, but, probably more importantly, the wind changed and turned the fire back on the burnt paddocks, so they were able to stop it. Even today, 25 years later, people still remember those horrific experiences. I was a councillor with the Happy Valley council at the time. After fighting the fires on the day, my job for the next couple of days was to go out and visit properties to see that they were all faring well and hopefully not discover anything horrific. Thankfully, I did not. On a lighter note, I do remember stumbling into a nudist camp on that journey around the bushfire affected areas. They had been affected, but fortunately they were still able to enjoy their activities—although I must admit I hightailed it out of that place as quickly as I could!

I remember getting up on the morning of those fires and walking outside on my farm and immediately smelling the fire. It was 50 kilometres away at that stage. It nearly reached my place by the end of the day, but you could smell the fire 50 kilometres away and see it on the horizon. You could see ash already floating in the air from that fire. It was a very eerie feeling, and I suspect people had the same feeling on that horrid Saturday.

During the Eyre Peninsula fires, only about three years ago, my brother lost everything on his farm. It was only through a miracle last-minute intervention by a water bomb that his house was saved. Everything else—the sheds, the fences and the stock—was destroyed. He has taken a long time to recover from that, but we will rebuild, and I am sure we will rebuild in Victoria.

I have to say I was somewhat surprised by the contribution by the member for Wills. I thought it was quite insensitive to get up and say it was all about climate change. Frankly, why are we having a royal commission if we already know it is about climate change? I think there is going to be some disagreement about that. In fact, a Victorian parliament committee report, from the inquiry into the impact of public land management practices on bushfires in Victoria, very much downplayed the role of climate change and identified the need to reduce fuel loads by back-burning and slow burning, which, as has been mentioned by other members, was almost the natural way in Australia. The report actually recommended that the state government should triple the amount of back-burning and slow burning in Victoria from 130,000 hectares to 385,000 hectares. Unfortunately, the state government have not implemented that recommendation in full. I hope that they rethink that.

In supporting this condolence motion, I quote the former Chief of Army General Peter Cosgrove, who said:

Without doubt the best quality we observe across the entire Australian community is a natural willingness to pitch in and have a go, to help others. We see it of course whenever there is an emergency or a worthy cause. We see it in every community volunteer organisation from the lifesavers to the bushfire brigades through to the thousands of youth and mature age sporting clubs and those great international service organisations like Rotary—

Lions, Apex—

and many others. We see it in our professional bodies such as the police, fire and ambulance services and of course in the defence force. It is a generosity of spirit and a selflessness that is perhaps our most precious heritage to hand onto younger and newer Australians—a nation of people who care for and look out for each other.

Whilst General Cosgrove could not have envisaged the shocking loss of life and devastation of the Victorian bushfires of this past weekend—no-one could have—his words nonetheless sum up the spirit of Australians, whose enduring philosophy of ‘we’re all Australians and we’re all in this together’ is most evident.

I recently said in this place that rural and regional Australians are resilient because they have to be. The hardships of rural life, of drought, floods or bushfires, are part of our lives. Australians help each other. It is an old Australian trait. You do not have to have a degree in psychology to know that in Australia social bonding coincides with extreme hardship. It is the spirit of pitching in, getting your hands dirty and helping out a fellow Australian. Perhaps it has its origins in the hardships endured by early Australians, which caused them to feel a great sense of reliance on each other. Whatever its origin, helping each other is integral to the Australian spirit. It defines our unique strength of character and pride that is reflected through the courageous and selfless acts of Australians working behind the scenes every day, and it is most evident in rural and regional Australia.

Rural and regional people live and work in communities that have been devastated by bushfires throughout history. My own electorate of Barker was particularly savaged by the Ash Wednesday bushfires of 1983, at the same time as the Victorian ones. Sadly, those Ash Wednesday fires are now recorded as the second-deadliest bushfire disaster in Australian history, as we now learn that the 2009 Victorian bushfires have claimed more lives. Without fail, then as now, the Australian response is to pitch in to offer help in a variety of ways. I was moved by the plight of those who have lost family, homes and livelihoods and I was equally moved by the response of rural and regional Australians.

Those yellow uniforms of the CFA volunteers represent more than 3,000 rural and regional Australians tackling the blazes at the weekend, working tirelessly around the clock. Even while the extent of this disaster was still unfolding, South Australian producers and farmers with sympathy, generosity and plain common sense were already mobilising. They are donating hay and emergency stock fodder for the surviving livestock, materials for fencing, farm machinery, equipment, and trucks and fuel to carry these to Victoria. Rural businesses which are already challenged with the economic downturn have also pledged hundreds of thousands of dollars to help the victims rebuild their homes engulfed by the bushfires. Their response, an unprecedented outpouring of assistance, while extraordinary, is nonetheless typical of farmer helping farmer, country folk helping country folk and Australians helping each other. The practical help and unthinking generosity is all the more remarkable, coming as it does from families who endure isolation and years of drought. I commend and thank the wonderful people in my electorate who have been so immediately responsive and generous. It does not surprise me.

As a community we all learned from the Ash Wednesday disaster in South Australia, the fragile sense of our control over the natural world. We made changes in our planning in South Australia to deal with that. For example, in my electorate, any new developments had to have a full water tank—5,000 gallons or, in the new terms, 22,000 litres—during the fire season, with a diesel pump that could be used either by them to protect their house or by firefighters in need of quick access to water. We also ensured that new developments had a clearing around them. So, while the trees might have to be 20 metres away, they still looked beautiful and there was at least a clear area around the buildings, whether they were farm buildings or houses out in rural areas. I would like to think those things would help.

Like other members of this House I think we should be very interested in the idea of bunkers. The picture I saw in the paper was of a cement water tank with a bunker next to it. It would obviously give some relief from the heat as well as provide protection. That is perhaps something that planners all over Australia should look at, because it could save lots and lots of lives.

We have learned that when disaster strikes it is unimaginable. Nature means that even the best preparations are inadequate. Even though we can make changes to planning laws, I think on days like those of last weekend it is going to be very hard to stop that sort of wildfire situation.

Calamities like Ash Wednesday and the fires in Victoria last weekend show the capacity of rural and regional Australians to act in a collective way to support other rural communities and nurture those whose lives, families and properties have been affected. They remind us that we depend on each other for protection and help, and they reflect the healthy societies of rural and regional Australia, which are built on people who act collectively rather than with self-interest.

As I travel through my electorate, which thankfully was spared—we had very similar conditions to those in Victoria, so one can only wonder why; in South Australia on Saturday we had hot, windy conditions and they were shockers but thankfully we did not have a major problem—I am constantly reminded of local contributions and acts of community service which generally go unnoted and unrewarded beyond that community. Right now we are in shock and disbelief at the extent of this disaster, but there will come a time when we will reflect with less mourning on what is unfolding and when we might more fully appreciate the community’s generosity. But I and many other Australians will probably never know the full extent of the generosity of the people of my electorate and others. I know that they do not seek recognition. To the generous rural and regional Australians responding to the bushfire disaster I say: you bring light into what is a very dark day and make Australia a better place to live. I sincerely thank you.

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of this condolence motion. In all that has been said in the last three days, the recurring theme has been the utter inadequacy of words to describe what we have all seen and heard, and certainly that feeling bears down upon me now. The last fortnight has been simply horrific. Saturday was the hottest day in Geelong’s history: 47.4 degrees. It was a day that was quite different to any we have experienced before, and we have been left wondering whether such hellishly hot days are now part of our lives. The heatwave which has engulfed south-eastern Australia is likely to become the worst natural disaster in terms of lives lost in Australia’s history, outstripping the deadly heatwave of 1939. The macabre stories of mortuaries in Adelaide and Melbourne filled beyond capacity are a terrible reminder of the numbers who died even before the weekend’s events. In all that has occurred, we must remember them.

It is the utter horror of 7 February 2009 which, outside of war, is the most calamitous in the history of our nation. The loss of life speaks of an event we did not imagine could occur. It manifests on this day in a collective misery that is gripping so many ordinary Australians who, only last week, were as oblivious to their fate as the rest of us.

Geelong has in part been represented in this disaster by the Victorian Minister for Community Services and member for Bellarine, Lisa Neville. She has been visiting fire scenes and ensuring that her department’s services are properly responding to this disaster. In speaking with her many times in the past few days, the nature and magnitude of what has occurred has revealed itself to me as truly shocking. In one case, she told of the fire bearing down on a line of cars, each filled with people in a desperate race to safety. The fire spared one family, but the cars both in front and behind were engulfed in flames. There is randomness in this that is both confusing and at the same time stark. Children loom large in this disaster. Many have witnessed unspeakable horror, images they should not have had to see. Others have perished and will account for many of the dead. When I heard this, I tightly hugged each of my three.

Yet Lisa also makes it clear that standing tall in the midst of this nightmare are human qualities that are inspiring and wonderful. There is the heroism of young Rhys Sund, who, the Age reports, twice braved the burning paddocks in a tractor to save many of his family from what would likely have been their deaths. There is the desire of the survivors of Kinglake to have one relief centre at Whittlesea, not two, so that they could stay together and be there for each other. In the darkest hour, people want to be with people. They want to share their experience of trauma together. This is a tragedy that will be overcome through a collective community spirit. That is the case among those in Kinglake and, at a broader level, it is the case for all of us in Victoria and throughout Australia.

On behalf of the people of Geelong, I wish to say to all those touched and hurt by the fires that we are with you. Geelong grieves with you, and we will offer our prayers for you in a memorial service in St Mary’s church this Thursday night. Geelong wants to help, and a benefit concert is being organised for 1 March. In this we are no different to every other Australian town and city. Already more than $15 million has been raised through the Red Cross relief fund, in an extraordinary demonstration of Australians helping Australians.

I would like particularly to remember Danny Shepherd, an instructor and relief manager at the City of Greater Geelong’s Leisurelink and Splashdown centres. Danny went to Kinglake on Saturday to help members of his family and, in the process, lost his own life. Our thoughts are now with Danny’s family and friends. He will be greatly missed. I would also like to give thanks for the life of the mother of Kylie Fisher, which was spared on Saturday. Kylie is a friend of mine and a councillor at the City of Greater Geelong. On Saturday evening her mother, who lives in Kinglake, was caught in the fire. Kylie was in contact with her. In Kylie’s words:

I had one phone call from her saying they had to evacuate, then about five minutes later she rang back hysterical. She said she was in a shed with no electricity and there was smoke and she wanted to say goodbye and that she loved me.

It would be another two hours before Kylie discovered that her mother had survived. There was unimaginable trauma in those two hours. There was unadulterated joy at the end of it. Kylie tells me that as soon as the road to Kinglake is reopened she will be up there in a flash. Many hugs are needed, she says. In the meantime, Kylie has been giving her time staffing phones for the Geelong Advertiser relief fund. She has asked me to investigate the best way she can donate some of her tax bonus to those affected by the fires.

The Country Fire Authority, the emergency services, medical services and support workers and the thousands of Victorians and the Australians who have put their own lives in harm’s way to fight these fires have, by all accounts, been utterly remarkable. It is clear that without their efforts many more homes would have been destroyed, many more lives would have been lost. Among their number have been 400 members of the Geelong and Colac CFA brigades. They returned to Geelong as heroes.

Yet Geelong’s greatest connection with these fires is a shared experience of the country in which we live—country Victoria. Terrible memories come flooding back of Ash Wednesday 26 years ago, which struck closer to our home on that occasion, leaving our city shrouded in smoke; and of Linton 10 years ago, which tragically took the lives of five CFA volunteers from the Geelong West Brigade: Christopher Evans, Garry Vredeveldt, Stuart Davidson, Jason Thomas and Matthew Armstrong. We spare a thought today for their families, for whom the grief of years past will be rising again to the surface.

For all of us, our emotions at this time are swirling. We feel horror at the carnage. We ask why and how. We feel anger at the prospect that arson may be to blame. We feel helpless at the inability to change what has happened. We feel shock that this could so easily have occurred in our own region. Time will provide a certain clarity, but right now some things do feel clear to me. I feel profound grief for those who have perished and those who have suffered loss. You are in our thoughts. I feel pride for those who have come to the aid of their fellow Australians and defined what is best about our country. You have our utmost praise. And, most of all, I feel for those who are continuing to fight the fires and those others in hospital who are continuing to fight for their lives. Our prayers are with you.

Joanna Gash (Gilmore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is difficult to find the right words to express the disbelief and horror at the bushfires that wrought havoc through Victoria this last week. So many lives have been lost. So many survivors will have to live with the emotional and physical scarring of what is surely an event of unprecedented magnitude. Watching the footage on television brought back to me the memories of the bushfires we had in the Shoalhaven—we live in a very high-fire prone area; in fact, 65 per cent of our land mass is crown or National Parks and Wildlife land. As significant as the fires were when they occurred in 2000 and 2001, they pale into virtual insignificance in comparison with this latest devastation by fire. The word ‘holocaust’ springs to mind. At the time of the Shoalhaven fires I was working in the fire control centre in Nowra, so I have some appreciation of what people went through then and now. Luckily, we lost no lives, but the trauma during the event and the after-effects were all too real.

I offer my sincerest condolences to the families and friends of those who perished. I hope to God that I and anyone I cherish are never put in that position. The ever-escalating list of victims being broadcast and reported is reminiscent of a casualty list from a war in some far-off land. The television footage, the imagery, the words spoken will never convey what it was like for those who went through it. I looked at the faces of the survivors on television. Some had the vacant stare of those with shellshock, completely numbed by their experiences, their minds not yet fully registering the enormity of the event; others were weeping openly from the shock; yet others were angry and wanting to strike out; some could even find something to joke about. Indeed, it is beyond comprehension for anyone who was not caught up in it, like some sort of bad dream.

I would like to pay a special tribute to the firefighters, the volunteers who are out there in the most extreme of conditions and giving it their all. In the weeks and months ahead there will be stories emerging of heroism and sacrifice. One virtue will be that any individual episode of heroism will not be eclipsed by another, and every act will be accorded the honest recognition it warrants. To those who will have to work with the survivors I say: the compassion and care you show will be critical for these people to make as full a recovery as they can. Even then, they will not be able to eradicate the memory. For many, their idyllic rural setting turned into a hell. They will be going through varying degrees of emotion as they tackle the grieving process. I pray to God they all come out of it. We must do all we can to assist in that process. We can replace the material losses, and the speed with which we do that will go a long way to bringing these people back to normality.

I would also like to commend the media on the quality and sensitivity of their reporting. They have within their capacity the ability to colour the atmosphere or exploit the story-line. This did not happen. Instead, without exception, each journalist was honest and compassionate. I think this will contribute greatly to the feeling that we are all in this together. The eloquence in expression may have been varied between reporters but the sincerity and honesty was uniform, such was the impact of what they were witnessing and what was unfolding before their eyes.

Perhaps it will be someone else’s turn next year, because that is the reality of the continent and the times that we share. While tragic, we should draw from this experience and learn to work together as a community and as a nation, because once again we are being called upon to rise to the occasion as we have done in previous times and to pull together as Australians have done in past tragedies. But for the moment our thoughts are with our Victorian neighbours, as are my thoughts with the members of parliament who cover these electorates. People will remember this catastrophe for many years to come. We can all draw some solace from the event in that crisis works to bring us together in a common bond. It will make us stronger. But now let us pause a moment to remember, to share the grief, and then let us get on with the task of repairing and healing.

I would like to thank all those who made their heartfelt speeches in the parliament yesterday and today. They were sincere and they went across the political divide. It made me proud indeed to see the unity that exists at this terrible time for these families who have lost all. I know we have all bonded together and we will do all we can to do what it takes to rebuild not only towns and villages but the lives of those who have survived.

Australians are the most compassionate people in the world, as has been shown on so many occasions. Already in my electorate of Gilmore donations of all kinds are forthcoming. Even my office staff said today they have arranged a sausage sizzle with the assistance of Woolworths to raise funds. It might not seem much but, as they said, ‘Jo, we have to do something,’ and do something we all will.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It has now been a few days since Australia as a nation faced one of its darkest days, the worst natural disaster we have ever encountered. And still the realities of what occurred seem surreal. I generally do not like talking on a condolence motion; I often feel I am treading on someone else’s grief. But I think we are all sharing in this tragedy and this horror and we need to put on record our sympathy and our thoughts and feelings.

The weekend’s fires were the result of the most severe weather conditions ever recorded and led to insurmountable losses with over 170 dead. I am assuming the toll has probably been reported as greater but I have not seen the news. Five hundred have been injured and almost a thousand homes destroyed, thousands left homeless, countless fields destroyed, businesses destroyed and animals and wildlife all gone. This is a tragedy of monumental proportions. Families and communities have been left shattered as entire towns have been virtually wiped off the map—towns we will rebuild. This has no doubt been the most tragic event to take place in my home state of Victoria and as such it will go down in history as one of our country’s darkest moments. It is not something we need to feel a glow about but in years to come we will also remember the heroism, the community bonding and the better moments and the better values of our society and our humanity from it.

On Black Saturday, as it is becoming known, over 400 fires burnt throughout the state, leaving a pattern of destruction and utter devastation in their wake. Horsham, Bendigo, Beechworth, West Gippsland, Kinglake, Kilmore, Marysville, St Andrews, Narbethong, Flowerdale, Churchill and numerous towns in between all felt the unrelenting wrath of Mother Nature at her most fierce. I think that was the thing that you really could not get your head around. You are sort of used to fires being in one area. The entire state of Victoria at the fringes was almost engulfed by flames, and we need to remember that those fires are still burning, and some of them are very serious still.

The harrowing firsthand accounts of those involved in the fires beggar belief. Reports of the sky raining fire and the speed at which flames swept through properties are terrifying. It is scarcely imaginable. Danielle Reeves, a Kinglake survivor, tells of her terrifying ordeal in one of today’s newspapers:

At one point it all went black. We could see fire closing in on all sides. Our last option was to go down to the back dam, chuck the kids on a raft and chuck blankets over us and try and hope that the fire would jump us.

There are numerous other personal accounts of miraculous survival and courage. However, it is the tragic deaths and loss that will forever resonate with 7 February 2009, a date that will be etched in our national memory for eternity.

I certainly remember where I was on Ash Wednesday in 1983. I shudder to think that it was my last year of school and that it is now 26 years ago, but I can remember being in the back playground at school thinking the world was coming to an end. In very-inner-city Melbourne, ash and dirt were raining down upon us from the devastating fires and the fields that were literally being whipped up from country Victoria and descending upon us. My mother, who was working in inner-city Melbourne in 1983, said that the mums from the high-rise flats in Fitzroy—many of whom were refugees from Vietnam—came screeching into the playground, whipping up their children, thinking that the world was at an end and that Australia was under attack, because at the high-rise all was dark and gloomy and nobody knew what was going on. She said, ‘By the end of the day we had about two children left on the playground.’ I can remember that vividly, and I think I will always remember last Saturday vividly.

It was a hellish day in Victoria. The heat and smoke were just horrendous. By some ludicrous stretch of fate, we were in town. My husband and my children were up to see a live production, and it was going to be a lovely day, except that it was incredibly hot. We left the theatre complaining of the heat, and then we turned on the radio. After about 10 minutes I turned off the radio because my children were becoming quite disturbed at what they were hearing. All that kept resonating with me was: ‘We’re feeling ill at listening to it; what is happening to those people who are experiencing it? What is happening to those mothers and fathers and their children who are actually in this maelstrom?’

I want to offer my heartfelt condolences and deepest sympathies to those families and communities suffering as a result of this tragedy. Our thoughts and prayers are with you all at this devastating time. You are not alone in this. This parliament and the entire country are behind you all, and we will continue to support you in the long and difficult task of rebuilding a normal life.

Earlier today I spoke to a constituent of mine. As I said then, I did not want to trample on their grief, but it shocked me that in my electorate, which is pretty suburban and quite far away from the fires, we now have a family that has no idea where their loving father is. He went down to see if he could help in Marysville, where they had a holiday home, where they had spent a great deal of their life and where they were very involved in the community. This individual is a charming character and a great member of our community. He has not been seen or heard from since Saturday. His family have no idea. They believe the worst has happened, but until they hear they are keeping on quietly praying and hoping.

It is the stark reality that everyone in Victoria will be impacted by this tragedy. A staff member of mine’s father was quite devastated on Saturday to find that his apprentice, who had been working with him for quite some time, had lost his life trying to get out of the Kinglake area. So all of us, in some way or other, have been impacted, and it will take a long time for our communities across Victoria to rebuild. The harsh reality of this disaster is that the death toll will continue to climb as more bodies are discovered by the emergency personnel on the ground. As the Prime Minister and the Victorian Premier have reminded us, we need to brace ourselves for more bad news.

In this troubled time of mourning and tragedy, there have been heroes continuing to fight fires on the ground across Victoria. The work of the CFA and emergency personnel at this time cannot be overstated, and I wish to record my thanks to them and also to the Red Cross, the Salvation Army and the countless community groups working on the ground through this tragedy. As the fire continues to threaten communities, we offer our enduring support to the emergency services working across the state. Many of these people are volunteers who typify the Australian spirit, selflessly helping and protecting others out of a sense of mateship and community. I want to offer my sincere thanks to those people providing a helping hand on the ground. All of you are heroes. Many have travelled from across the country and, indeed, from overseas to assist those left devastated and to fight the fires that continue to burn. The rebuilding of communities affected by this unparalleled tragedy will be an immense task. Of course, the government is providing emergency assistance and will continue to deliver further measures to assist those in need.

I particularly want to thank the ambulance officers on the ground. Yes, it is a bit selfish—being married to an ambo and knowing a lot of the ambulance officers who were out there on the day. Many of them felt a bit helpless because they could not get in and out of the fire area. They were all stationed there waiting to go but they could not drive their ambulances in to pick up the victims. A very good mate of my husband’s was there on the day. She was working with an ambo from Kinglake. While he was on duty his house burnt down. Luckily, his wife and children were fine, but he had to end his very long shift before he could find out how they were.

For the people dealing with fire victims it is incredibly traumatic. It is particularly traumatic for the victim, but for those dealing with them it is just overwhelming. My husband very rarely describes what goes on at work, but he will tell you that dealing with a burns victim is incredibly complicated and the smell is just unbelievable. Fire victims are in immense pain. They are at great risk from ongoing injuries. It is not just the burn; it is the internal organs, the airways, the ability to keep their fluids up and it is the infection risk. The people who were dealing with these patients on the ground at the time, before they could get them to the hospital to stabilise them, were under great stress. They came across some horrific scenes. So I want to thank all the ambos who were out there, who did an enormous amount of work and who are still doing an enormous amount of work.

A friend of Steve’s and good mate of ours said that it was really hard. In one case it took them two hours to get a victim out of a situation before they could even make a start out on the road to get the person to the Alfred. It was a very complicated job and they needed some extra help so they asked one of the cops to assist. Our friend said, ‘Cops are really good at assisting because they do what you tell them.’ She was very impressed, but at one stage they were a bit worried that the poor police officer assisting was going to be needing support next because, as I said, dealing with these individuals is pretty horrific.

I also want to thank Monash University for donating its Gippsland campus to the support effort. The Gippsland campus at Churchill was under immense threat itself, and the university has donated the area around it to the effort. Support vehicles are stationed there and people are using the accommodation and services at the campus. The community is chipping in. That is what Australia is terrific at doing. I commend everybody.

Support from the Australian community will be vitally important to the rebuilding process. We have already seen a tremendous outpouring of generosity from the community. I thank all those who have contributed to the cause and I urge the public to continue to open their hearts and to give generously. Now more than ever is the time when we need to pull together and offer a helping hand to those so adversely affected by this natural disaster—the worst of its kind in our history. As the Prime Minister mentioned earlier today, we must adopt a common resolve to help these communities to rebuild so that they can re-establish their lives. We must help these families and communities to dust themselves off so that they can get back on their feet. We all know that it will take time and that it will be difficult. The scars and injuries will not heal overnight. Indeed, this will take decades for people to get over. But we also know that Australians stand together when times are tough. We will do whatever it takes to see these communities through this atrocity and support them in their resolve in restoring their livelihoods.

In concluding, I want to call upon all Australians to consider donating blood—not this week but in the weeks to come. The burns victims will need ongoing blood and plasma supplies. So do not just give your blood today; give it into the future because it will be vitally needed in the weeks and months ahead. Some of the Bali bombing victims still require blood products to this day. I want to commend to the House all the fantastic words spoken by all the wonderful people in this place who genuinely do come here to try to make the world a better place.

Danna Vale (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with great sadness that I ask to have my name associated with the words of the Deputy Prime Minister and all other members of the House who have spoken so eloquently on this motion. I wish to express my condolences, and that of my family and of the many families in my electorate of Hughes. The good people of Victoria are facing their darkest hour as they stand against the fury of the worst firestorm recorded in our history. However, the good people of Victoria should be encouraged that they do not stand alone. The rest of Australia is with them in our hearts, in our prayers, in our practical support and in the very physical presence of so many hundreds of volunteers and service agencies.

The sheer terror of this natural phenomenon subdues us all into a shocked silence as we watch the news footage that shows the utter destruction of homes, hamlets and communities. We listen in disbelief to the daily increasing toll of our fellow Australians, and I understand that it is now above 180. While we are fully aware that the fiery month of February brings with it the terror of rampaging bushfires across our wide brown land, the firestorms raging through Victoria are unprecedented and leave us all bereft of the proper words to express our shock and disbelief. Our fellow Australians in Victoria have been on hell’s anvil this week; and, worst of all, it is not over yet. The inferno continues. The firestorm advances on several fronts and we learn that the death toll may reach 200 before it is over, which still may take weeks.

However, where words may fail, the people of Victoria have seen the giant hearts of their fellow Australians as they bolt into action, and in the face of the wrath of outrageous nature so many committed Australians are already lending a helping hand, a broad shoulder or steadfast support. So many of our fellow Australians are living embodiments of the spirit of mateship in the meaning of that true-blue Aussie term.

While I wish to associate myself with all the words of my colleagues who have spoken on this motion, I also wish to acknowledge the fine contribution and tireless commitment of all those involved in assisting the many families to cope with the reality of surviving these firestorms. I include the police, the paramedics, the ambulance service, the doctors, the nurses, the firemen, the Red Cross and the Salvos, to name but a few of the many agencies who are out there in the field lending a very practical and welcome hand to the thousands of victims who are traumatised, homeless and, in some cases, grief stricken at the loss of a loved one.

Further, on behalf of my constituents, I especially wish to thank all those members of volunteer emergency services who put themselves at risk to help their fellow Australians at times of crisis and who now, once again, step up to the plate to serve their local communities. We have all seen footage of those heroic members of the Country Fire Authority, tired and exhausted from hours of fighting the flames of an unforgiving and relentlessly rampaging element. We have all heard that many of these volunteer firefighters from the Victorian CFA have also lost their homes and, in some cases, family members in this firestorm. I also acknowledge the many volunteers, and especially the volunteer firefighters, who have travelled from other states to assist the CFA in this time of great need.

I especially wish to commend the men and women of the Sutherland Shire Rural Fire Service from my electorate of Hughes. Thirty-one volunteers from local rural fire brigades travelled to Victoria last Sunday and have been deployed in the Beechworth area assisting the local CFA brigades. Sutherland shire personnel from Heathcote headquarters, Loftus, Maianbar, Waterfall, Menai, Illawong and Heathcote communications brigade—which, I might add, includes my long-suffering husband, Bob—formed a strike force, lead by team leader Peter Evans, comprising five heavy tankers and the communications operational command vehicle. They were ready to be deployed on the Monday. The team will be relieved this coming Thursday by a further 30 personnel from Sutherland shire brigades. I also acknowledge the work of the personnel who remained at home at the Heathcote fire control headquarters under the leadership of Andrew Pinfold and who continue to work to support all our brigades and personnel in the field.

We are not strangers to the ravages of bushfire in the Sutherland shire. In a beautiful bushland area just south of Sydney, bordering on the Royal National Park and stretching across to the Heathcote National Park and the Holsworthy defence area, the leafy tranquillity of peaceful residential areas between the waters of the Georges, Woronora and Port Hacking rivers belies the very ready threat of bushfire that comes with every summer. Some of the places that I visited once upon a time when I was lucky enough to travel through the Yarra Valley—and I have seen Marysville and the beautiful Healesville area—are very similar to the leafy residential suburbs of my electorate of Hughes, and it is easy to understand how the kind of tranquillity that presents itself in softer climates can turn into an inferno so very quickly.

The people of the Sutherland shire are not strangers to the traumatic loss of life and property which is left in the scorched wake of a rampaging bushfire. As a matter of fact, in the fires of 1994 we lost 94 houses almost in one street, on Woronora Crescent in Jannali. One young mother died in that particular inferno. Indeed, our awareness of the destructive force of fire is the very reason that our communities are protected by 13 brigades under the Heathcote fire control headquarters. Many of the volunteers serving in these brigades represent several generations of family commitment, with many a grandfather serving alongside his grandchildren in the defence of their neighbourhoods and their local communities. To the list of the brigades already mentioned, I would also like to add the brigades from Woronora and Sandy Point in my electorate, as well as the brigades at Kurnell, Bundeena and Grays Point, who serve in the neighbouring electorate of Cook. I also wish to take this opportunity to thank the members of those brigades for their commitment and service to the people of Victoria, as well as their service and commitment to the people of the electorate of Hughes. We are all very much aware that, given the same weather conditions, we could once again find ourselves facing the very same danger as our fellow Australians in Victoria.

I note that the Premier of Victoria has called for a royal commission into the causes of this firestorm, with its unprecedented ferocity and its unprecedented intensity. I sincerely hope that such a commission will provide sound recommendations that will be implemented so that the ferocity and intensity of this firestorm may not occur again. At the very least, we owe such a commitment to the many families who have lost treasured loved ones in this inferno. It is all very well to call for a royal commission, but if its recommendations sit on a shelf somewhere to gather dust then we have failed these Australian families and, worse still, these dark days will be repeated sometime in the future. We all know that there are reports that have taken a lot of time, money and effort, yet, regrettably, their recommendations go unheeded. I do not want to see that happen to this particular report of this Victorian royal commission.

We all clearly understand that we cannot control the weather, the high temperatures or the strong wind velocity, which combine with forest fuels to produce a bushfire. But we can do something about the amount of fuel on the forest floor, about hazard reduction in the winter months and about the amount of red tape that limits the opportunities for our volunteer fire brigades to undertake the appropriate hazard reduction at appropriate times. Local fire authorities should be able to make local decisions about the need for, the time of and the amount of hazard reduction in any given area. This fire is unprecedented. It really is a firestorm, and I do hope that the commission seriously looks at the impediments to appropriate control at the local level by well-trained local bushfire brigades not only in Victoria but also in New South Wales.

I have been very proud of all my parliamentary colleagues this week and of the manner, the sentiment and the tone of the many contributions that they have made in this House. We are united in trying to deal with the enormity of this national tragedy which has become the heartbreak of our nation. But let us continue that unity and all commit to implementing the recommendations of this report when it is handed down. The Nairn inquiry’s report into the Canberra bushfires in 2003 still gathers dust on the shelf, yet there are recommendations in that report on appropriate hazard reduction that have not been implemented anywhere. I also urge everyone in my electorate—and I know that they are noted for their generosity; they have been generous in the past—to dig deep and make contributions to those calling for them. There are many options available to them, and I do urge them to donate. I know that they will. As I said, they have been very generous in the past. But it is with great sadness and, again, with continued disbelief that I join my colleagues in commending this condolence motion to the House.

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like so many other country Victorians, I grew up in the shadow of bushfire. I can remember in primary school learning a bit about Black Friday. I remember reading books by authors like Ivan Southall. Bushfires were so much a part of ordinary rural life when growing up. In my late teens, I spent two summers—two fire seasons—working for the forest commission doing a range of things, including fighting bushfires and experiencing something that is pretty common in rural Victoria. But the events of last weekend and, indeed, more recently—the extraordinary intensity, the severity, the horror that unfolded and all of the appalling consequences that flow for so many families and so many communities—just overwhelm all of that past experience of people like myself and so many others who have grown up in country areas where bushfires are prevalent.

Others have expressed very eloquently the enormity of the tragedy—the heartache, the loss, the emptiness and the suffering that will prevail for so long for so many people and families. On the other side of the ledger, they have spoken of the miraculous escapes, the extraordinary self-sacrifice, the heroism and the dedication of so many people who have worked so hard to keep their fellow human beings safe and to look after their property and animals. I do not wish to reiterate those themes; I think they have been very amply and eloquently expressed by so many of my colleagues. I want to make a few points that arise from the terrible events that we have all experienced or seen in recent days.

First, these experiences touch so many different people and spread so much wider than just those immediately involved. I note the comments by you, Madam Deputy Speaker Burke, about one of your electorate staff. I discovered last night that my daughter’s kindergarten teacher has lost her home—she lives in Strathewen—and my wife is already involved with others in the kindergarten in organising things to assist there. I have been on the phone to my brother quite often in the last few days, because he lives in an area that is now not far away from the latest threat in Healesville. He was up all Saturday night with his wife and two small children, listening to the ABC and scanning the internet, with two suitcases packed, ready to get out of there. These are limited connections with these events, but I have no doubt that most of the members of the Victorian delegation to parliament will have similar connections, some perhaps more telling, and that most Victorians will have connections of some kind to those events and will have people whom they are connected with—people whom they need to help, to worry about or to look after. In a sense, that is a good thing. It means that, for most of us, these events are extraordinarily immediate and familiar in so many terrible ways. They are connected to us and to our communities, even for people who, like me, are in and represent the centre of Melbourne.

The second point that I want to make is that already we are seeing a wide variety of arguments, understandably, about these events emerge in the community—about what went wrong, what bad decisions were made or who is to blame. That is understandable, but I urge people to exercise restraint and withhold judgment, because it will be quite some time before we are in a position to truly understand where blame should be allocated, if it should be allocated, and what the factors are that have caused so many deaths. All of these things are quite complex, and inevitably you are seeing some people emerge who are running particular themes which may or may not have some merit but which happen to be themes that they hold dear irrespective of whether or not these events had occurred.

Whether it is the level of back-burning, whether it is planning issues and whether people should be allowed to have homes in areas that are exposed to such bushfire risk, whether it is the fire plans and arrangements and the instructions people are given and how well they are implemented by the CFA, whether it is climate change or whether it is arson—we saw today the member for Mallee get up and point out that what was originally thought to be arson in the case of the Horsham fire has turned out to be the product of a faulty insulator on a power pole, apparently—it is extremely important that we withhold judgment on all of these matters. By all means, raise questions, but it will be some time before we can draw conclusions. I think, out of respect for those who have lost their lives and property and for those close to them, we should all avoid drawing firm and unduly emphatic conclusions that may happen to suit things we are predisposed to believing anyway before having seen all the evidence and having understood all that has gone on.

I have been involved in controlled burning—many, many years ago—so I have got some idea of what a complex thing that is and also of how risky it is. It seems like a great idea to start a fire in October or November in a very thickly forested or overgrown area in order to reduce the fuel, but sometimes it does not quite work out as you intend. These things involve very difficult judgements; they involve very tricky questions for the authorities concerned. So, again, I would urge people to avoid drawing conclusions too early.

The third point I want to make is to commend all of those people and organisations throughout Australia—particularly in Victoria, most obviously, but throughout Australia and, indeed, in some other parts of the world—who are already stepping up and offering to help. For example, I note that the AFL has rescheduled the NAB Cup game that was scheduled to occur between my team, Essendon, and the Western Bulldogs in Darwin. That is now going to be held on Friday at Telstra Dome with all of the people involved donating their services and all the proceeds to go to the fire appeal. I also commend Channel 7, Foxtel and AUSTAR for televising that. I am going to be attending that game representing the government. So that is just one example—and you can already see such examples across corporate Australia, amongst ordinary citizens and in workplaces—of how people are stepping up to help in all kinds of ways. It is a good example of just how Australians do come together and work for each other when things are so difficult.

The fourth thing I would like to mention—and again this follows on a little bit from what you, Madam Deputy Speaker Burke, in your capacity as member for Chisholm, talked about before—is that many people have quite correctly acknowledged the CFA volunteers and the extraordinary sacrifices they make and risks they take, even to the extent of one or two individuals actually fighting fires in one location while they were losing homes, or even loved ones, in another. I certainly endorse all those comments. But I do want to add something, because I think there is a group of people who are often overlooked. Alongside those CFA volunteers there are large numbers of employees of the Department of Sustainability and Environment whose job it is to look after the bush, to step in and fight fires, to put their lives on the line, to work around the clock—to do all kinds of extraordinary things to keep people safe. They, too, make an extraordinary contribution. They are the professional foresters, the bulldozer drivers, the labourers, the variety of people who work for the state government who are always in the front-line of dealing with these things whenever there is a bushfire, and I think it is extremely important that we acknowledge their heroism and dedication, as we acknowledge that of the volunteers. I might add to that that we acknowledge the dedication and bravery of the other professional services, whether police, ambulance or the various others who are also involved. It is worth emphasising that this is a team effort. Even when you are dealing with relatively modest bushfires that threaten property but perhaps do not threaten life, you will have both CFA volunteers and professional firefighters—including, in this instance, metropolitan firefighters as well. It is important that we acknowledge both of those groups because both of them are crucial to the effort.

Finally, can I give some hint of optimism in all of this. When you see those terrible aerial photos of communities like Marysville, Kinglake, Strathewen or elsewhere, it is hard not to think that these places will never recover or that it will take decades. It will happen a lot quicker than that. I was fortunate to be a part-owner of a home in Aireys Inlet many years ago, well before I became a member of parliament—in fact, well before I owned any other kind of property. I bought that property about six or seven years after the Ash Wednesday fires had completely devastated Aireys Inlet. This house had not been burned down, but much of Aireys Inlet had—it was one of the key locations of the Ash Wednesday fires. Within six or seven years, you would barely have known that. As somebody who did not know the history, there was nothing obvious about this community to tell me that this place six or seven years ago had been three-quarters wiped out by bushfire.

I believe that these communities, with the dedication of their people and with the support of the rest of the Australian community, the federal government and the Victorian government, will recover physically and will re-establish themselves much more quickly than we might have expected at the peak of such a terrible event. We can have cause for optimism that economically and physically that recovery will be quicker than we might have expected. The emotional scars and traumas in those communities and people connected with them are a different matter.

I conclude by reference to what is, perhaps, my favourite piece of poetry which I think epitomises the Australian character and how we are both competitive and cooperative and shows how we get the balance right in conducting ourselves in moments of enormous trauma and tragedy when coming together and helping—leaving other things aside—really asserts itself. It is the Henry Lawson poem called The fire at Ross’s farm, in which, for those who do not know it, the squatter and the selector, great 19th-century symbols of antagonism and opposition, because they were fighting over the same land, were in perpetual feud. In the final part of the poem there is a fire on the selector’s farm and at the conclusion of the poem the squatter and his son go to help the selector—the selector he is trying to get rid of and get off the land—put out the fire. That epitomises how the Australian community deals with these kinds of things when all other antagonisms, all other conflicts, legitimate though they often may be, are set aside and people just step up to the plate and do what is necessary to help the people who are in such terrible difficulties.

We are already seeing that again and I think you will see it much more in ensuing weeks and months. That is what gives me great confidence that, notwithstanding the unbelievable enormity of these events, the appalling tragedy and loss of life, and the mass psychological damage that has inevitably emerged, those communities will recover and the people affected will recover better and quicker we can conceivably imagine at this stage. We have done it before. This is a bigger challenge for our community than equivalent things in the past, but that recovery will come. We have to believe in that. We are committing the practical things, with the support of the opposition, and I am sure the same thing is occurring at the state level. But more than that the recovery of the spirit, the recovery of optimism and commitment to get on with things, will see us through quicker and more strongly than we would perhaps expect.

Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise with an incredibly heavy heart to support this condolence motion. I can recall as a 20-year-old living in Adelaide during Ash Wednesday staring up into the hills of Adelaide, beautiful hills that they are, and watching them ablaze. The heat was unbelievable. I think it was close to 44 degrees with a very hot north wind. I recall hearing news reports about the loss of life and devastation of township communities up in the Adelaide Hills. When it was safe to do so weeks down the track, I drove into the Adelaide Hills and saw the absolute devastation that had occurred throughout those hills. As a 20-year-old that sticks in your mind.

I had relatives who lived in a township called Bridgewater, which had been affected by the Ash Wednesday fires. They told me how the fires, when they were attempting to fight them, would leap across houses. Their house was safe, but they had watched the fire jump from one house to another and completely demolish it. That is the precarious nature of these events and their incredible force—the sound like a freight train, the wind, the speed at which the fire comes up a hill. Reading about the devastation in Victoria and Adelaide I thought and hoped—foolishly perhaps, as a 20-year-old—that we would never see the likes of Ash Wednesday in this country again. Tragically, we have, in an even more awful way. So it is devastating to stand here and talk about these circumstances and the loss of life that has occurred. There are no words to adequately express the personal shock and the community sorrow over the loss of life in my now home state of Victoria on Saturday, 7 February.

The countryside, which many members have eloquently referred to, the picturesque villages and the idyllic landscape where many people had holiday experiences have been obliterated in an instant. For many, those areas of natural beauty and serenity were a canvas on which they crafted happy lives and even happier memories. This is a canvas that is now charred, a scene of unprecedented loss of life, human and animal, and of property, with hundreds of homes simply gone. By a terrible act of nature, townships on our local maps are no longer there. They have been razed.

At this moment there are places that used to be townships that are now remnants of townships—places like Marysville and Kinglake. Some are saying—I have heard some of the commentary in the media—that these places will never be built again. Like the member for Melbourne and others, I do not believe this, because I saw what happened after Ash Wednesday in the Adelaide Hills. I doubt it because in this country you can never write off the triumph of the human spirit, the strength of resolve, the stoicism, courage and inventiveness for which Australians are famous. As our Prime Minister said in the parliament today, we are going to rebuild our broken, devastated communities, brick by brick, community hall by community hall and school building by school building. Mark my words, we are going to rebuild.

Australians reading the morning papers, watching the horror of these events on television or listening to radio—774 in particular, by the sound of it—have learned that there are potentially hundreds dead and missing, yet such numbers remain incomprehensible. How can we possibly comprehend 200 people lying dead in these townships? It is simply incomprehensible. It is as though this cannot be happening. Would that by wishing we could make it go away. Tragically, we cannot.

My thoughts and prayers and those of my family are with the many thousands of Australians touched by this tragedy. There are about 5,000 people who are homeless, at this stage, as a consequence of this tragedy. In particular, our thoughts are with the honourable members for Bendigo, Gippsland, Indi, Mallee, McEwen, McMillan, Wannon and the thousands of their constituents who have been left destitute or bereaved by these fires. Further to that, I would like to praise the work of two Victorian state members whose constituents have been hit hardest by this catastrophe: Ben Hardman, the member for Seymour; and Danielle Green, the member for Yan Yean. As I understand it, fires are also burning across the New South Wales border in the Bega Valley, so I extend our best wishes and prayers to the staff and volunteers of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service, my friend the member for Eden-Monaro and his constituents.

Australians, as we know, are by their nature generous people and ready friends when the going gets tough. As a nation, we have shown this time and time again. From domestic crises such as the Ash Wednesday bushfires and the Thredbo tragedy to natural disasters abroad such as the Boxing Day tsunami, we band together to lend a helping hand to those in need. However, we are unused to tragedy at home on this scale; we need to be frank about this. That in our most densely populated state, despite all the best laid plans and preparations, so many people have died whilst protecting their homes, their families, their photos—everything that is dear to them; in essence, everything that represents who they are in this world—is heartbreaking.

I am taking advantage of the time here, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I would like to thank you for your indulgence, but you listen to people who have been affected and it is absolutely heartbreaking. There was a gentleman who was watering what was left of his home in one of the townships that had been destroyed, and Sky TV came and interviewed him. They said, ‘How do you feel?’ He said, ‘How do I feel? I don’t know what to do. I’ve lost everything—my possessions, my future, my school.’ He just about broke down. As he was about to continue, he said, ‘But I’m worried about my mate. He’s been fighting bushfires and I don’t know what he’s going to come back to.’ What other way could you summarise the Australia spirit? In the midst of losing absolutely everything, you have that quintessential Australian spirit of thinking about your mate and how that person is coping and feeling? It is just a small sign of the greatness of the Australian spirit that comes through in these times of adversity and that I know will see us through this great catastrophe.

Victorian Premier John Brumby, clearly moved by Saturday’s catastrophe, has rightly announced that a royal commission will determine whether more could have been done to save lives and whether or not the policy of allowing residents to defend their homes in the face of encroaching fires will stand. But we will leave that to the royal commission. I confidently predict one finding: Victorians faced a perfect storm and all the emergency services did a brilliant job in trying to subdue it, at the risk of their lives. At times like this the issue is not that we mourn the loss of one life here more than the loss of lives overseas but rather that it often takes the immediacy of witnessing or hearing of suffering of our own neighbours in our own backyard for us to be alive to the risks to our way of life that exist at home. For causes near or far, Australians are typically generous, with estimates this morning of around $20 million already pledged to victims of the fires. I am sure there will be much more to come.

I would like to echo the comments of the Prime Minister on Monday’s Today program when he rightly said: ‘The challenge at present is to provide the hand and the heart of human friendship to those suffering from both loss and grief at this difficult time.’ As you have said very eloquently, Madam Deputy Speaker Burke, this grief and loss will last. This is not a short-term thing. You do not lose everything in your life—your loved ones; your whole identity—and expect that to go away. We need to be there providing support to these people for five years, 10 years, 15 years or however long it takes because they are going to need our support for that period of time, particularly those who have experienced burns, as you have mentioned Madam Deputy Speaker, and who will suffer post-traumatic stress due to some of the horror stories I have heard emerging. They basically will need intense counselling for a long period of time. We have to rebuild hope, and I hope what people take from the unanimity of spirit within this place that we have seen over the past couple of days is that we are united, we do stand behind those affected by the bushfires and we will continue to do whatever it takes.

Whilst no suffering can compare to the staggering loss of life, the immediate threat posed by Saturday’s hellish conditions was not lost on the residents and CFA volunteers in Holt. On Saturday several major fires started in my electorate, which is one of the most densely populated areas in Melbourne, with a number of families sadly losing their homes. In and around the suburb of Narre Warren North, just outside my electorate, 184 hectares were consumed by fire. Two houses and garages and a heritage listed caretaker’s hut were destroyed on a day that saw temperatures in the area reach 47.1 degrees with wind gusts up to 100 kilometres per hour. Thirty-nine CFA vehicles were on hand to battle the blaze. I am reliably informed that, without the further assistance of the Erickson Skycrane and a helitanker, the damage done by this fire would have been much worse. The sight of this help from the sky, in Holt and all over Victoria this past weekend, is nothing less than a gift from heaven to firefighters giving their all in the most appalling conditions imaginable. The fire in question is still burning, as has been mentioned by the member for La Trobe, but I am advised that it has been contained.

A CFA strike team and the local Narre Warren CFA fire brigade are working around the clock, monitoring the fire and preventing a revisiting of Saturday’s horror in the areas already destroyed by fire. I salute, and I hope we all do, the enterprise and ingenuity of local firefighters, who, without appliances, arrived in their own cars and, using a garden hose they had brought themselves, assisted with the fire-fighting effort—and it was 47 degrees when they were doing this.

Additionally, there was another fire that was started on Saturday, in and around Narre Warren South. It destroyed six homes whilst a further seven homes were significantly damaged. The fire burned under high-voltage transmission lines at Ormond Road and threatened and many more are homes in the area. Narre Warren South is a very densely populated area. The fire was contained as a result of the hard work of a metropolitan fire brigade strike team that was diverted to Narre Warren South whilst en route to yet another fire. Without the help of the metropolitan fire board, it is likely that there would have been far more widespread property loss, as the local CFA fire brigades were stretched to the limits across the local area and the state. Sadly, however, a local CFA member’s house was amongst those destroyed in the fire, with the Hampton Park brigade doing all they could to provide assistance at this time.

The Mayor of the City of Casey, Councillor Geoff Ablett, has informed me that the council has swiftly provided clothing, counselling and accommodation to those affected by the fire, even as council staff feared for their own homes also under threat. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Geoff and the Casey council staff for helping those affected at this terrible time.

A fire also began in Cranbourne on the fringe of a major road that runs through my electorate, the South Gippsland Highway, which turned into a substantial grassfire on the Cranbourne golf course and the landfill. As a result, the highway was closed owing to the considerable danger to motorists posed by the thick smoke. There exists concern that this fire may have been the result of a flicked cigarette butt or a similar ignition source from the highway. Despite no property or life being lost in this fire, the stretched resources of emergency services on Melbourne’s hottest ever day meant that every fire truck that could have been saving lives or homes elsewhere was instead fighting a grassfire set off by a cigarette butt in Cranbourne.

This sort of irresponsibility—or could I call it criminality—is nothing short of disgusting. In this vein, I would like to join with my colleagues the Attorney-General and the Prime Minister in condemning any suspects found to have deliberately lit fires on Saturday as murderers. Some eight years ago, Don Watson, the author and former speechwriter of Prime Minister Paul Keating, criticised the term ‘un-Australian’. While some may say it is in an inelegant epithet, just because it is not pretty does not make it inappropriate. The behaviour of those individuals who we believe started some of these fires is utterly devoid of humanity and is completely un-Australian. These people deserve the term ‘un-Australian’. In fact, Mike Rann went further in dubbing these people terrorists. Like I said, I have a personal opinion aside from the Prime Minister’s; they are cold-blooded, shameless murderers. I have great faith that the men and women of the Victorian Police Force and the Australian Federal Police, some of whom have the heart-wrenching task of searching for and identifying victims of what is now called Black Saturday, will hold these individuals to account.

To sum up, the brigades in my electorate that have taken part in the fire-fighting effort over the past few days included Cranbourne, Hallam, Hampton Park, Narre Warren North and Narre Warren. The brigades in the electorate have, in addition to fire-fighting duties within Holt, sent strike teams to other parts of Melbourne and regional Victoria such as Healesville, Yarra Glen and Bunyip. Staff of the metropolitan fire brigade are to be commended for their assistance to the CFA, with MFB staff stepping up to the CFA stations, enabling more CFA staff and volunteers to join strike teams despite the huge demands already placed on the MFB dealing with the increased fire risks all around Melbourne and the deployment of strike teams to rural fires. The pilots of various airborne fire-fighting apparatus flying in extremely windy, hot conditions and dealing with reduced visibility were nothing less than miracle workers. CFA staff and volunteers who fought long and hard to protect the homes of others whilst their homes were potentially at risk must be thanked last but certainly not least.

In 44-degree heat on 30 January—just prior to Black Saturday—with conditions made worse by strong winds, local CFA brigades battled a large fire in Endeavour Hills, which is not far from my home in my electorate. Following the collision of two cars, one car caught fire. The fire spread to over 45 hectares of grassland and threatened hundreds of homes and the Churchill Park Golf Club. More than 350 firefighters—not only CFA staff and volunteers but the MFB, the Department of Sustainability and Environment, and Parks Victoria staff—battled to keep the blaze under control, and they did in about three hours. So for every one of the fires we have seen, we should think about the number of fires that have actually been put out by these incredibly brave people.

They seem to have no respite, given the current set of circumstances. In circumstances like this I cannot help but admire the strength and courage of the CFA firefighters, the emergency service workers, the police and the ambulance service workers who literally put their lives on the line in order to protect us. They do this at great personal cost and really not for great financial reward. These heroes could be spending the weekend safe in the care of their families or their mates at home instead of defending homes in record heat and in conditions that you and I can scarcely envisage or perhaps even survive in. So much of the fire-fighting phrasebook sounds awfully glib or euphemistic with terms like ‘asset protection’. However cliche the comparisons between the havoc wrought by the fire and the damage done in a war there is a sad truth to it, and that is that people can die in these sets of circumstances.

I would also like to thank all of the employers in my electorate and throughout Victoria who have supported their staff who volunteer with the local CFA brigades. You do your community and the people of your state an invaluable service. Although times are tough, I urge all employers to continue to support their staff who are giving their time and risking their lives to help others. Whilst I hear the weather has been quite cool in Melbourne and in many parts of Victoria since Sunday—a state of affairs that is naturally unheard of down south and could not contrast more with Saturday’s heat—the danger to many areas remains very real and the need for volunteers remains great.

I think I speak on behalf of all members of the House in expressing a prayer that, being ever mindful of the continuing risk that some of the fires still burning present, the services of our brave firefighters, police and emergency services will not be required in this way again this summer or for that matter ever again in our nation’s future. We must learn the terrible lessons of this holocaust of fire and, united as a nation, take whatever action is necessary to wipe the scourge of bushfires from our harsh and beautiful land and confine the horrors of the last weekend to the dusty books of history.

Sharon Grierson (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This has been a very inspiring, heartfelt and unifying debate, and I move:

That the debate be adjourned.

Question agreed to.