Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to give voice to a considerable number of my constituents in the northernmost part of my electorate in the Torres Strait. I refer to some 1,000 to 1,500 permanent residents in a series of islands in the northern part of the state. There are the four coral islands of Iama, Poruma, Masig and Warraber, and then you have the two mud islands—which are quite close to the mainland of Papua New Guinea—Saibai and Boigu. For a considerable time, these islands have been suffering significantly from flooding. In the case of the two mud islands, we have a situation where we have deteriorating seawalls, infrastructure which has been there for well over 40 years. The extreme elements in that area have seen those walls start to deteriorate and be breached by the sea. As a consequence, we now find that, with every king tide, all of those homes are being washed out completely. This has a massive effect on these communities.

We have to understand that the total inundation contaminates their fresh water supply and sewerage system and means things like a high risk of Japanese encephalitis and the increased risk of other diseases like meningitis—not to mention illnesses in relation to youngsters, such as diarrhoea and other serious health problems. They have been pleading for years to have this matter addressed, so much so that the Mayor of the Torres Strait Island Regional Council, Mr Fred Gela, actually commissioned a report, which was completed, I think, in 2007, in which he figured that the community itself had to identify a way to have this fixed. The report suggested that, for an investment of $22 million, all of these communities could have their problems addressed in relation to inundation by seawater. To date, the report has been ignored—totally ignored.

During the last election campaign, I was proud to be able to announce that a coalition government, recognising the urgency of the issue, would put in $22 million over two years. The problem would have been addressed and resolved, and of course my constituents were very pleased with that. Unfortunately, we did not get into government, and it seems to me that, in spite of commitments by the Labor government that this matter would be addressed, it is still on the backburner. As recently as a few weeks ago, these communities were once again flooded.

We have seen the trauma of what happened in the south-east corner, extending right down the eastern seaboard into Victoria, and how people were affected by floods. Why would it be any different for these 1,500 residents? They are being impacted the same way, and not once but year after year. Why is their plight any different? This government has now introduced a flood levy to help people affected by the floods, particularly in the south-east corner of Queensland, to address this—but there is no mention of the people affected by flood in the Torres Strait. It seems that they are totally forgotten in this whole debate, and I found that quite outrageous.

I was with the mayor of the Saibai council just before Christmas, Mr Ron Enosa. He took me for a drive to the leeside of his island and I was disturbed and absolutely dismayed to find so many of their graves in their cemetery washed into the ocean. Could you imagine the outrage if a cemetery in Sydney or Melbourne or Brisbane was washed into the sea? This is what is happening on Saibai Island today. This is not just a new phenomenon, this has been happening for a number of years. The problem is that you cannot get all of the television stations or the major newspapers up there, and it seems to me that this government only reacts to a sensational headline or a lead seven-minute grab on the television and then, as soon as it is over, they forget it exists. But these people have real needs and the option that we have, unfortunately, is one that really should not be contemplated.

I know that the Labor Party has attacked us on many occasions in relation to the way we deal with Indigenous issues. You may recall the Bringing them home report, the stolen generations, the forceful removal of Indigenous people. We are now at a stage where we are going to have to forcefully remove whole communities from these places and find somewhere else for them on mainland Australia. At the same time, we are running around talking about foreign aid for climate issues in relation to the Pacific Islands that are being affected and throwing taxpayers’ money at them. Great, but what about our own backyard? How is it going to impact on these families who have culturally and traditionally lived in these communities forever? Where are we going to put them? How is it going to impact on the native title rights of other individuals when we relocate what are sea people onto the mainland? What is going to happen to all of these cemeteries as they are being washed away? Their connection with their ancestors, their connection with those they have lost.

Mr Deputy Speaker, how would you feel if you knew that your grandparents and your children and your other relatives’ graves are being washed out to sea where you have no way to visit them? That is what is happening on Saibai today. And we start to look at this, we take these people and forcefully remove them—I am telling you, a lot of the oldies do not want to go, and they will not go. It will be a forced removal. We will rob them of their culture and their homeland. We will force them into somebody else’s community, as we have done before. Fortunately, there was some cooperation with places like Seisia and Bamaga where some people came from Saibai down to there. We had another situation down on Lockhart River. This is very different though. These people are being dragged away because of something that is absolutely and totally avoidable, for the sake of a $22 million investment to rebuild these walls that should have been done years ago as they started to deteriorate. The fact is they do not have access to mainstream media and they cannot get the pressure of a television news story—which is very graphic, I can assure you, when you stand there watching tombstones that are very important people. Strategically we are talking about islands that are three kilometres from the mainland of Papua New Guinea. These islands are strategically very important to us, and we can not afford to be in a situation where we have to forcefully remove those entire populations and relocate them.

So what I am saying in this motion is that I am desperately trying to give a voice to those forgotten people in the furthermost regions of Australia. They are as much Australians as those people affected by the floods in Brisbane, in Victoria or in New South Wales. They are entitled to exactly the same consideration as those people in Queensland—they are in fact part of Queensland. The difference is they have been suffering for three, four or five years now, not from a single phenomenon, and they are entitled to have the same value put on their homes, on their communities and on their cemeteries. They have a right to be able to visit the resting place of their people, their ancestors from time immemorial. We cannot sit back and allow this devastation to continue, this sacrilege of very special places for these people. I am pleading with this government to commit the $22 million now, not to wait for another election cycle, because I can assure you this side of the parliament is already committed to making it happen. Why should we see more of those cemeteries washed away? Why should we see more of these kids suffering from diarrhoea, japanese encephalitis or these other things because of this totally unsuitable situation? Water contamination from sewage is totally inappropriate and we should not even be contemplating the thought of forcefully removing these families because the government sits on its hands and does nothing. (Time expired)

Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to begin by commending for a short moment the motion moved by the member for Leichhardt, who just spoke, in relation to the plight of the people of the Torres Strait Islands. I think everyone in this House would agree that in some parts of Northern Queensland and closer to Papua New Guinea the people of the Torres Strait do do it tough and have for many years been affected by flooding. They have a whole range of very complex problems that they are facing and it is good to hear that people do stand up and have a voice so that we can actually look at better ways to address some of the complex problems. But I will criticise the member, just for two things. One is that he oversimplified the problem by just playing a simple game of blaming government. If you are going to do this then do it properly. The member smiles and I know why he does. If you are going to do it, just do it properly and be genuine and sincere about being a voice—

Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Entsch interjecting

Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, it’s you that doesn’t get it. If you are sincere about being a voice then do it properly. Come into this place and bring people with you, because there are people who will understand and be sympathetic and who will want to assist you. But oversimplifying the issue and overdoing the rhetoric does not actually help your cause. You would be better off trying to find some of the solutions to the complex problems that are faced by people genuinely in need in that area. We all understand that. But you are just coming in here bleating about blaming government and saying, ‘If only we’d spend $22 million all the problems would be fixed.’ I think the problems are just a little bit more complex than that.

Trying to portray that this government is doing nothing is completely wrong. It is completely false. In fact, there is quite a bit happening. But before I get onto what we are actually doing let me say that I do not want to diminish or in any way simplify the very real problems that people in the Torres Strait Islands face. As we have all experienced recently, particularly in Queensland but in other parts of Australia—and for that matter the rest of the world—flooding devastation and other natural disasters are a real problem and they really do affect people in enormous ways. In my electorate alone, in a part of the world where we do not expect flooding, certainly not on a regular basis, the recent Queensland floods were an enormous thing to bear. So I can imagine what it must be like for the people up in the Torres Strait, where they face this flooding every single year—in fact more than once a year, as I understand it, with tidal surges and a range of other inundation problems.

But the problems are very different. In the member’s motion he states that there should not be any discrimination and people should be treated alike. Hear, hear! Absolutely. I completely agree, but we also need to recognise that we are facing very different problems. It is not a one in 100 year flood that we are facing or a very unusual and rare event caused by a whole range of matters in Queensland that we are still dealing with. In the Torres Strait, in the particular islands that the member mentioned, we are talking about regular flooding—flooding more than once a year, in fact, on a regular basis. So we need to look at the underlying issues. If I read it correctly, this motion talks about climate change. It really does look at what is happening with rising sea levels, what is impacting on those particular islands. I find it a little bit disingenuous. I understand the member is serious and is sincere about wanting to help people up in the north and in the Torres Strait—I do accept that. I do not challenge that. But he is being a little bit insincere in the way he portrays this and does not even address or deal with the issue of climate change.

If we are going to look seriously at these matters, something that the Labor Party has been talking about for many years is the real risk to low-lying islands and particularly the people in the Torres Strait, who will be the first people affected by climate change and rising sea levels. Yet it is only this government that is prepared to step up and make some tough decisions and tough choices about doing something about that for the long term. We are not just fixing a wall for the short term but actually looking beyond that, beyond what a seawall or other minor infrastructure changes might do today. We are looking to the future and looking at how we can actually do something about climate change more globally. To me, nothing speaks more of our understanding of the need to take some action, to help these people in the Torres Strait, than what we are trying to do about climate change. We are trying to at least pull back, trying to do our bit, because Australia will be the most affected country in the world. Australia will be the one that has the highest price to pay, and it will not be people where the good member lives who pay. It will not be the people living where he lives or where I live, particularly, who will pay, but it will be people on the low-lying outer islands, in the regions and in those coastal communities. Those who are at the lowest sea levels will pay the highest price.

The member used some very emotive language. He talked about a range of issues. I would say to him that I understand how difficult, how emotive it must be for people to be forcibly removed, but I do not know that this government was forcibly removing anybody. Perhaps he might want to rethink the forcible removal that he is proposing, because it is certainly not a policy of this government to forcibly remove anybody. We are there to assist people. There are a number of programs in place and we are spending some money to try to deal with these problems, but forcibly removing people? It might be the member’s idea or the member’s policy but it is certainly not this government’s policy.

He talked about the graves and the homes and Indigenous people’s rights, and I agree that I would be devastated if my home were in a low-lying region that is now being overrun by rising sea levels. You would want to be doing something about that, absolutely, and you would want to be working with that community, not against that community. You would not want to be forcibly removing anybody, but you would want to be working with that community, and that is exactly what this government is doing. We are more than aware of the problem of coastal erosion and inundation facing the Torres Strait Island communities and we have already funded work to assess the risks and identify adaptation options in some of those communities, because you just cannot go in with a heavy hand. You cannot just go in and forcibly remove people. That might be the policy of the coalition and of the member, but it is not the policy of this government. So while inundation is being experienced, and it is consistent with what we have been saying for a number of years about climate change, I do not see any support for asking: how do we start to pull that back? There are specific responses that can be made.

There is also a need to understand that a flood in South-East Queensland is nothing like and has no relationship to inundation, rising sea levels or other complex flooding experiences that occur in that part of the world. This government is addressing some key issues in making sure we better understand those sea levels and have proper projections so that, if there are to be seawalls, we know what height they should be. Perhaps we should not just go and build them to a certain height, whatever it might be, only to find out in a season’s time that it was actually the wrong height or in the wrong place, not where it was supposed to be. Of course, it is always easy for members to be very critical, to heap on plenty of rhetoric, to oversimplify complex problems and to say somebody else should pay for the issue. The government has already provided some $400,000 for new research into the impacts of climate change on the Torres Strait Island communities, to see how we can develop strategies to better assist those communities. The Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs is also working jointly—that’s right, a foreign concept—with that community through the Torres Strait Regional Authority. We have given them a further $1 million for the operation and maintenance of regional tidal gauge networks. We are trying to better understand the things that are happening in those communities so we can actually deal with them properly, deal with them in a measured way.

I go back to where I started. I commend the member for Leichhardt for being a voice—and I say that genuinely. It is his community, it is his electorate and he ought to be doing that. That is his role. That is what he ought to be coming into this place to do. But, if you are going to do it, bring people with you. We feel for those people too. We want more to be done. But let us go through it properly. Let us make sure that we can organise it around what really ought to happen rather than just what the member thinks ought to happen. Then, if he is serious about helping those communities into the long term, he should look at starting to address the single biggest problem that those communities face in the Torres Strait, and that is rising sea levels as a matter of climate change.

These are recent events. These are events that have happened in the last 20, 30 and 40 years. They are complex problems. They are not problems that can be just washed away, as it were, by merely saying, ‘A little bit more money here and we will patch up a few tidal walls and the problem will go away.’ I am sad to say that the problem probably will not go away. It is a problem that will last for some time and we ought to do something about it in a serious manner.

I too think this is an important matter. I too think that the people of the Torres Strait, their homes, their graves, their communities and their rights are as valuable as anyone else’s in Australia. We ought to be doing as much as we can up there to assist them, but we ought to do it properly and we ought to do it in conjunction with the community and with the cooperation of the community. We ought to make sure that proper adaptation principles are used up there and that we respect people’s rights. Where we can be of assistance we should be, and we should make sure that we work with the local Torres Strait Regional Authority. That is the proper course of action. That is the way that this government will act to continue to do its work properly. (Time expired)

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I strongly support the private member’s motion moved today by Mr Entsch, the member for Leichhardt. I could not agree with it more. Let me say that the coalition strongly supports it. It is of critical concern that we make sure that all Australians can live in safety. Certainly there is an issue of climate change. The coalition has a detailed strategy to address climate change. But if you just have that ethereal look and a lot of theory about what could happen with climate change and you have a carbon tax agenda and ignore at the same time the fact that there are communities being inundated as we speak in our Torres Strait Islands, with their sea walls disappearing, then how good is this government? It is ignoring a problem that can be fixed with some cement and mortar and some heavy machinery. It is a job that could be done tomorrow.

But what we are hearing from the government, as we just heard from the member for Oxley, who was speaking before me, is: ‘Let’s think about climate change. Let’s not think about the six low-lying outer islands in the Torres Strait, which for four years have lived with the dangers of sea inundation and island flooding.’ They have watched their cemeteries wash away. Their children’s health has been jeopardised by contaminated water and difficulties with mosquitoes and other water related conditions because the government has failed to do the simplest thing, which is to repair inadequate, partly destroyed sea walls—40-year-old sea walls.

Let us do the job that is immediately demanding action. Let us do it right now. Let us listen to the member for Leichhardt. As he said, the coalition have committed the funding but we are not, unfortunately, going to be in government in the next few months. Therefore, this government needs to adopt the actions that the member who moved this motion has identified. It is not rocket science. It is a matter of equity and justice for people who deserve better.

No-one in the opposition is surprised by Labor’s neglect of these remoter communities, these non-metropolitan communities. As the member for Leichhardt said, they are beyond the Canberra press gallery’s immediate and easy reach, beyond the daily metropolitan newspapers and beyond the electronic media’s interest. When you have issues that are a little bit further away than Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane then you struggle for attention from this government. That is simply not fair and it is un-Australian.

Labor stopped the funding of Landcare. People on the other side might say: ‘What the heck does that matter? What’s Landcare?’ Landcare was a 25-year-old program which was keeping environmental services going in our country. It managed weeds, feral animals and biodiversity. It was abolished without even an apology from the Labor government. The Natural Heritage Trust also disappeared.

But one of the worst was the independent youth allowance for rural and regional students. Again, the government of today has said: ‘Well, you know, it doesn’t really matter. Those kids, if they’re smart enough, will get to uni somehow.’ The realities are that country kids, those beyond the tram tracks, those beyond the green and leafy suburbs, are now deferring going to university at rates of twice those of metropolitan students. That is the erosion of the next generation of professionals in Australia. It is kids who on merit had places in universities but could not afford to go. The rate of university deferral in country Victoria has gone up to 15.2 per cent in 2010, while in the same year city deferrals are only seven per cent in Victoria. That means the rate of deferrals in country Victoria is double. And, of those who defer, only three out of 10 ever go back to take up the study option. That is another example of how this government turns and looks the other way when it comes to the needs of people beyond the metropolitan Australian populations. It is just not fair.

Then we go back again to this issue of serious flooding in the Torres Strait Islands. They have had violent storms, tidal surges, and you can imagine the terror of those populations during the recent cyclones that wiped out so much of Queensland—and of course south-east Queensland suffered dreadfully with their floods. We have had all those losses of lives. You can imagine the terror of being on a small, low-lying island like Saibai as those king tides, those violent storms, washed through and over their inadequate 40-year-old walls. I cannot imagine the terror of having that occur—and both the state and federal governments were looking the other way.

I am all for the support that is now being given particularly to flood affected victims in south-east Queensland. The coalition does not object to that. In fact we support that level of financial assistance to put farmers back on their feet, to put community non-government organisations back on their feet and to help local government. We wonder, though, why that same generosity of spirit does not extend to other parts of Australia like the Torres Strait but also like my electorate in northern Victoria, where I too saw floods devastate my communities. Over 80,000 hectares of field crops and 120,000 tonnes of hay and silage are gone, over 330,000 chooks, hens, were killed and over 11,000 sheep were destroyed. This is also devastation, but we have not had much media attention.

Today Prince William is going to one of the small communities still under water in northern Victoria. We hope that therefore the media entourage will take a good look at what it means to live in Benjeroop right now, a month after the flood but still with six inches of water through your house. We hope he will bring some attention to the problem, but what we want is the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and the Labor government to focus on it too. We want them to announce that part D of the natural disaster funding that is available in south-east Queensland is also available in Victoria. We want to see the state government of Victoria—which unfortunately has inherited a budget with a lot fewer dollars in it than it anticipated from the recently departed Labor state government—hand in hand with the federal government of Australia, saying, ‘Yes, we’ve got to restore those rural communities in northern Victoria, just like the Queensland government is being helped with south-east Queensland.’ Too often, we are ‘out of sight, out of mind’.

We have seen the government weep crocodile tears for low-lying Pacific islands—and we join with them in saying that places like Kiribati have serious problems. But why would you be sad and put some dollars into assisting low-lying Pacific islands when your own Australian populations on the Torres Strait are having those same devastating experiences of king tides and so on? They are being ignored.

Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They’re in the Pacific.

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They are in the Pacific; their one problem is that they hold Australian citizenship. It seems that you do not get as many brownie points if you are the foreign affairs minister or the minister for community services if you are helping your own, your Torres Strait Islander communities, compared to being out there saying to the Pacific islanders, ‘Yes, you need a hand too.’ That is not good enough.

We have a two-speed economy developing in Australia of the rural areas and metropolitan Australia. We have a back being turned on communities that are in enormous need but sadly are not on tram tracks, not in suburbia and not in CBDs of capital cities. We cannot continue in Australia to have our values of a fair go, with everybody paying their taxes—for example, flood levies being applied right across the populations whether you lost some of those 4,000 kilometres of fencing or not—and have the sense that you are all in there making the effort, but when it comes to your individual needs, if you are a community way beyond the cities and regional centres of Australia, you just do not matter.

I commend this motion. I say to the member for Leichhardt: what an important thing you are doing today. The coalition, yes, will do the job, but unfortunately we need to have this job done tomorrow to rebuild the sea walls of these low-lying islands. It is not fair that those small communities are suffering in the way that they are. They are Australians. They do their best. They stood between us and the Japanese some 60 years ago. No-one then said, ‘Oh, we don’t care much about what happens out there.’ We understood that they were the doorway, the gateway, to the rest of the country—

Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Entsch interjecting

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, thank you; I am sure you have spoken already.

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

as the member for Leichhardt said. I commend this motion and I ask the government to put their hand in their pocket and do the right thing by these small communities.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thought I was here chairing the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs! In fact, four members and the committee secretary are present in the Main Committee. I commend the member for Leichhardt for bringing this motion on behalf of his constituents. That is what local members should do—raise issues of concern. I too believe that, whether you live in Tasmania or the Torres Strait, as an Australian you should be treated the same way, with the same rights and the same access to a good education and decent health care, roads that function and public transport. That is appropriate. And there should not be discrimination, whether you are gay or straight, black or white, or whatever colour, creed or religion you adhere to. That is true. I commend the member for Leichhardt. In fact, I note his strong advocacy for many years in relation to gay and lesbian issues as well, and I commend him for that. He has been a strong advocate for ending discrimination in all forms. I am not going to keep praising him; otherwise, he might be re-elected! But that is the case.

On this issue I do think—with respect to the member for Leichhardt—that he is being a little precious. He was elected, I think, in 1996 to this chamber. He had a voluntary sabbatical, if I can put it like that, from 2007 to 2010. He was a member of the Howard government at one stage, and I think he may even have served as a parliamentary secretary for quite some time. I notice in his motion here—perhaps it is the old lawyer in me—that in paragraph 2, subsection (c), he says:

… the Torres Strait Islander people have been experiencing flood devastation for the past four years with no help from Government …

Four years—we were not even in government at the time that this allegedly started. I imagine this happened many years before that, during the time of the Howard government. We have seen rising sea levels and we have seen problems in relation to islands off the coast of Queensland, whether in the Great Barrier Reef or other areas, for quite some years. I do not recall the coalition raising this issue much in the last three years during the Rudd and Gillard government. I do not recall any of his colleagues, those opposite, raising these issues. I cannot recall too many private members’ motions from those opposite saying, ‘This needs to be done.’ Indeed, I do not recall much at all in relation to those opposite.

One thing I will say is about the member for Murray—and I have heard the member for Leichhardt—criticising us about our commitment to regional and rural Australia. This always galls me as a Queenslander who represents a regional and rural seat in south-east Queensland. It always galls me because the truth is—the facts are—that, when it comes to funding for regional and rural Australia, this government has an exemplary record. For example, with respect to roads and rail and essential infrastructure like ports, we have massively increased the funding: $37 billion, and $22 billion of that is in rural and regional Australia—more than the doyens of the bush, the National Party, or any of those others, ever saw in Queensland. They claim that they represent rural and regional Australia, but the truth is that it is this federal Labor government which has invested massively.

It is not just that. Think about the regional and local community infrastructure we have funded. We just announced recently a billion dollars in relation to that. The Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government, the Hon. Simon Crean, announced that. The councils up there in the seat of the member for Leichhardt can share in that should they make application. I anticipate that the good member for Leichhardt has actually got on the phone to the local mayor and said: ‘Look, hang on a sec, mate; there’s some money on the table there. This pernicious Labor government over there, this wicked Labor government that doesn’t do anything for you’—that is despite the fact that we have just brought forward his third quarter financial assistance grants, getting money in the bank to help community infrastructure, despite the fact that we have activated NDRRA and despite the fact that we have put another $315 million on the table to help flood affected areas beyond the NDRRA. Despite all of that: ‘Oh, mate, there’s some money on the table here. Can you make an application?’ There is money on the table for councils to make applications for funding for essential community infrastructure if they want to do it. There is money on the table if they want to do it. But do we see the member saying: ‘I’ve just spoken to the mayor, and we should apply for that sort of funding if at all possible; we can do what we can do up there, if there are any roads or essential infrastructure we should apply for’? The member mentioned his local councils up there. He mentioned the Torres Strait regional council, for a start. But I do not think that the member, as valiant as his efforts are here in this chamber, has actually got on the phone and spoken to his local councils about applying for funding.

This is very important because those people opposite are absolutely racked with division on climate change. If you are associated with a little island off the coast of Queensland, you know that the climate science really tells us that we are at peril, because climate change is real, and human activity contributes to climate change. We have three members opposite sitting here in the Main Committee. I dare say there are probably four opinions over there about climate change. They have a leader who says that climate science is crap. He says one thing to the shock jocks and he says another to his local branch meeting when he is doing a fundraiser, and he says another when the national media is on him and he needs to look measured and reverential and really sensible. So you have opposite those people who really do not know in relation to climate science. But I imagine the member has had a chat to his local mayor and said, ‘Listen, mate, we should not just apply for the money; let’s back the federal Labor government on pricing carbon.’ I wonder whether he has had that conversation with his local mayor up there about that.

In Queensland we have had terrible flooding. Seventy-five per cent of Queensland was covered by water. Then we had Cyclone Yasi. The cost to rebuild Queensland before Cyclone Yasi impacted upon North Queensland was $5.6 billion. And the devastation is terrible—truly awful. In my electorate we have seen terrible devastation. We have seen 600 businesses in the Ipswich region affected. We have seen 3,000 properties in Ipswich, 470 in the Somerset region, inundated. Over 700 streets in Ipswich were affected. I drove up to Mount Stanley, north of Somerset, last week to meet with some of the local farmers up there. This is just one example of how one electorate has been affected. Leichhardt has been affected. Moreton has been affected. We know Brisbane has been affected. We know of many electorates. And the devastation is awful for people who are trying to rebuild their lives. So I have some sympathy for the member for Leichhardt in his protestations today. I do have some sympathy in relation to what he wants to do to stand up for his local community. Coastal erosion is real and coastal erosion needs to be looked at, as the member for Oxley talked about in terms of the studies that we are undertaking in that regard.

The truth is that climate change is going to make an impact on the Queensland coast. Climate change is real. Just a couple of years ago the Queensland Farmers Federation asked me to launch their climate change analysis and study. I did it at the home of a very prominent LNP member in south-east Queensland, Linton Brimblecombe, in Forest Hill. Linton Brimblecombe is campaign director for that area in the Lockyer Valley for the LNP. The study is quite clear. Climate change is real; it is affecting Queensland. It has been affecting us in the past and it will affect us in the future.

I would urge the member opposite, who moves this motion, to get on board with our proposals to tackle climate change. I also note he is one of the members opposite that did not support us with the funding we needed to rebuild Queensland. So he wants us to provide the money for it but he did not support us on the flood levy, the $1.8 billion which we needed to rebuild Queensland. He did not do it. He wants us to give him the money but he does not want us to raise the money to pay for it. There is inconsistency between the member for Leichhardt’s motion here and what he has actually been saying. When those opposite did come up with some savings, it was a joke. They ended up with a billion-dollar black hole in their budget. They wanted to cut back funding for the NBN and the BER, defer some foreign aid and then what they tried to do was come up with some dodgy accounting. The truth is those opposite want us to spend the money in their electorates but they do not want us to raise the money for it.

I say to the member for Leichhardt, has he had a conversation with the Hon. Simon Crean, the Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government? If he has done that and had that conversation then he needs to speak to his local mayor and make an application for funding for these things, see what he can do about this. He does not need to come into this place, say one thing and then go back and say another thing in his own electorate. He needs to apply for the funding and take note of the fact that all those BER projects and that entire community infrastructure in his electorate were brought forward by a Labor government and they cause his area and mine to be commended.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I remind members that you are required to speak through the chair. I am not the member for Leichhardt.

Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to support the member for Leichhardt’s motion. He is a very dear friend and colleague of mine. He is well known for his advocacy and determination to ensure that the people of the Torres Strait Islands are not overlooked in their needs.

There is one thing I do want to dispute. The members opposite have called the member for Leichhardt a hypocrite. Anyone who knows the member for Leichhardt would know that that is absolutely not true. He is a person who stands on principle and there is nothing remotely hypocritical about the member for Leichhardt. He came into this chamber to highlight a very serious issue concerning the Torres Strait Islands, particularly the 48,000 square kilometres of open sea between Papua New Guinea and Cape York, a serious issue with infrastructure and a very old sea wall which is deteriorating. I am very happy to get up today and support him.

These problems in the Torres Strait have been occurring over a four-year period. The members opposite have highlighted it. Why did the member for Leichhardt not bring this up earlier? The sea wall has been deteriorating over four years and there has been constant flooding. Members earlier, including previous members on our side and the member for Oxley, spoke about the infections and high risk of disease that has occurred. The member for Leichhardt spoke of his own sighting of graves and the destruction that it is causing to the culture and to the community. These are problems that have been occurring over four years and this government has been sitting on its hands. It took the member for Oxley eight minutes to speak about the specific responses that were occurring, including $400,000 that is being spent to gauge and see what the tides are doing. The member for Leichhardt can tell you what the tides have been doing. The devastation and disaster is there for all to see and yet we have more delaying tactics in measuring the tides.

The people opposite are the hypocrites in this debate. They keep pushing out climate change. When we talk about low-lying Pacific islands, their own Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs, Richard Marles, says that there are no climate change refugees. I want to reiterate that this government is spending money, particularly in the Pacific Island region, to help mitigate and to stop rising sea levels and yet closer to home, on its own shores in the Torres Strait, no serious money is being spent on this huge problem. What we are doing in the foreign aid budget is very admirable, but let us try to help some of our own people here in the Torres Strait Islands. Let us not bring out this climate change debate when your own parliamentary secretary says there is no such thing as climate change refugees.

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He was on the record. He was interviewed a few months ago; he said there was no such thing. You can check the record.

Seawalls, graveyards, roads and all of those community structures that we spoke about are being flooded year after year, and people on those low, outlying islands are unable to do anything. They feel powerless. Of course, they go to the member for Leichhardt; he is their member. He is a fierce advocate and he does visit them more than just in an election cycle, I can assure you of that. I have been in the member for Leichhardt’s electorate. He is a fearless advocate for his people and visits them on a regular basis. That is one thing I can say with great certainty.

This problem has gone on for far too long. It has gone on for four years. It has gone on for so long that in 2009 the Torres Strait Regional Authority took their concerns to the eighth session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York. There they detailed their concern that approximately 27 per cent of their community was affected each and every year. They described their human right and need to be protected. They outlined their concerns about the right to life, the right to water, the right to food, the right to culture and the right to a healthy environment. What we are talking about here is $22 million that will put all of those things in place. They have a right to live in some sort of peace and harmony, knowing that their island region is protected.

During the 2010 election, the member for Leichhardt continued that fight for the islanders. He fought to secure money to assist the regions and he announced a commitment of $22 million to fix the seawalls and to develop a solution to this particular problem. The time for that solution is now. This government needs to invest heavily in the Torres Strait Islands to save these low-lying communities from destruction in the future. (Time expired)

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Leichhardt for taking the time to move this motion. While I do not doubt his commitment to the Torres Strait Islands people in his electorate, I do wonder about the timing of this particular motion. For myself, I proudly have a Torres Strait Islands flag on my desk and I am very respectful of their contribution to Australian history. I am not totally sure that the Murray Islands are in the Torres Strait; I assume they are—any lawyer knows the contribution that Eddie Mabo and the two other successful claimants made in the Mabo decision. I know of their long-term connection to the land and to the sea and to the areas in between, particularly their fish traps. Also, on a committee with you, Mr Deputy Speaker Sidebottom, we gained insights into the importance of Torres Strait Islanders in keeping feral incursions out, particularly in protecting honey bees, and in their contributions to defence and security.

So I do commend the member for Leichhardt for his commitment to his people. However, he has a strange view of history. Unfortunately, he is not in the chamber so I cannot glean from him just when this flood devastation occurred. I get the impression that it was either at midnight on 24 November 2007 or when the election writs were issued! I am not sure when the devastation actually started to occur. Maybe it was the day Labor were elected! But it seems a bit strange that, while he was the member for that area from 2 March 1996 through to 24 November 2007, there were no problems whatsoever with flooding in the Torres Strait. My understanding of anthropogenic climate change is that we have accurate measurement of sea levels over the last 200 years—accurate, empirical data from scientists, not Alan Jones type fakers. These are accurate measurements of sea levels, empirical data, that show that over that time we have had about a 20-centimetre rise in sea levels.

I believe in climate change. I believe that humans have contributed to it. I do not believe that it is bovine faeces, to paraphrase the Leader of the Opposition. I believe that it is real and that people have contributed to it. Obviously that is going to have an impact in areas like the Torres Strait. Every Queenslander knows the challenges that come with being a local government in a remote area, and especially so when you are dealing with islands. The rateable basis for these shires is nothing like that for my area and Brisbane, which is an economy bigger than even Tasmania’s.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Twice as big.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Twice as big, some might say. I would not say that, but our rateable area is completely different to the Torres Strait Regional Authority’s rateable area, which gives it particular challenges when it comes to providing protection against sea rises. So what do you do? We contribute money sensibly. We have given $400,000 for new research into climate change and how it affects the local area. Those opposite made light of that fact; they said, ‘Oh, it’s obvious!’ Well, it is not necessarily obvious. My area was flooded in the recent floods, in January, and it was completely different to what happened in the 1974 floods and a bit different for the member for Blair. For example, in 1974 the water came down Oxley Creek; this time, in 2011, the water came up the creek. I have people in my area whose houses had been flooded up to the ceiling in 1974 when the water came in through their back door; this time it came through their front door. So you do not just rush in and say, ‘We’ll build these walls.’ You do have to understand the situation, especially if you are going to commit significant amounts of money.

It is also good to see that we have contributed $1 million to the regional title gauge network so that people can have additional warnings. And perhaps we need to give additional support to the Torres Strait Regional Authority so that they can make proper decisions about where the housing and the infrastructure are located. Those are concerns in the Ipswich and Brisbane areas as much as they are in the Torres Strait. The federal government can play a role in guiding local government in this area.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allocated for this debate has now expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.