House debates

Wednesday, 6 February 2013

Statements on Indulgence

Australian Natural Disasters

4:08 pm

Photo of Paul NevillePaul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | | Hansard source

In rising to speak on this very important matter, in which my communities were sorely affected, I recognise that your city of Rockhampton, Madam Deputy Speaker Livermore, also received quite a large flood and that that impacted severely on that community, and a lot of my remarks today could well include your own area.

There have been six major flood events in the Bundaberg area since the 1890s. They varied quite dramatically. The daddy of them all was 9.04 metres in 1890 itself, with 8.9 metres just three years later.

In 1942, during the war years, they had 8.5; it was 7.3 in 1954; and then they had two peaks in 2010-11, with 7.9 before the new year and 5.8 after the new year. But what we saw in this current circumstance was a once-in-200-years flood, where it went to 9.53 metres.

That just sounds like a lot of figures, but let me put that into context. We had a severe flood two years ago, and this flood was 1.5 metres above that, which is shoulder height. You can imagine that volume of water on top of a then almost record flood, and it was 0.5 metres over the all-time high. So you can see from that that we were in uncharted territory. And no-one knew that Cyclone Oswald, which started up in the Gulf of Carpentaria and moved across Cape York, was going to spend its time coming down the east coast and then move inland doing strange twists and turns, feeding inland rivers and causing tornadoes as it came down the coast.

The circumstances around Bundaberg started on Australia Day, with most of the functions in the Bundaberg area cancelled. I came home from Childers that morning and the rain was pouring down. We were anticipating 400 millimetres of rain, or 16 inches, over that Friday, Saturday and Sunday, which would have been just horrendous. That afternoon and night, five tornadoes hit. The first hit Bargara at 1.35 in the afternoon. Pine trees came down, houses were unroofed, the shopping centre lost its roof and the Bargara bowls club was grievously affected. In fact, the staff and patrons who were in the club at that time had to take refuge in the coldroom, which was the only secure place in the building. One of the Norfolk Island pines came down on a car. Fortunately it did not kill the two people inside, but they had to be removed to Brisbane for expert medical attention.

There were then three tornadoes at Burnett Heads, slightly north of Bargara, at 3pm, 6pm and 6.30pm. I went to both of those locations—Bargara and Burnett Heads—in the second instance with the Governor-General. We saw a house there which the tornado had gone right over the middle of and completely taken the roof and all its struts and sucked the contents out, as if a huge vacuum cleaner had been put in it. It was just horrendous. Then the fifth tornado hit at Coonarr, a small and rather secluded beach just south of Bundaberg. In the early hours of Sunday morning a sixth tornado hit Burrum Heads. We did not know the extent of that at the time because Burrum Heads lost its mobile telephony and was cut off for two days before we could get in to see the extent of the damage.

I thought the damage at Bargara was horrendous. I remember one vivid image that I was looking at with the Prime Minister. There was a five-foot-long piece of timber, about a metre and a half, that had speared through the door. It was spiked at one end and it had gone clean-through the back of a house. Anyone standing next to that door would have been a goner. In fact, our local parish priest had only just moved away from the window of his house, which was not far from that, when a Norfolk Island pine slapped against the window and showered the whole kitchen area with glass. There were some very lucky escapes. But Burrum Heads has to be seen to be believed. The caravan park was just a total wreck, like a tsunami had been through it. There were caravans that had been tossed through the air and were on their sides, strips of aluminium and timber, and household items almost up to waist height everywhere.

Then there was a swathe—this was similar in Bargara—of about four blocks wide cutting across, ripping out trees and foliage and taking off roofs. Old houses were wrecked. Strangely, new metal-roofed houses survived, but the tile-roofed houses were just lifted off and smashed into a thousand pieces. I came back from Burrum Heads, and the Army were at that stage on their way to Bundaberg. I was able to have one unit diverted as they came through Maryborough into Burrum Heads, and those boys worked there right through till two days ago.

The river came up very quickly this time. I was there in 1974 and during the 2010-11 floods in Bundaberg, but this one came up with a vengeance. On Sunday at 6.30 am it had reached 5½ metres. We can always tell when these things are coming down quickly, because there is a monitoring station at Wallaville, which is near Gin Gin, west of Bundaberg. Once it reaches around 22 metres, you know you are in trouble, and in this instance it went over 23 metres, so we knew something fierce was coming. By 6 pm that Sunday, it had passed the 2010-11 peak. Late in the evening it had reached 8½ metres. At dawn it was 8.7. I know some firms called their staff on that night when they were warned by the city council that a heavier flood was coming than had been expected, and they tried to move stock and everything. By the next morning, they were paddling in knee-deep water; that is how quickly it came down.

But the real focus was in Bundaberg North. As I said, we were in new territory. The river was an absolute torrent. One expert estimated it was running at about 40 knots. As you know, there were cuts closer to Brisbane at places like Caboolture, so there were no trains. Both the traffic bridges were gone, and you could not take a boat into the river. The lifesavers made one attempt; it just threw the rubber ducky into the air, with the three lifesavers in it. Luckily they had vests on and were able to get to the bank. So water crossings were out, and there were more than 2,500 people that had to be either moved or evacuated. Fortunately, we had been able to get two Black Hawk helicopters from Townsville on one day and another two the next day. The idea was then to shift people over to the south side of the river, where all the emergency services were located, while another 1,200 who were originally to go to Bundaberg North State High School were moved out to a small state school on the edge of town, called Oakwood. At one stage there were nearly 2,000 people there, but when they scattered to various farms and friends and neighbours it came down to 1,200 and later down to 700. Then, of course, they had to be fed. That meant the helicopters were doing two things: taking people south and bringing food north.

At the council's instructions, 20 teams from the SES went around to warn people to be out in three hours when the river was coming up. Sadly, some people did not take that advice, and we were plucking them from the roofs with rescue helicopters and Black Hawk helicopters. In fact, I was talking on Australia All Over on Sunday, and Ian McNamara had an expert with him who said he thought it was the greatest civilian rescue by air that he had heard of—certainly by helicopter—since the days of the Second World War. So thank God for the helicopters, which plucked 35 people from the roofs of houses. Every one of those was a hairy rescue, so you can imagine what that involved.

But it did not just stop at simple rescues and moving able-bodied people around. The RSL retirement home, which had high-care and low-care patients. A retirement village called Liberty Villas had to be evacuated. The Lakes, also a retirement village, which only had minor damage at the end of the day but still was too close to the centre of things to be left there, had to be evacuated.

So all of those people had to be ferried across by helicopter to the south side.

So the north was isolated. The damage there was horrendous. I went back there with the Prime Minister when she came to Bundaberg. You could not get into the suburb, but to give you a bit of a colour of what it looked like: it was not just a matter of putting down some new bitumen, because the streets were scoured out to the depth of a metre or more. Sewerage, water pipes and cables were exposed. The two bridges were closed. On one of them, a new bridge that luckily had nothing wrong with the integrity of the bridge itself, the up-ramp had been undermined and had collapsed, and that will not be fixed properly for another three weeks. The Army are building some form of Bailey bridge construction to at least give us one lane as an interim measure. In the 2010-11 circumstance Bundaberg Slipways had severe damage but this time was just swept away.

I went over to North Bundaberg on Monday afternoon to see some of the shops just before I came back. I went to Digger Thiele Electrical. He is the bloke who will have to fix up all of the appliances that have to be tested—fridges, stoves, washing machines, hot water systems, toasters, jugs and all those sorts of things. They cannot be used again until they are fixed up. In fact, it would be quite dangerous to use them. But the firm that will have to do that work is not there. They are one of the firms that have to be got up quickly.

In another place, a building that used to be a pharmacy but is now a real estate agency—it was next to but not attached to a two-storey building—fell into a sinkhole. In North Bundaberg, mainly—but there are a few more instances on the east side of the town—49 structures either floated away, like they did in my colleague the member for Blair's area in similar circumstances during the Lockyer Valley evacuations, fell off their stumps onto their sides or went into sinkholes. There were 49 of them. Imagine that.

So, when you looked at North Bundaberg it was just a horror scene. A lot of work will have to go on there. I went around and looked at some of this with my friend Bill Morehead, a very responsible developer, and I am coming to the conclusion that we have a circumstance where we are going to have to look very seriously at relocation. I talked to the Prime Minister about it this morning, but I do not want to go too heavily into it until there are community consultations. I have spoken to the mayor and so on. But we cannot just go back for a 10th time and revisit this sort of destruction, especially if we are going to have these more violent weather events that we have noticed over the last four or five years.

Talking more broadly about Bundaberg and not just North Bundaberg, nearly 400 houses are severely affected. They are structurally sound but severely affected. In other words, until they are repaired and properly cleaned out there will be 400 that cannot be used. There are 870 homes with medium damage, which is where you have to pull out gyprock and walls like that. There are another 829 homes with minor water damage above the living area. There are 1,808 homes that are undamaged but have water under the house—and the Deputy Speaker would be familiar with this, because Rockhampton cops this a lot. So, the total number of dwellings wrecked, unusable, requiring repairs or in some way affected is just a tad under 4,000. That is a major disaster.

The farms—and I have not had a chance to visit many farms—suffered in the electorate of my colleague here, the member for Flynn, but citrus seemed to cop it worst. They not only had hail in the last four or five months; now they have had floods that have ripped trees out—whole trees are gone. I will let the member for Flynn talk about that in more detail. The Bundaberg-Mundubbera-Gayndah area is one of the biggest citrus-growing areas of Australia, so do not expect a lot of oranges in the coming season.

I also went to a blueberry farm. The product was all under igloos, and you can imagine what happened there. Luckily, they only lost about 11 igloos, but there was a lot of water there. Some of the cane will survive because it was a reasonable height, about the height of the table in front of me, but lower down still it got waterlogged and you can write that sugarcane off for the coming season. I visited with John Cobb, the shadow minister for agriculture and food security, last week and I am going up on Friday with Senator Ludwig, the minister himself. We should get a better picture of the agricultural damage to many crops. I am touching on that because I recognise the importance of the crops, but the assessment of them is still going on.

Bundaberg was well prepared for this because, as you know, it copped a flogging in the 2010-11 floods. Actually, there were two peaks to that flood. As I said earlier, one peak was at 7.9 metres and the other was at 5.8 metres; one was reached just before New Year and the other was reached about 10 days after New Year. I remember returning from holidays in Perth in the middle of that circumstance. That was bad enough. At that time, the Prime Minister and Minister Crean travelled north and were of great assistance, as was the Leader of the Opposition.

I have to say that I got enormous support this time—from Campbell Newman three times in the week, from the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister on one of the days, from the Leader of the Nationals and the shadow minister for agriculture on the next day, and from the Governor-General on that afternoon. The next day, we had the Leader of the Opposition and Senator Joyce, the Leader of the Nationals in the Senate. And I mentioned that I will visit there with Senator Ludwig on Friday. I do not think any member of parliament has had a retinue of that seniority in his or her electorate, certainly not since the Victorian bushfires.

Honourable Members:

Honourable members interjecting

Photo of Paul NevillePaul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | | Hansard source

No, it is not that. I think it is the gravity of the situation.

From a personal perspective, my daughter's home went under. She survived the 2010-11 flood in Rockhampton because it went under the slats of the house. This time, it was about two feet deep throughout the house. The kids from Shalom College came out and helped her on the first day to get all the muck out. The worst thing is taking out the damaged furniture, the linen and the carpets. It is heartbreaking pulling all that stuff out. There is the piano that will never be used again, and the fridge, the stove, the washing machine and the hot water system that you have to just chuck in the street. There were piles of stuff. I travelled down Skyring Street in east Bundaberg with the Governor-General. There were piles of refuse, 2½ to three metres high, on both sides of the street. You had to see it to believe it.

My daughter's place went under, as did my sister-in-law's place. In fact, I went down at 11 o'clock at night knowing that the water was coming up fast—it caught us all by surprise, though I am supposed to be right on the ball on these things. I went to my sister-in-law's place with an idea that in the morning I might go down with a few sandbags. When I got there, there was four feet of water. I said to Margaret, 'I'm prepared to wade through water in daylight, but I'm not going into waist-deep or shoulder-high water at night.' That is how quickly came up.

My son, who is a builder, came up from Brisbane and we gurneyed out the houses and ordered the cabinet-making. We were the lucky ones.

Tony Abbott and Barnaby Joyce came up, and they said: 'Look, no point in going around just inspecting things again; everyone's inspecting things. How about we pick a house somewhere and get into it?' So, we got on to a house. The council referred us to a Mrs Margaret Bullpitt of East Bundaberg—just near the distillery, for those of you who have been to Bundaberg, up on that hill that normally does not flood. And there were Tony Abbott, Barnaby Joyce, myself, the guy who is endorsed to follow me, and some staffers. They all brought their galoshes and old clothes, and we went through that house and got out the muck, got out the furniture. We had to gurney it out four times to get it right. Then we went up to the distillery for lunch; they put on lunch for us which, just for the record, was bread rolls and soft drink—none of the local product! Nevertheless, it was a little bit of local colour on top of everything else.

As I said, the management of the flood has been quite remarkable. The Bundaberg Regional Council was well practiced from that last flood. The new mayor, Mal Forman, a former deputy mayor, was very much in the leadership role, as was his deputy, David Batt; and the CEO, Peter Byrne, who was virtually executive officer of the show. And then there was the infrastructure engineer, Andrew Fulton. I have enormous respect for his opinions. He almost picked the heights that this river was going to hit and the hour it was going to hit. To have people with that sort of expertise on a committee is just remarkable. Then we had Major Patrick O'Neil from the Army. He directed the operations not just in Bundaberg but, as I said before, in Burrum Heads and also out at Gayndah and Mundubbera.

People generally get impatient at times of floods. Ergon, in reconnecting people, did a remarkable job. The Salvation Army and the Red Cross, at the peak, were doing up to 1,000 meals and, as I said, taking other meals across the river by helicopter. All the service clubs were involved. At its peak there must have been close to 1,000 people in three evacuation centres—one at the civic centre, one at Agro-Trend and another small one at the PCYC. And of course, as I said, there is this unofficial one at North Bundaberg, at the Oakwood school. We kept those people there because there was no point pushing them across the river, because they were in the parts of North Bundaberg where the floodwaters were going to go down earliest, and they could get back to their homes, whereas the ones down on the flat were going to have to wait a lot longer.

So it was a remarkable event. It is not finished yet, as you know. The flood and the drama fires up your adrenaline, and you make sure things happen. The real thing is going to be the reconstruction. I am coming to the conclusion that we have to do something different across Australia. We are doing it to some extent now with bushfires; we are much more expert in how we handle them than we were, say, 10 years ago. But when we see places go under repetitively to floods, I think we have to do something like what has happened in Grantham. Councils have land banks. They can cut up land. Some of the worst houses can be moved. Houses that are aesthetically pleasing can be put up on stilts, with garage doors underneath. I notice that some were done like that in Brisbane after the floods; that can be done. I think there has to be some sort of buyback program or a transfer program. If you are prepared to go to the new estate you will get perhaps a three-bedroom brick home to the level of, say, $115,000 or $120,000—not a mansion, but certainly better than some of the houses that some people are coming out of.

I think we have to look at this, as a nation, in a bipartisan way, and look at a 10-year horizon. I do not know what the right figure is, but I would guess that it would not be less than $200 million a year—so probably $2 billion over 10 years, where state governments and councils made a contribution as well. But we looked within that 10-year horizon at doing many Granthams, getting some of these towns to a point where it does not happen again.

It is false economy because when it does happen—and I am not saying this with any complaint—we all hop in and do it. But there are costs involved in helicopters, rebuilding roads, getting people there, emergency services, cleaning out houses and rebuilding houses. There must be a better way to start eliminating floods from some of those places that go under. That is my appeal.

I salute all of those who did just remarkable work. I salute all of those people I just referred to and there were many more, far too numerous to name. But I think, having been through this myself many times, and this probably being my last flood in this place, that we need to look very seriously in future to some form of flood mitigation and flood replacement.

4:36 pm

Photo of Shayne NeumannShayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

In this place most of us represent electorates named after famous people relevant to that particular area with a few exceptions such as Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. My electorate of Blair is named after Harold Blair, a very famous civil rights activist and opera singer in Australia. Often I have to explain where Blair is. I say to people that is all of the Somerset region and the majority of Ipswich. But since the 2011 floods, on numerous occasions, I have explained that my region contains the Wivenhoe Dam, the Somerset Dam, the Bremer River, the Brisbane River and the Lockyer Creek and then they know because those areas in my electorate were impacted. If you look at the AEC website and look at the map of the electorate of Blair, right in the middle is the Wivenhoe Dam and to the north of it the Somerset Dam and below that the rivers and creeks I referred to.

Following Australia Day, the electorate of Blair was fighting floodwaters yet again. My heart goes out to the people who were flooded and to the businesses and farmers. I remember the '74 flood when I was a kid and my parents' house going eight foot under the water and me—doing something quite silly when I look back—on a rowboat going out and sitting above my bedroom on the roof of the house. The area around Ipswich, I know very well. The damage this time was not as severe as in 2011 and certainly not as bad as 1974, but people living in the lower part of the Somerset region were very badly damaged. The area around Patrick Estate, O'Reilly's Weir, Clarendon and Lowood was inundated and isolated as were all the country towns in areas up around Linville. Mount Stanley is still cut off. Like last time, there were people that we had to helicopter food in to and there are still areas of isolation now with causeways, roads and bridges cut off.

Over 250 properties are believed to have been severely impacted in the Somerset region. Some of the worst affected homes had about 1.5 metres of water through the living areas. About 165 businesses, mainly agribusinesses, in the lower Somerset were adversely affected. These are big farms, big areas that you can see on the map. They are significant farming properties. Many of these farmers had corn, lucerne, soya beans or other types of horticulture there. They were flooded and they lost their fences. Last night I spoke to Trevor Barber and his wife, Marilyn. They are soya bean and corn farmers in Clarendon in the lower Somerset region. Their farm was submerged in water, destroying most of the crops and causing considerable erosion. They sent me images of what it had done to their farm and it was terrible. The financial cost to them will be severe. For the second time in two years, they have lost their crops to flooding. Like them, Andrew and Roslyn Jackwitz's family farm in Clarendon suffered the same fate. Now I have photographs that illustrate the desolation of their farm as their crops and their fences were washed away, and the topsoil from their prime farming land is just gone. The impact will be felt for years to come.

The mayor of the Somerset Regional Council, Graeme Lehmann, told me about a week and a half ago that he expected the damage bill to be in excess of $20 million because of damaged infrastructure such as roads, bridges and causeways. I expect that will be much higher. Certainly that was the experience last time with the Somerset council. They initially underestimated the damage. Later, when they were able to go through the whole region—and it is the council covering the biggest geographic region in South-East Queensland—they found out that it was much worse. Somerset regional councillor Jim Madden has sent me some photographic images of some of the damaged infrastructure that I have not had the opportunity to get to and I have seen quite a lot of the damage.

In October last year I announced the completion of 70 causeways up towards the Mount Stanley region in the north-west of the electorate of Blair. That was done through NDRRA. That area has been cut off yet again by heavy water and the farmers have been isolated. It is disturbing to see $5 million of repairs literally go down the drain. I note the very wise comments of the member for Hinkler in relation to this. The causeways in the Mount Stanley region need repair yet again. We have to do it. The farmers need them. There are dairy farmers there and beef farmers. We have to do—there is no alternative. These are significant contributors. People have been in these areas for generation after generation. They are Australians. They pay taxes and they deserve our love and affection and our financial support as well.

In March 2012, the Somerset Regional Council mayor, Graeme Lehmann, and I opened the Richards and Hubner bridges at Sandy Creek in the north-east part of the electorate near Kilcoy. That was funded under the federal government's Roads to Recovery program and the Natural Disaster Recovery and Relief Arrangement. Now they are damaged and need repair yet again. The opening of the Alf Williams Bridge over Gregors Creek and O'Connors Bridge in Colinton were delayed due to the passing of long-serving councillor Neil Zabel. The official opening was to be next month. Those bridges are completely submerged and very damaged. It will be very difficult and costly to get them repaired.

I congratulate the Somerset Regional Council, which in 2011 had its headquarters wiped out in the flood, for its handling of the flood situation. I thank the council for its expeditious opening of the evacuation centres in all the country towns in my electorate. Up to 150 people were in Kilcoy. There continues to be a recovery centre in the Lowood showgrounds. The council kept the public and the media well aware of what was happening, with constant updates and information. The council's disaster recovery group has been reactivated, with Councillor Jim Madden heading up the economic subgroup to handle the significant impact on local businesses. He will be joined by members of the Business Enterprise Centre Ipswich region, the Kilcoy Chamber of Commerce and the Somerset Regional Business Alliance and ably supported by council staff, including Brad Sully, the manager of council planning and development. This is a council that has learned from the 2011 events and that has responded quickly. I commend the council and all the council staff for the great work that they have done. I also commend the not-for-profit organisations such as the SES, the rural fire brigades and all the local service clubs such as Lions and Rotary that got behind the council.

In Ipswich, the flooding was not as extensive as it had been in 2011. The Brisbane River cuts through Ipswich. The Bremer River rose to five metres shy of the 2011 flood waters, 13.9 metres as opposed to 19.5 metres in the Ipswich CBD. In 2011, it was 19.5 metres. That was an enormous flood. This time, it was 13.9 metres. The council today reports that in Ipswich the expected damage will be $30 million. I spent the Australia Day long weekend knocking on doors in low-lying suburbs like Booval and East Ipswich and Basin Pocket. They were inundated in 2011, as they were in 1974. I was providing assistance, helping people to evacuate, getting muddy, warning people about the flood levels and sometimes hugging people and giving them a shoulder to cry on. Residents were living through what they thought was a recurring nightmare.

I was in constant contact with Councillor Cheryl Bromage, who was the deputy chair of the disaster management group. Cheryl and I are good friends and we spoke again and again. I thank her for her wonderful work in the flood. I thank the Ipswich mayor, Paul Pisasale, the chair of the local disaster management group, for letting the people of Australia know what was happening in Ipswich via his constant and well-thought through media commentary. He let the people of Australia know what was going on.

That disaster management group had two local disaster coordinators, staff members of the council, Craig Maudsley and Bryce Hines, and I thank them for their great work. It is well represented by community and emergency services, including Energex, the Red Cross, the Ipswich District Police, Queensland Ambulance Service, the Department of Transport and Main Roads, Queensland Urban Utilities, the Queensland Fire and Rescue Service, Queensland Health, the Department of Communities, Amberley RAAF and 9 FSB Army battalion, which is also based at Amberley. The group would not be complete without Ipswich SES headed by Arie van den Ende.

Arie has taken every opportunity to bring the needs of the SES to me and to the Prime Minister, particularly in relation to the need for another sandbagging machine. He made that request once in the past through the office assisting the Queensland flood recovery to the Attorney-General and straight to the Prime Minister. The request was made to the Prime Minister in front of the national press. I was pleased and relieved that the federal Labor government was able to deliver the funding for the purchase of a sandbagging machine. The Prime Minister came to Arie and the Ipswich SES volunteers in June last year to give them the good news.

The SES volunteers in Ipswich and the Somerset region, indeed throughout Queensland, have been inspirational in their efforts to protect businesses, farms and homes and assist in evacuations and road clearing. The Ipswich SES volunteers logged over 3,000 hours of community support. In the 2011 floods, the Ipswich SES volunteers hand filled over 11,000 sandbags. These sandbagging machines, including the one we delivered at the request of the Ipswich SES in July last year, can fill up to 300 bags an hour. I thank the Australian Defence Force personnel who assisted in sandbagging in very muddy conditions which I witnessed first-hand at the Ipswich SES headquarters. I thank the SES workers. I know they ate plenty of sausages and plenty of burgers on that day. They were well fed and they worked so hard. In 2013, the Ipswich SES was able to provide 9,000 sandbags thanks to the new sandbagging machines provided by council and by the federal Labor government.

On the first day of the flooding event, 220 people were registered at the evacuation centre at Ipswich Showgrounds. I thank the Ipswich Show Society President, Marcia Cruikshank, and her hard-working vice president, Rusty Thomas, for facilitating those efforts. I thank the Salvation Army and the Red Cross for their efforts at the Ipswich evacuation centre. I thank Pat Roach and the St John's Ambulance team for their work. Pat and I had a conversation about the fact that we were back at the evacuation centre. She was there in 2011 along with her workers. The look on Pat's face when I arrived there was so heartbreaking. Residents were able to bring their beloved pets and the pound at Ipswich relocated to the showgrounds, which was very important for the people. When floodwaters receded, centres at Ipswich Showgrounds and at Shilo, in the electorate of Oxley, were closed.

At the peak of the flood 47 Ipswich roads were severely affected. The Sydney Street bridge was out and the Hancock Street bridge was out. I make this point to the government: if ever there were a demonstrated need for a second crossing of the Bremer River, it was clearly the case in this flood. We have one major bridge in town, the David Trumpey Bridge, which takes 40,000 vehicles a day. We need the Norman Street bridge from East Ipswich across to North Ipswich, because the traffic congestion was terrible. Thirty-one residential properties in Ipswich were badly affected, with homes in Tiger and Keogh streets in West Ipswich inundated up to the eaves, as they had been in 2011. Fifteen businesses in West Ipswich were badly flooded and 28 UniLink student accommodation units in Churchill were affected. Flooding left about 5,000 people in Ipswich without power.

We are looking to rebuild. The iconic Colleges Crossing Recreation Reserve is very important to the people of Brisbane and Ipswich. It recently received an $11 million restoration following the 2011 floods, of which $9 million came from the Natural Disaster Recovery and Relief Arrangements. The council has yet to fully assess the damage to the reserve, but it will be extensive. It must be rebuilt for the people of Ipswich and Brisbane. As people in the Somerset region and Ipswich assess the damage, they will continue to have challenges in relation to insurance.

I have been a pretty vocal critic of the insurance industry and I was fairly significantly influential in making sure that a House of Representatives Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs chaired by my colleague the member for Moreton, looked at this particular issue of insurance around the country. That inquiry took us around the country. We saw after 2011—and I hope this does not happen again—a process whereby premiums were raised to ridiculous levels and people could not get flood insurance. Things were done by way of postcode. Effectively what was happening was a re-victimisation of flood victims.

I think the insurance industry needs to be monitored in relation to what happens across the country in places like Ipswich, Somerset and indeed Bundaberg, the member for Hinkler's electorate. I thank the government for the extensive assistance they have provided. I hope and expect that the Queensland government—and I have to say this—will cease politicking. If you read the media back home in Ipswich, in Queensland and in Brisbane, you see the LNP state government has engaged in egregious and disgraceful politicking and you can see again and again wrong claims in relation to the degree of assistance we have provided. Indeed Campbell Newman was in Ipswich this morning criticising the federal government's assistance to the region. Instead of pulling together at this particular time, outrageous claims, inaccurate claims, were being made in relation to the degree of assistance provided by the government—so I will only say that much. I thought that the Premier of Queensland and his Treasurer would rise above that and stop playing politics, and I urge them to do so. This government has had a proud record of working with Queenslanders to rebuild communities. We will do that this time as we did in 2011.

I want to make one final point. Today we are seeing in Ipswich the reopening of Coles after extensive flooding in 2011. The loss of the Coles supermarket devastated Ipswich in the middle of the town. Today Coles opened a 6,000 square metre flood proof store employing more than 200 local staff. It is a terrific morale boost for business in Ipswich, particularly in and around Brisbane Street and Limestone Street, so badly affected by the 2011 flood. I thank Coles for doing so. I thank the council and the people of Ipswich. I thank the council and the people of Somerset for their fortitude, resilience and their commitment and for the great communitarian spirit they have shown at this time. I am with them, we are with them, we will not forget them and we will be there every step of the way.

4:52 pm

Photo of Darren ChesterDarren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | | Hansard source

I start by congratulating the member for Blair and also the member for Hinkler on the contributions they have already made during what I think is an important opportunity for members in this place to put on the public record their experiences in their electorates over this troubling summer of natural disasters. It does feel quite alien to be standing here in a suit and looking around at my colleagues in these quite salubrious surroundings, having come from a bushfire scene in Gippsland where over the past couple of weeks it has been flannelette shirts, jeans, workboots and gloves while standing beside my constituents. Having heard the member for Hinkler's tales of his experiences in dealing with the mud, the sludge and the disgusting mess left behind by the floods, I know it would have been quite compelling for anyone listening at home.

I welcome the opportunity to report, first of all, back to the parliament on the impact of the devastating fires in my electorate and I do note that many of the speakers here today—from regional communities including many of my Nationals colleagues and also my friends in the Labor Party—as regional MPs are joined by our experiences in this regard. With the bushfires in Tasmania and New South Wales and in my own electorate and in Western Australia and also in other parts of Victoria, along with the floods and the storms in Queensland and New South Wales, tragically this has been a dangerous summer for our constituents. There has been loss of life. In the fires in Tasmania one of my constituents passed away, a man from Tyers by the name of Peter Cramer, and in the recent Gippsland bushfires Stanley Hayhurst from Seaton was killed. I believe there were seven fatalities in the Queensland event.

Having looked at the coverage and listened to my colleagues over these past few days, I believe we were quite lucky. Given the rapid rise of rivers we experienced in Queensland and given the extraordinary spread of fire in Tasmania and Gippsland, I think we were quite lucky that we did not have greater loss of life. We have been sorely tested in many parts of regional Australia over the past couple of months but I can assure the House that none of our communities are beaten. I am constantly amazed by the resilience we see from our communities.

It is a part of life in regional communities, and we are lucky to represent such amazing people who are so incredibly tough. I guess it is the price that we pay for the magnificent environment we live in: the majestic forests of Gippsland and Tasmania, the beautiful rivers, the coastal areas and the extraordinary expansive coastline of Queensland. When nature turns vicious on us, unfortunately these beautiful surrounds make it very difficult for us to deal with it.

In Gippsland, unfortunately, we have had a lot of practice in natural disasters. In my short time in the parliament we have dealt with significant floods, the Black Saturday bushfires and now these bushfires. I would like to take the opportunity to thank the emergency services in particular, both the paid emergency service people—the police, the ambulance, the Department of Sustainability and the Environment and the paid staff within the Country Fire Authority—and the volunteers, whether they be with the SES or the CFA. I also thank the staff of the Wellington shire, the Department of Human Services and the Department of Primary Industries. It is an enormous contribution that we get from so many different people pulling together when we have these events.

It is something that we should be very proud of as a nation that we do have plans in place to help our fellow man in very difficult circumstances. We are a lucky country to have such organisational capacity and people ready to swing into action at a moment's notice. The professional people are there, the plans are in place, and they are backed up by teams of volunteers who are just so desperate to get in there and lend a helping hand. I would also like to thank, in the time I have today, the local media. We benefitted enormously in our regional communities from not only the ABC but also our commercial radio networks and our newspapers and television stations. They are very responsible in trying to report the most accurate information they can, and some of the information they provide is faster and more relevant to people facing particularly bushfire threats. When they can get people ringing in, giving up-to-date information over the ABC, it is very handy for people who are literally in the firing line.

It is a real community effort and I am very proud of the way that the people of Gippsland and beyond Gippsland have rallied to this enormous challenge. It would be remiss of me not to thank the communities—

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 16:57 to 17:03

As I was saying, it would be remiss of me not to mention the support that the people of Gippsland have received from people throughout Victoria and, indeed, from throughout Australia. There were CFA crews present from right around Victoria during the efforts to control this bushfire.

The amazing thing about an event like this when you get out amongst your community and start talking to people is their capacity to count their blessings. You meet people who have been adversely affected by the fires but who will automatically point to someone else down the road who has been more adversely affected. They will say, 'Don't worry about me,' and they will direct the aid effort to someone else even though they certainly should receive some support. They are quite selfless and humble in the way they respond to these tragic events.

The Gippsland bushfires started on 17 January but they are still going today. While the department staff and the CFA have done a great job in establishing containment lines, the fires have now burnt in excess of 74,000 hectares. They have burnt an area from Aberfeldy, which is north-east of the Thomson River Dam—and at one stage the fires threatened the water catchment of Melbourne—right through to Seaton, Glenmaggie and areas to the north of Heyfield. The fire perimeter itself, if you went around the entire perimeter, is 300 kilometres.

In the first 24 hours, when the fire did most of its damage, when it ripped through the communities around Seaton and Dawson particularly, 21 houses, 54 sheds, 13 vehicles, several caravans and about 170 head of stock were lost. The fencing losses are still being assessed and the fodder loss is obviously a major challenge for the farming sector. At the peak we had more than 600 firefighting personnel in Gippsland working on the fire. We were a bit lucky, I suppose, in some regards that we were the only major event in Victoria at the time and so there were a lot of crews and tankers on the ground and also aerial support. It was tremendous to have that at the time.

But you cannot measure an event like this in raw numbers like that; the statistics do not tell the full story. It is only when you get out amongst the community, talk to the people on the ground or fly over the area, as I had the opportunity to do, that you appreciate the full extent of the damage that has been inflicted upon the Gippsland community. As I flew over the fire ground I was stunned by some of the more remarkable saves that you could see, where fire had burnt right up to the very outside of homes and yet landholders had been able to save their properties. They had lost a lot of shedding around the properties but they had made a stand at their homes and were able to save them. People had taken the messages well in terms of early preparation, reducing the fuel load around their properties and having the appropriate firefighting pumps in place, and a lot of people were able to save their homes.

The fire itself, as any fire I have ever experienced, was very indiscriminate in its nature. There were examples where one house had been burnt to the ground and the neighbour's property was unscathed. There were sheds that had been burnt to the ground and the house was fine and vice versa. That is the nature of fires.

I went out and spoke to my uncle and aunty, John and Lee Gell, who live at a place called Paradise Valley. Thankfully, I can report to the House that Paradise Valley has earned its title and retains its title because the fire somehow managed to jump over most of the valley and burnt both sides of the hills, leapt over the Macalister River—where campers were seeking refuge at the time—and no-one was injured and very little damage was actually sustained. Remarkably, when I spoke to my uncle and aunty about their experiences, they said that it was just like 1965. The weather conditions, the typography of whatever seems to shape the fire in a certain way where that particular place seems to be blessed. So it seems that Paradise Valley has survived.

Their neighbours at the Montana Caravan Park, Barry and Sue Taylor, with their family fought the fire literally to their backdoor step. Their preparations held them in good stead and they were able to prevent major damage to their residence.

Unfortunately, there were some very severe losses. I spoke to some great friends of mine, Richard and Dianne Dennis—and people who read the Weekly Timesmay well have seen the photo of Richard on the front cover. I must say that it was probably not the happiest that I have ever seen Richard look. He is a tremendous fellow. He and his wife Dianne and their family are a great support. In fact, their parents, Michael and Helene, have been heavily involved in the farming family business for many, many years. Tragically, the Dennises lost more than 100 head of stock and an enormous amount of fencing. They are facing some very tough times ahead. We hope to be able to support them as they work their way through this.

The thing about fire is that we see it on the news and we hear about the loss of life and buildings that are lost, but some of the costs of a fire are hidden to those who do not live in the community. The environmental toll it takes is something that members who come from regional areas probably understand more than others. When you go back to these communities the silence in the bush is something that strikes you as quite eerie. That is because the birds are gone. You see the other native wildlife and the charred remains of wallabies, kangaroos and wombats that were not fast enough to flee such a fast-moving event. So there are these hidden impacts on the native environment and on the birdlife and the impact that it has on stream and water quality in the aftermath. These are all things that these communities have to deal with for not just days, weeks or months but for years after the event.

I know the member for Lyne has experienced similar things in his beautiful environment, and I am sure his community will be facing similar challenges. But I can report that the environment is extraordinary and it does recover. To endure the Black Saturday events, and to go back to some of those communities now, only a couple of years later, and see that environment restored is something quite extraordinary.

The rebuilding effort is going on even though the fire is still burning. So we have the unusual situation where the response to the fire is continuing. The DSE and the CFA are out there trying to do their best to protect against further losses, but the rebuilding effort is going on at the same time. We have had volunteers on the ground from a wide range of local community groups. We have efforts from the VFF and other organisations to provide fodder relief for our farming community and we have people on the ground like BlazeAid organisation helping out with restoring fencing. As I said, this is going on while the danger period continues. The danger period certainly has not passed for Victoria. We are maybe halfway through the fire season.

I notice that tomorrow has been declared a day of total fire ban in Gippsland and I assume in other parts of Victoria as well. There are warnings coming through, in my email as I speak, about a large fast-moving bush fire at Hotham Heights in the Dinner Plain area in the member for Indi's electorate—but neighbouring my electorate as well.

There are continuing fire threats in the Gippsland region as I stand here today. There is plenty of fuel out there, there is a likelihood of hot and dry conditions and there is always going to be a point of ignition in an environment like ours in Victoria and in south-east Australia—whether it is a natural event like a lightning strike, an unfortunate accident or a deliberate act by someone acting maliciously. On that point, I urge people in regional communities to be extraordinarily vigilant in the weeks and months ahead in this fire season and to report any suspicious activity to local police immediately. There are people in our community—who I simply cannot understand—who get some perverse enjoyment out of lighting fires on these days. We ask people to be vigilant, to report suspicious activity and to give the authorities every chance to, first of all, catch the offenders; but, if they do happen to succeed in lighting a fire, early detection is so important for the emergency services.

We are constantly learning from experiences like this, and the Gippsland bushfires are no exception. The fire experts were stunned by the behaviour of the Aberfeldy fire as it burnt through the Gippsland region. They described it to me as a forest fire behaving like a grass fire. It moved so quickly and ripped through that community ahead of a wind change. It certainly moved quicker than any of the locals expected, and it proved extraordinarily difficult for them to contain on the evening. It was only the return of better weather conditions that actually helped them out. Frankly, our best efforts—whether it is the CFA, the DSE or our water bombers—will not put this fire out. Only a good drenching rain will put this fire out and we face that reality over the coming weeks.

As I said, we are constantly learning and there still remains room for improvement despite our great efforts as a community to combat this fire. One area we need to have a better look at, as responsible agencies in the community, is the issue of roadblocks. The issue of roadblocks is one that constantly causes additional hardship and exacerbates the trauma for people in the affected communities. People recognise the need for roadblocks once a bushfire has gone through. They recognise it in that immediate stage, but in recent times we have seen roadblocks continuing for many hours after the apparent danger has passed, restricting access to and from areas. People who have a legitimate reason to be there want to return to their properties to check on the welfare of their properties and also to check on the welfare of their stock. They did not have that opportunity within the first 30 hours of this particular bushfire, and there was a certain amount of grief in the community about that. They wanted to get back there and make sure their stock was alright. They knew they did not have enough feed; they knew they needed water and they knew they needed tending to. We need to finesse the way we manage these roadblocks in the future. Safety is paramount and the community accepts that. The risk of falling trees causing further deaths in the aftermath of a fire is a very real risk. We need to prevent looting, so we do not want people moving indiscriminately through these communities. We want to reduce the intrusion by any sightseers who think they can just turn up and have a look at what has been damaged. People need to be able to get back into these areas as quickly as possible. Perhaps in the future we may need a little bit more common sense in the way we provide escorted trips into the fire areas once the immediate danger has passed. I think it would be one way to not exacerbate the situation.

I can report to the House, in a very positive manner, that the text message warning system—which we have talked about in the past and has been partly sponsored by the federal government and partly sponsored by the state government—worked well in this particular event. Again, the only proviso remains that it only works well if you live in a region with mobile phone coverage. Large parts of my region have had mobile phone coverage in recent years over the past decade, but there are still sections in my area—some of the most bushfire prone parts and some of the most flood prone parts—that do not receive mobile phone coverage, and they will not benefit from the text warning system in the future. But I have heard very positive feedback, and I would like to pass that on to the minister for emergency management, on the ground about the way the text system worked and about the way it was used by the authorities to provide accurate and useful information. In these events, you do not want to be plying people with too much information to the extent that they start ignoring some of the warnings. The text system is something that my community certainly appreciated.

It is tempting on these occasions to run through a huge list of people who need to be thanked. I will not do that now, but it would be remiss of me not to thank the political leaders in this country for the support they have shown to the people of Gippsland at this time. I include in that the Prime Minister, who visited Gippsland with the Premier of Victoria. They were very well received as they moved through my community and offered some support to the residents who have been affected. I also thank the Deputy Premier of Victoria and Police and Emergency Services Minister, Peter Ryan; my state colleague, Tim Bull; and Mayor Scott Rossetti and his fellow councillors.

It is a difficult role as a local member or political leader at a time of natural disaster. You run the risk of being seen, quite cynically, as turning up for a photo opportunity. Those in the community may wonder what you are doing there. But I think it is an important role as well for members and senior leaders to show that they are interested, that they are there to support these committees and that they understand the troubled times and the challenges we are now facing. I listened to my great friend the member for Hinkler as he described the floods through his community. In such harrowing times the role of an MP is almost a mix between parish priest and advocate for the community. You are there to offer support and to be a mate and a friend—because they are our family and friends as well—and make sure that people who are perhaps traumatised do not fall through the gaps in the system and know what support is available for them. I can recall many occasions where just a phone call from someone in my office has been able to help people in the community access the support they needed at that time. It is true that we need to reassure these communities that we will be there and stand shoulder to shoulder with them for the long term. The recovery effort in Gippsland, in Tasmania and, of course, in Queensland is going to be long term; this is not going to be something that is going to take a few days or a few weeks. The effort is going to be ongoing and require enormous amounts of support from the state government and also the Commonwealth.

On the behalf of the people of Gippsland, I pass on our best wishes to the people who went through the floods. It amazes me how many people in the bushfire affected areas talked to me about the floods. They would say, 'Can you believe what happened to the people in Queensland!' It was extraordinary. They were more worried about those things. When you saw those things on TV they did beggar belief. We have had floods in Gippsland, but 4,000 homes have been so badly damaged, particularly around the Bundaberg area. The people of Gippsland felt great sympathy for the people in the Queensland region.

Our fellow Australians are facing such enormous adversity and rallying together and getting on with the clean-up. As we gather here in this place at the start of a parliamentary year, there is a real challenge for us to focus on the things that matter to these people and to these communities. I think we will be judged very harshly in this place, particularly in the next few weeks, if we indulge in petty political games. When we have got people on the ground building fences, helping mates out and shovelling mud out of their living rooms while we are shovelling dirt on each other I suggest we will be judged very harshly by our constituents if we cannot find ways to work in a very bipartisan way, particularly when it relates to these communities which have been so adversely affected.

There is a challenge there for us as members, and I think we are up to it, to stand shoulder to shoulder with each other as we help our fellow Australians who are in this for the long haul. I take on board the comments from the member for Hinkler that we need to take whatever steps we can to help minimise and prevent such damage in the future. There is an opportunity for us, as state and national leaders, to find ways to reduce the impact of these disasters in the future. We need to help our businesses and our farming sector get back on their feet. One of the things we sometimes forget is that business communities, in particular tourism businesses, suffer a fair bit of damage after a natural disaster. We need to get the message out there when we can, when these communities are safe to return to, that these are great places to enjoy a holiday. I think it is going to be a challenge for us in the months ahead in these tourism areas which have been adversely affected.

I think as a nation we have been sorely tested over the last couple of months. I think we have been reminded about nature's great power. Our communities are certainly looking to us as leaders of the community to put aside our petty political differences, and I think that, as a parliament, we dare not let them down.

5:19 pm

Photo of Dick AdamsDick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I wish to enter this debate in relation to the natural disasters that have hit our country and, on indulgence, say a few words.

Of course, the true destructive nature of Australian bushfires was very much felt in January, when a number of communities across the Lyons electorate, and also the Braddon electorate in the north-west, were devastated by bushfires. A number of homes and properties were destroyed in the firestorms that caused real damage and a real loss of livestock on many, many properties. The worst were the fires that swept through the Tasman Peninsula from Forcett right down to the back of Taranna, and raging through Dunalley on its destructive path. Dunalley is a very old settlement with a canal that was built at the small top end of that peninsula over 100 years ago to lessen the burden of sailing right around the bottom end where Port Arthur is. In those days, boats were used much more as transport.

As the fires approached Dunalley and that area, many people took refuge on the beaches and under jetties, and some people were on boats—if they were able to get the boats in—and they got their neighbours on and went out and moored. The police commissioner, and also the Chief Fire Officer of Tasmania, both said to me that they believe that we did not suffer any loss of life because we were so close to the water. When you recall the Victorian fires, with so many people caught trying to get off mountains in those sorts of circumstances, we were lucky with the amount of water that was there and that people were able to take advantage of it. It certainly lead to a Dunkirk-style flotilla of boats going down to evacuate residents and their pets, and some stranded tourists were taken off because they could not get off the peninsula either.

I visited the fire-devastated town of Dunalley with the Prime Minister following the disaster. On our visit, we talked to a number of local residents who had been affected by that disaster and we listened to their stories of hope and survival. Many of them were talking about how they were going to rebuild and start again. We visited the town's devastated school, where I had been only a few months before, reading to the students and the students in the leadership group showing me the boats that they had built. Although the school had been lost to the fire—as well as all its teaching resources—I was pleased to see that the hall we built and did up through the BER funding had survived and was being used as a recovery centre after the fires because of all the showers and toilets that had been put into it. The hall was on a slightly lower level than the school, but the whole school had gone. The community understood what an important community the school can be and they rallied around to rebuild that school. It was the Parents and Friends Association rather than the education bureaucracy that managed to get a temporary school in place so that when school opened yesterday, 5 February, the students in Dunalley walked into their brand new temporary school, with a replacement permanent school already in the planning process. Quite a feat, and a surprise, for the state minister for education.

Although it is never the same after losing a special place, the speed with which the rebuilding has been achieved has allowed hope to arise from the ashes. Thanks must go to the Dunalley Parents and Friends Association, under the careful guidance of Elizabeth Knox, with help from the state body, and Jen Eddington, without whose dedication and commitment the school would still be in ruins.

The fires also took a boatbuilding project, as I mentioned, that was being undertaken through the school. The year's work lies in ashes; they were going to show their boats at the Wooden Boat Festival this weekend in Hobart.

Luckily the boatbuilder who was running the course had a couple of unfinished shells, one was in the Nubeena school further down the peninsula and one was safe in his workshop, which did not get burnt, down near the slips on the canal. With the help of the children and one of my staff members, the boats have been rebuilt and there will be one or two of those boats at the Wooden Boat Festival this weekend in Hobart. That will be a great opportunity for the school and for the kids to show what they have achieved and that the community is still achieving.

I also visited the temporary emergency shelter that had been set up in Sorell for those who had lost their homes. I heard the stories of loss and remarkable survival. All of our service clubs in that area were working there. The Sorell RSL, which is attached to that hall, was involved right in the middle of it as well. The church groups were all busy and active in a pastoral care role, and the council, with a mayor who had been elected to that job only three months before, came through with shining colours.

I learnt of the website that had been set up by Mel Irons. She was one of the key assistance services dealing with the countless donations of food, clothing, livestock feed—there was a great set up at the Sorell sports grounds—bedding, fuel and money was made. Hundreds of hours of voluntary work was also being offered through this Facebook website that Mel had set up. She was a tireless volunteer behind most of the donations and coordination for the Dunalley Tasman Peninsula fire. In her own time, she coordinated the thousands of donations that were made, as well as using Facebook to keep people updated on everything that was happening—reconnecting friends and family who had been separated during the disaster. There were people whose children were on the peninsula with other families—it is a big holiday area—and for the people who were in Hobart while their families were on the peninsula with a fire between, it them caused a lot of angst.

I spoke with Mel and thanked her for all the hard work that she had done, and social media had played a really important role. I just heard the member for Gippsland talk about social media from the fire service in Victoria. It certainly was used very successfully by the fire service in Tasmania. They feel that they got their message out very successfully to many people. Social media was used to keep people abreast and also, as Mel had done, keep people in touch with family and caught up with where things were happening. Mention must also be made of the state member Bec White, whose office in Sorell was thrown open to help all comers. Her staff spent hours working with Mel to ensure that cries for help did not go unanswered. They need to be thanked gratefully for all the work that they put in.

But Dunalley was not the only area that suffered great devastation in January; fires were experienced across the state. The Lake Repulse fire around Ellendale, which is high in the Derwent Valley—a very large forest area that goes right back into national parks as well as active working forests—was a very big fire burning through there for quite some time as well as in the Bicheno area, which burnt right through to the Coles Bay national park. I have spent time in each of these areas talking to the residents and making sure that Centrelink was available to issue those first areas of assistance to help, and then later talking of other means of assistance and helping in that area.

I also want to thank Centrelink for getting their bus to Tasmania from the mainland. I think that was a bit of a rush down to the ferry in Melbourne to get it on the ferry and get it over overnight to Tasmania and then a big rush down to the south. I thank them for the work and the effort; those officers put in a lot of time.

In late January, I again visited Dunalley, with the Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Sid Sidebottom. Following the disaster, the federal government made emergency funding available to those who had been directly affected by the fires. The community and the whole of Tasmania have been raising funds for the disaster appeal. Our regular and our volunteer fire brigades, along with the SES, who were involved in much of the clean-up afterwards, all played an enormous role around the state in fighting fires. Also, despite it being the holiday period, many people on their holidays were actually fighting fires. Many of them worked many long shifts. I visited the control centres and was extremely impressed by the efficiency and coordination of all the emergency groups: fire, ambulance, police and the SES. We would have to have one of the best services in the country in Tasmania, and I think it was a credit to those services that there was no loss of life in these fires. The people at Aurora, our energy company, must also be thanked for getting on with the job of putting in new poles even when the old ones were still smoking. They are a remarkable bunch of workers.

Unfortunately, a volunteer firefighter from the mainland—I think the member for Gippsland mentioned he was from that electorate—Peter Cramer, lost his life during this period. It was not as a result of the fire but rather a medical condition. I and my constituents thank him and his family from the bottom of our hearts for coming to our aid in our time of need. It was a truly heroic gesture on his behalf.

One of the greatest property losses was the loss of fencing. While much livestock perished in the fires, those animals that survived were left without adequate fencing. Of course, this causes problems with stock getting onto roads and into other areas. Also, some damage was caused to potato crops, which is an important feedstock for Tasmanians—we feed quite a few mainlanders potatoes from Tasmania.

I say thank you to BlazeAid, a voluntary organisation set up following the Victorian Black Saturday bushfires in 2009. BlazeAid was supported by a number of sponsors, including the Country Women's Association, the Salvation Army, the ABC, Rotary International and the St Vincent de Paul Society. BlazeAid volunteers helped rebuild fences in bushfire affected areas and have volunteers around Australia and the world, including, I understand, in New Zealand, England, Canada, Germany, France and America. Through their efforts, many kilometres of fence line have been restored in the Evandale and the Sorell-Dunalley Tasman Peninsula area.

But there is still a lot more to be done and I am sure many of the property owners will welcome working bees to help them continue to repair their working lives. The next few months are going to be a hard time for those people who have lost houses and businesses or whose farms have been affected. The clean-up process is beginning and the insurance people have been out and about, working on their assessments. Both of my offices are available for people seeking assistance and have been working with Bec White, the state MHA for Lyons, in the Sorell area. So, hopefully, we can cover most of the problems that might arise.

There are also a few communication problems that need to be fixed. Our local ABC was wonderful in giving out regular emergency messages. I met up with them at Bicheno and at Sorell. They do a tremendous job throughout high-sided areas where you can still get a signal. As the member for Gippsland mentioned, there are parts of regional Australia where you just do not get phone coverage. That is no-one's fault. The difficulties are in gullies and mountainous areas where you do not get a direct signal. Sometimes the ABC have a signal, and they provide an important service in an emergency. Their messages were loud and clear right across all these areas. I thank them for the work they did. They went into some regions and put out the message, and they talked to people who were affected. Some of the signals did not get through, in some cases because of substandard equipment, particularly in outlying areas where work still needs to be done. We need to continue to work to have those upgraded.

I also want to thank all the Tasmanians who came to help and who donated goods and money, and who volunteered all sorts of things to help out. Some provided help to businesses they compete with—in particular, some of the oyster growers at Boomer Bay who lost their sheds. The other guys helped them get their fish to shore and process it in their sheds. We saw great community spirit in helping out your neighbour.

When we are in crisis in Tasmania, the island pulls together. It is great to see. Many teams who came down to help us have now headed back north and are probably helping out in Queensland. I want to thank all those volunteers from Victoria and other places who came to help us in Tasmania. It was a great effort and I thank them very much. Tasmania is a great place to live. It is not what you have but what you can contribute to others that seems to be the Tasmanian ethos, and that is a wonderful value to have. Thanks to everybody who assisted. I also pay special thanks to the Prime Minister for coming and lending her support to all my communities.

5:38 pm

Photo of Ken O'DowdKen O'Dowd (Flynn, National Party) Share this | | Hansard source

Who would have thought of this after the 2010-11 floods that affected the people of my electorate and those in the electorates of the member for Ryan and the member for Brisbane? I have often had this question put to me: what would you prefer if you were a farmer, a flood, a fire or a drought? It is a very good question and I do not expect an answer. You could debate the matter with yourself over and over again. I tend to think that, if I were a farmer, I would prefer a drought. Fires are very destructive, as are floods. Floods will wipe out everything on your property, as will a fire. Droughts do not take your house, your machinery or your farm infrastructure. That is something just to think about.

My electorate takes in a little of North Bundaberg. It was a record flood, equal to the 1942 flood. People said they never thought they would ever see it in their lifetime. It is certainly a record for Bundaberg.

In other parts of the Burnett River, sometimes it registered over the 1942 floods and in other places it did not. But one thing is for sure: the rain came down very quickly, which caused the movement of the water to be very quick. That is why it hit Bundaberg in not so many days. It did the same thing in Rockhampton. The local water is never really a problem for flooding around Rockhampton, but it was this time. There is total devastation across two-thirds of my electorate. Fortunately Emerald and Theodore, which were so badly affected in 2010, escaped. But the other two-thirds of my electorate was hit very badly. It affected railway lines and roads to an extent. But I am pleased to report that, maybe because of the action of Main Roads, which has cleared a lot of debris and put drainage along the sides of the roads, the main highways did not seem to be so badly affected as they were in 2010.

There was a lot of destruction on new bridge works. I think in future we have got to spend a little bit more money on bridge ends and use more concrete instead of bitumen because, with this heavy rain, the bitumen will soon lift off and create great holes and wells in the bridge ends, which makes those bridges impassable. When I saw the holes that have been gouged in the sides of roads and bridges, it certainly changed my mind about driving in heavy rain. The holes are so dangerous they could swallow a car in one go.

There was crop destruction along the Burnett River, which runs for about 250 kilometres before it gets to Bundaberg. Some parts the river were five or six kilometres wide; in other places it was narrower. Of course, the narrower it is the faster the water runs. The citrus plantations—oranges and mandarins—and blueberry farms have been hit very hard. Fences have been destroyed everywhere. Over 1,000 kilometres of fences were knocked down in the Banana Shire alone. Hundreds of homes were inundated and some were lost forever; some of them were seen floating down the Burnett River. Some sheds in the Stanwell area were picked up, with their concrete base attached, and dumped on other people's properties. That is how strong the water was.

Very high stock losses were reported in the early days. But as the floodwaters receded, cattle, pigs, sheep et cetera bobbed up on other properties downstream. At one stage one particular grazier thought he had lost 3,000 head. Fortunately, at this stage he has recovered about 2,000 head on other people's properties downriver. A dairy farmer at Mundubbera had a dairy herd of 400 cows. He initially lost the lot; they were washed away. Fortunately he has recovered half to 60 per cent of his herd—and, who knows, he may recover more. There was a loss of herds on the Gayndah Bridge, which is a pretty high bridge. When the waters receded, cattle and timber—full trees—were stuck in the bridge and they had to be removed before the bridge could be used. One particular farmer did not suffer floodwater damage to his shed, but the whirlybirds on the roof of his shed were sucked out and, of course, the rainwater did the rest of the damage.

Irrigation systems were lost. They were bent and twisted. Machinery was inundated with water. A brand new grader of the North Burnett shire was put on a hill which they thought was high enough to be out of floodwaters. It had all the modern gizmos and electronics. It went under. There are many stories like that where cars and tractors and other vehicles and cattle trucks have all been lost. Pump stations have been covered in mud and sand. There are not enough electricians to fix those yet. It is going to take a long time. On the Binjour Plateau a highway between Gayndah and Mundubbera has had great holes washed in the side of the road and people are unable to use it bar one lane.

There were two motels in Mundubbera. They were completely inundated with water. So there is no accommodation as such from motels. My good friend's hotel in Gayndah was washed away completely. He had poker machines, a TAB agency, living accommodation for him and his family and the accommodation in the motel units. That has all been lost. It is very devastating.

I think it has been mentioned before in the lower house that Lizzy Connelly from Eidsvold was a very lucky girl indeed. She went to bed, there was heavy rain and she got up to have a look around. The waters picked her up and threw her out of the house, down over the yard, over the fence, across the highway and over another fence. Fortunately, she ended up in a plantation of trees. The trees were pretty branchy and leafy and for the next five hours she clung to these trees along with a big brown snake in the same tree as she was. I think they were both pretty frightened. She lived to tell the tale and it was a marvellous and miraculous escape by a very brave young lady.

I will go through my electorate, where four or five shires were flooded. I will start with the north, with Rockhampton, Neerkol, Kabra, Stanwell, Bajool, Mount Morgan, Alton Downs—and Alton Downs has been under water twice in the same flood. The road from Mount Morgan to the dam has been very badly damaged. I have seen that with my own eyes. The Neerkol bridge has been washed out. That is on the main Capricorn Highway from Rockhampton to Emerald. So it has been severely damaged. There is a side track there now until the bridge is fixed, which will take months. Take Wilson's farm on the Yeppoon-Emu Park road. They have sent me photos. There is a lot of erosion and a lot of gouging of soil.

If you head into the Banana shire, the towns of Jambin, Wowan, Goovigen, Baralaba were all heavily affected. I was talking to a lady in Wowan who had not seen her husband. He was safe. He was on top of a roof. What happened on the Sunday and the Monday, probably at the peak of the flood, was that all the telecommunications lines went out. Telstra did apologise profusely. They had two lines in Queensland. One south of Mirrimbah got washed out and they could not get in a chopper or a vehicle to join it all up again. There was another one near Kingaroy. Again, they could not get in vehicles to fix or repair. So most of those flood affected areas were out of communications. That led to a lot of confusion and misinformation as to what was happening. Well, there was no information at all. It was all hearsay.

That is what the people of our electorate had to endure. As you move south to North Burnett, Gayndah, Mundubbera, Eidsvold and Monto, all had major damage. South Burnett towards Kingaroy and Wadeye had huge flood waters, again doing damage to farmland and fences et cetera. My good friend Paul Neville, the member for Hinkler, described the scene at Bundaberg, so I will not go into that again. Needless to say, there are still people assessing their losses. My staff have only today got into a place called Winfield, and Battle Creek, which is a fair way north of Bundaberg. They have been cut off and no one has been able to get in there.

I experienced a fair bit of difficulty getting around because the Army, which do a great job, came in. When the Army come into your area—and fortunately they did—they do take control of the fuel, so some private helicopters and planes were short of fuel. That was not a big help to me but the fuel was better off being used by the Army for the rescue of people than for my cause. People stood shoulder to shoulder. Some had no outside assistance. I ran into two ladies at Stanwell. The police could not get in. They just took control of that area. They rounded the people up and made an evacuation centre for them in the Stanwell hall. For 2½ days no-one knew they were there, but they kept them calm. They raided their own fridges and fed the people. When the police finally did arrive they were amazed to see what a good survival job they had done.

Throughout the electorate there are all sorts of stories and there will be more over the coming months. The emergency services, the volunteers, the police and the Army all did a wonderful job and there was no loss of life. That is something we can be grateful for. The government assistance is starting to flow in now. We only have South Burnett and Banana, which will be declared in the next day, I hope, with some funding and the AGDRP, the Australian Government Disaster Recovery Payments. Once that happens it is going to take a long time to rebuild. A lot of the farmers, who are devastated, are still paying back loans from the 2010 flood, so they are going to be hit hard. They say to me, 'We don't want to owe more money.' I had the services of John Cobb, our shadow agriculture minister, and Warren Truss, Leader of the Nationals. A lot of politicians, including the Prime Minister, went to Bundaberg. We elected to do the country areas. All those people came to Bundaberg and up north to Burnett and Rockhampton.

I thank them all. There are too many to mention, both state and federal politicians. I want to also thank our colleagues in Canberra, whatever electorate they come from. They rang on numerous occasions to offer their condolences and help. I thank them very much.

5:54 pm

Photo of Janelle SaffinJanelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I wanted to speak to the statement, on indulgence, that the Prime Minister made yesterday in the House and that the Leader of the Opposition spoke to. I have spoken twice in this place, both last night and today in an adjournment speech and in a constituency statement, on the floods that have affected my area, but I still have something to say here. What I want to raise is about the fires and floods that have devastated some of our lands—Victoria, Tasmania, Queensland, New South Wales and other areas. It is as though every year, sometimes twice a year, there is some sort of natural disaster happening. The honourable member for Hinkler in his contribution, which was a very fine contribution, spoke about how over the past four or five years there have been these extreme weather events that have happened and that is what I have been talking about locally in my area, the Northern Rivers area in my seat of Page.

In October 2007 there was a huge hail storm, the likes of which we had not seen for a long time, and it seems every year since then we have had some big weather event. We do get a lot of floods in our areas. When I say we are used to floods, you can never be used to them but we are organised because we do have a lot of floods. Our SES and Rural Fire Service, the people who live in flood areas, the council workers, the agencies that hop in and help with the emergency management: they deal with the emergency issues but they also deal with the recovery and that is what we are in now. It is something that seems to be happening a lot more, and that is what people are talking about. That leads me to the issue of people talking about what more we can do in the area of flood mitigation.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 17 : 57 to 18 : 15

Before the suspension, I was talking about the extreme weather events we have experienced in the Northern Rivers. It has had a huge impact on our emergency services, our local councils, the people who live in flood affected areas and the local media, who are very active when we have these flood and extreme weather events. I also want to talk about the impact on farmers. There is a large agricultural industry, which includes horticulture, in my seat of Page and the Northern Rivers. These events that keep coming year after year in the way that they have do not allow farmers to get back on their feet. I want to read a letter from the Australian Macadamia Society. Their headquarters are in Lismore in the seat of Page. At least 60 per cent of the national production happens in the Northern Rivers. Their letter states:

Janelle

I appreciate you will have a lot on at the moment. This is to provide you with a preliminary update on the impact of the storms and floods on macadamia growers in your electorate and to seek your help in securing appropriate assistance for growers and the industry.

The Northern Rivers has also been severely hit, particularly north and easterly facing orchards. As always the effects of weather are very variable in the region and reports vary from less than 5% crop loss to almost 50% loss. On some exposed orchards 1 in 5 trees have been blown over or suffered severe damage.

I went and looked at the damage. The big wind that came with the floods actually shook the trees and shook the nuts off. I visited Rick Paine's farm on Rouse Road. He has been a grower for years and he said that that had never happened before. It happened five or six weeks short of the picking season, so it was tragic to see the nuts on the ground. There are some left on the trees but they have to get them quickly cleaned up off the ground to deal with what is left on the trees. The letter from the Australian Macadamia Society continues:

The industry in the northern rivers accounts for some 60% of national production and is valued at $70 million at farm gate. An across the board loss of nut of around 20% would mean a loss to the industry and the region of over $10 million. This does not include the cost of repairs and replanting. These are conservatively estimated at $60/ha or a further $5 million.

Of the approximately 600 growers across the region reports indicate that around 70% have been significantly impacted. The individual loss and damage bill reach over $100,000 for some with a loss of $30,000 common.

This letter was written on 31 January, so more assessment has been done since then. The letter continues:

Macadamia growers in the northern rivers have had at least 3 very difficult years from the big storms of 2009, dry weather at nut set in 2010 and a wet harvest in 2011. Many have not covered the costs of production in that time. 2012 saw a cautious step to recovery with a reasonable yields and firm prices. 2013 was shaping up to continue that recovery and a lot of effort and expense had been put in to maximise returns. This is now all in jeopardy.

What is happening now is that there is an assessment going on at state level. A lot of the carriage of that is with DPI, the Department of Primary Industries. They will then put forward the request, which goes through to the Commonwealth. It will be a category C request under the Natural Disaster Relief and Recovery Assistance program. I know that there are a lot of farmers anxiously waiting for that to happen.

The other issue that I wanted to talk to that I started on before and then left was the issue of flood mitigation. In the area that I live in, we have done flood mitigation. We have levies. We have raised houses. We have bought houses back. We have done all that. Now is the right time, as the member for Hinkler said in his contribution. He was talking about the same kinds of conversations that I am having in my electorate. I will be having some meetings on the weekend on that very issue. It is time. It would be good if we could look at this in a solid bipartisan way with technical expertise. We need to look at what we can do over the next 10 years in terms of more work in that area. We cannot prevent these events, but we can do a lot of work to mitigate in certain areas.

I also wanted to say that I was pleased to have the opportunity to speak for the third time in this place about the floods, particularly those in my area but also the natural disasters impacting everywhere. I express on behalf of my community sympathy and sorrow for everybody who suffered loss. People in my area have suffered loss. As we have said, we have not suffered loss of life. To those communities that have, we extend our sympathy and sorrow. Thank you.

6:21 pm

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

I rise to speak after the member for Page, who represents a very beautiful part of Australia. I want to commend her care for her constituents, along with the previous speakers, the member for Hinkler and the member for Flynn. This is the second time in two years that I have been on my feet in this place expressing condolences as a result of flooding events in my electorate and across Queensland. The damage and the devastation from ex tropical cyclone Oswald in my electorate was not as severe as that in 2011 and nowhere near the level that we have seen in Bundaberg and other central Queensland and northern New South Wales communities. However, the effect on some pockets of my electorate was very significant.

In 2011, the flooding in Brisbane predominantly occurred as a result of the Brisbane River reaching dramatic heights. This time, it was localised flooding as a result of storms that caused suburban creeks and waterways to swell and to overflow. This led to houses and businesses getting flooded all over again. There were hundreds of thousands of dollars of storm damage, with trees and power lines coming down right across my whole electorate. Tens of thousands of my constituents were without power for periods of up to three or four days. Businesses lost their Eftpos facilities. Homes were flooded. Possessions and memories were lost.

Tragically, little Angus Burke, a three-year-old boy from Gordon Park was killed after a tree fell on him and his mother, Dr Zara Weedon, as they were innocently standing and watching the water rise in Kedron Brook creek while taking a walk with his dad, Dr Andrew Burke, and his little brother, Joseph. Dr Weedon is still in a critical condition in a coma at Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital. The Courier Mail today printed a very moving eulogy that was given by Dr Burke at Angus's funeral yesterday morning. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and his friends at this very sad time.

The sense of deja vu as the waters poured down and emergency warnings were issued sent shivers down my spine. We all recall the trauma and the devastation of the 2011 disaster. However, the extra warning made a big difference and people rushed to SES depots and began sandbagging their properties. The fact that some people sandbagged their businesses and properties and were not flooded was a good thing. This time, the Brisbane community was much more prepared than ever before.

I want to thank the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, for visiting the Newmarket SES depot with me and helping to fill sandbags with volunteers. It is really important during times of disaster that we as a community—and particularly community leaders—express our appreciation for the work of volunteers. There were so many people out there helping so many of their fellow men and women. I want to pay tribute to all of the parents, the P&C and the principal, Paul Zernike, of Milton State School. A working bee of some 100 people and more rolled up at the school before the anticipated waters hit. Fortunately, Milton State School was not flooded, which was a great thing. They then had the mammoth task of putting back all of the equipment. Their preventative action is to be applauded.

The most affected areas in my electorate were parts of Windsor, Albion, Enoggera, Milton and Ashgrove. I want to pay tribute to Councillor Vicki Howard for coming out with me when we visited the northern suburbs of Brisbane where people were starting the heartbreaking process of cleaning up. The anguish and frustration on people's faces was truly heartbreaking. I want to also acknowledge Councillor Peter Matic and Saxon Rice, the state member for Mount Coot-tha, for coming out to the Rosalie shopping district, which was the scene of much devastation in the 2011 floods. Luckily, this time it was spared, so we all breathed a sigh of relief. I do not think that you ever recover from watching residents carry out wrecked and mangled furniture onto footpaths and hosing out their living areas for the second time in two years. That is a terrible thing.

When I visited Newmarket I saw businesses that had been flooded with two metres of water. Elite Dance Studio, for example, had just finished refurbishing their dance studio. They were waiting for enrolments and the start of dancing classes for the year. It was terrible to see the devastation of their fittings. There were volunteers working there. There is a wonderful bakery at New Farm, Chouquette Bakery. I want to pay tribute to this incredible bakery. People line up there every day to have a coffee and taste the finest French pastries. They had just started a wholesale bakery, had purchased the equipment and were about to start producing wholesale pastries for delis and for businesses in Brisbane. I saw the effect of the floods on their $80,000 brand new baking oven. You cannot move huge ovens like that. They were able to move some equipment but sadly they are now in the middle of an insurance claim.

The incredible community spirit that was celebrated in 2011 was on show again as neighbours and community members rallied to help their fellow Queenslanders. It was the case in the CBD, where I again waited and watched the water in the Brisbane River rise, praying that it would not go over the boardwalk, with Councillor Howard and also the state member for Brisbane Central, Robert Cavallucci. Watching the waters was very tense. Many CBD workers and many of those who owned buildings in the CBD were watching with dread and anticipation. Sadly, the effects of the last flood, the one in 2011, came to our minds. I want to acknowledge that, while the water did not reach the upper end of the boardwalk, it did damage Matt Moran's Riverbar restaurant. Our thoughts are with them at the moment as they try and rebuild from the damage that was done there.

Remarkable stories abound always in times of crisis. Strangers help other community members with hot showers and accommodation. They roll up and clean up houses. They clean up businesses, even though they do not know the owners. To see those acts of pure selflessness and generosity makes me really proud to be the member for Brisbane.

There are so many people I want to commend. I commend Volunteering Queensland for the website that they set up, Emergency Volunteering. There were some glitches during the 2011 flood; I know that they took away a lot of those lessons, and they were absolutely marvellous. This website basically connected those people interested in volunteering to help businesses and residents that needed help with sandbagging or cleaning up. This service was of huge benefit to my constituents who needed help. It ensured that help went to those who needed it the most.

I want to thank all of the police officers, the SES volunteers, emergency service personnel and community volunteers for their service. I have incredible admiration for their commitment. I want to particularly thank Mike Swanston and Energex. I did not have the need to ring Mike Swanston on this occasion. He and his crews were out there trying to reconnect power under some very difficult circumstances. I want to thank all of the workforce at Ergon Energy for the incredible work that they did, particular as they were under incredible pressure. Interestingly enough, the time that it took to reconnect homes and businesses was much shorter than it was in the 2011 disaster. I acknowledge the inconvenience of having no power for extended periods, causing food to go off in fridges and freezes, meaning that it needs to be replaced.

I want to thank the Australian and Queensland governments for activating the National Disaster Relief and Recovery arrangements. I am encouraging my constituents to take advantage of the emergency assistance grants available at community recovery centres. I have written to most of the affected areas, informing them of what relief grants are available to them. I would like to thank the Premier, Campbell Newman, and the Lord Mayor, Graham Quirk, for their outstanding leadership throughout this disaster period. The efforts that they went to to provide Queenslanders with as much information as possible and as soon as possible were suburb. Those efforts provided reassurance to residents that the government was there no matter what.

In particular, I want to commend the Premier. I met with him last Thursday and he announced the decision that allowed SEQ Water to release water early from Wivenhoe and Somerset dams. This ensured that when mass water flowed into the Brisbane River from the Lockyer and Bremer rivers there was capacity in Wivenhoe and Somerset to hold and contain water that fell within their catchments until the Brisbane River went back down. The people of the electorate of Brisbane would have been much more severely impacted if this action by the Premier had not been taken. I thank him for his leadership. I want to place on the record also the thanks that was expressed by Mayor Pisasale. I also acknowledge the incredible work that Mayor Pisasale did in his region as well.

I also agree with many representatives and the Premier on the need for governments at all levels to work together to ensure that we invest in infrastructure and planning policies so that neither I nor any future member for Brisbane has to stand up in this place and make a similar speech about floods ever again.

I would like to talk about something that I feel is absolutely essential. After a crisis, it is really important that we think about ways in which we can prevent these disasters from happening again. But I cannot emphasise enough—and I have spoken at roundtables with Minister Shorten about this—the need for digital elevation modelling and the real need for DEM mapping. This would allow more extensive and accurate hydraulic modelling. Normal flood mapping is useful, but it is a very generalised tool across suburbs and often does not allow or account for the different property levels within a suburb. While a property may be coded a certain way on a flood map because it is within a certain area, it may in fact be higher or lower than the proposed water levels because of individual characteristics of that property. DEM mapping also allows for identification of impediments to the water flow. It is really important that governments at all levels—local governments and the Queensland government—work together to make sure that this information is available not just to prevent floods and disasters from happening but also to help with infrastructure planning in the future.

I would like to urge insurance companies to act with fairness and compassion when dealing with claims from flood victims. I note the concerns that have been raised by many members of this House both on the opposite side and from our side of politics, particularly in the media, regarding the length of time that it is taking for insurance companies to respond to claims.

I am also getting reports that insurance companies are refusing to pay claims and, instead, are blaming local councils regarding local flooding and backflow issues. I share these concerns and will not hesitate to publicly expose any disingenuous conduct by insurance companies. The last thing that people need when they have gone through a natural disaster is again to have a fight with an insurance company.

In concluding I want to acknowledge the resilient spirit of Queenslanders and to reaffirm my commitment to continuing to work to get Brisbane families back on their feet after these recent events.

6:35 pm

Photo of Sid SidebottomSid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | | Hansard source

Fire, drought and flood are so much part of our environment. Might I pass on my sympathies and best wishes to those folk further north who have been affected by very serious flooding again. The member from Queensland and my colleagues here have been working assiduously with their communities again, and I really do sympathise with you. To face this again after two years is a monumental challenge. But our sympathies go with you, particularly from Tasmania, and of course into New South Wales.

In my home state of Tassie, as you might be aware, towards the end of January very serious fires occurred in the Tasman Peninsula in particular, which is part and parcel of Dick Adams's electorate of Lyons; on the east coast of Tasmania, which is also in Lyons; and in the Derwent Valley, which was Dick Adams's patch. We had some serious fires up in my electorate, but fortunately they did not threaten, beyond our immediate concerns, houses or persons.

I joined the member for Lyons recently, at his invitation, and went to visit the Tasman Peninsula. I know that there are people in this chamber and certainly in this parliament who have before faced serious bushfires and their consequences, and also flooding. But I must say that these fires, like most extraordinary fires, needed to be seen to be believed.

I particularly want to congratulate the people of the Tasman Peninsula on the way that their community has rallied in the face of these extraordinary fires, fires that in fact crossed rivers and bays of considerable size—they completely skipped major rivers—and, of course, caused damage in areas that you would never believe would face serious fire. That community has responded magnificently. In congratulating them, I would like to also recognise their local council, which has done everything possible to rally to support the community. The Tasmanian government has been very, very good. So has the federal government in giving ready support and assistance, particularly in declaring disaster assistance and disaster zones. I know that has been replicated throughout the country with the unfortunate circumstances in Queensland. We expect nothing less of federal governments, no matter what their political persuasion, than to support their people. But I do congratulate the Tasman Peninsula community in particular.

I attended a meeting with the member for Lyons, Dick Adams—and I must congratulate Dick; he really does know his area and they know him well, and he seems to know every little nook and cranny that was affected by the fires. I also want to congratulate Dick and his office for the tremendous work that they were able to do—as I congratulate my colleagues here. I say to every person, no matter what their political persuasion: I am so sorry your communities have been touched by disaster; I know how much work you would have done and how much you care about it, and I do thank you all for the work you do there.

We went to the meeting, which was auspiced by Sue Madden from Blue Lagoon Oysters. There were three oyster farms in a row and Sue's business was completely wiped out. I have never before seen the consequences of heat as I saw in this circumstance, and in an area with very few trees. Right next door, they were processing oysters. All this was going on and we were having the meeting, and the next minute a bloke arrived with a tray of oysters from right next door to Sue's. Then, next door to this oyster place that looked like it had not had a fire near it, another business was wiped out. It is extraordinary. Fire does not discriminate, in either its path or its ferocity. But I thought it was typical of the spirit shown that here was a guy coming around with oysters for us from his oyster bed. He did not have a factory left, but he had the oysters, so he brought them round for everyone. It just demonstrated a fantastic spirit.

Sue Madden auspiced this meeting, and we must have had at least 35 people representing, in particular, primary industries and small business in the area. One of the things that came out of the meeting, apart from an expression of shock and grief and the resilient attitude shown by the locals, was that sometimes disaster relief is paid, for instance, immediately to the primary producer but not necessarily to the small business that depends on the primary producer. So the provision of disaster assistance is an issue that Dick and I will be taking up.

Colleagues in this chamber and others have talked about the insurance industry. I know there are some insurance people who do the right thing, but I have heard of so many cases where people are dealing with an insurance company and do not feel confident that there is any certitude in their relationship with the insurance company. All I know is that the premiums continue to go up, so the service should be commensurate with the premium. People should not be worrying about the definition of an 'act of God'—that is a slippery definition. We have taken steps towards amending this problem, making sure it is expressed in plain English and is more definite, but I think we have a way to go. As members of parliament, if we believe someone has been done over by an insurance company, we are more than happy to step in, and they tend to listen to us when we do.

On that matter, whatever happens in Australia when it comes to the insurance industry affects us all. We have sought clarification of and fought over the definition of 'flood'. To give you an example, I live in the valley of Forth, near the Forth River, which I suspect would now be classified as a zone at risk of flood. My insurance premiums have gone from $1,100 to $4,000. I have not been flooded out, but that is the effect of living in that region. So I will go shopping for insurance and I urge others to shop as well. If insurers are going to charge these sorts of rates, the service they offer must be commensurate—and people should not have to worry about whether they are insured or about slippery stuff like what defines a flood. We hope we have overcome all of that. I know members in this place are listening to and taking up the cause of their people on the subject of insurance. It was something that was raised with us on the Tasman Peninsula. People should not have to worry about that.

We then visited Kelly's Timber. This tells you a little about fires. When I was entering the Tasman Peninsula, there was a mill and you would swear that they would not know what fire was. Then, straight down the road, a complete sawmill was absolutely wiped out. It was worse than a bomb zone; it was completely wiped out.

They employed 50 people. They had been there for over 50 years and were completely wiped out.

One of the things that came through all of this was: when we talk about insuring, do people understand what it means to insure for the replacement value because so many people were underinsured. It is like a national consciousness; we really have to take stock of ourselves when we look at this stuff. So many people are underinsured, like Kelly's Timber at Dunalley. Through all of this they lost all their business. It is heartbreaking. There is an opportunity for them to continue one aspect of their business and they want to try to do that. I hope, through Dick and myself, the federal government will be able to assist but that is dependent on the intergovernmental agreement on forests in Tasmania. Again, all of this stuff is tied up.

Then we visited a potato growing and packaging business, which had taken up fence insurance. It is a dichotomy of emotion. They see people getting assistance, in some cases the full amount, to rewire their properties yet they do not have insurance for it. It is these types of issues that we need to have a look at as a community and what that means in the insurance industry. I do thank Sue and Dick and all those people who attended that meeting. I know Dick now is in communication with our government to try to assist individual cases there. He did a superb thing.

I would like to finish by thanking some people in my electorate. I am up in the north-west of Tassie. This fire was right down in the south and the south-east. Like your communities, my community feels very deeply for those who suffer. I do want to thank those people who came, particularly from Victoria, to help with rebuilding fences. Tasmanians went over to Victoria and did it for them. Isn't it remarkable how these people share? So much for their holidays—they spent them helping other people. It was fantastic.

I would like to thank Greg McDonald and John Sadler from beautiful Flowerdale up my way. They asked: what can we do to assist our colleagues? People said they needed stockfeed. So we gathered stockfeed. How were we going to get it there? Through my office—and I thank my office so much for the work they did—we were able to talk to some transport and logistics companies. Chas Kelly from Searoad Logistics, Bruce Monson from Monson Logistics, Hazell Brothers Group and De Bruyn’s Transport came on board and worked out with Greg and John and Bill King, who was up at Wynyard, as well as Alan Lord from Smithton to bring down stockfeed to support their colleagues on the Tasman Peninsula. I thank them very much and I thank my office for the work they did in coordinating that. It is not something you put out publicly because the last thing you want to do is even look like you are grandstanding on anything like this. I want to thank my office for their terrific work and have it on the record. I do want to thank Greg and all those who carried out that fantastic support.

Again, to my colleagues in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, commiserations and I do have great sympathy for you and your communities. I hope they can get through it. To have it twice in two years is very difficult to comprehend. Thank you for all the work you do and thanks to the federal government for the work it is doing. I know that whole communities are banding together, particularly on the Tasman Peninsula. It is not to be forgotten.

6:49 pm

Photo of Scott BuchholzScott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

In the final days of 2010 and early days of 2011 the electorate of Wright endured a level of flooding which was incomprehensible, a level of flooding that changed the lives of many people in the community and a level of flooding which will have a lasting impact on their psychological wellbeing.

The 2010-11 floods were floods that one should only have to endure once in a lifetime, but these communities have had to endure once again this unprecedented amount of water through the electorate. In certain places we had more inundation, higher levels of water, than we had in the previous flood. In the 2010-11 floods we suffered an enormous loss of life. I do not know if one can steel oneself to loss of life, but do you thank God that we only lost three people? It is not something we celebrate but something our community will mourn.

Again, the Lockyer Valley was not spared. This time it was the communities of Laidley and the Glenore Grove districts. To paint a picture of Laidley: it is a small country town with one main street with a couple of branches. It has got showgrounds, a high school and predominantly everyone knows everyone. There was not one business in the main street which was spared from the flood. At the top end of the street probably a foot of water went through businesses—enough to have destroyed the furniture or to have put a layer of silt over their floors; enough to throw their businesses into absolute turmoil. At the other end of the street, the water was about two-thirds of the way up businesses walls.

If I take you on a visual journey into the grocery shops, Foodworks—IGA was a little bit higher—in Laidley from about eye level down, every product line on their shelves was destroyed. These are the businesses that are still trying to recover from financial hardship because, even for those businesses that were insured in the last floods, there are always out-of-pocket expenses which cannot be claimed.

The main street of Laidley again felt like a war zone, but it was humbling to see the community rally together—and I compliment the younger generation of Laidley, that got out and became the mud army. You could go to any business, help them pull out their furniture, pull up their carpet, pull out anything in the sea of mud—anything that you could see that was visible—and it would be thrown onto the street. In the main street, the council had six little bobcats pushing everything into a pile and a convoy of semitippers or body-tippers came through the main street to try and get the place into some sort of order. The very next day, after the bulk was cleaned out of the commercial precinct, the same street was still alive with pressure cleaners trying to get rid of the silt—there was a lot more silt and mud in this flood.

The Mount Sylvia area, which is a valley, took the brunt of the water. When we talk about water, we are talking about a year's worth of rainfall in three days, so we are talking about landslips down the sides of mountains that have taken out infrastructure, power poles. These people had just had road infrastructure finished only months beforehand—seven crossings to get into these places—destroyed; heart-breaking. For the last two years they have been compromising and working patiently with construction crews to try and get their lives back to some kind of normality.

A laser leveller is a machine which levels farmland. On the Thursday before the rain started on the Sunday night, one farmer in the area had just had the laser leveller leave after levelling land from the 2011 flood. They had not yet received the invoice only to wake up to washouts—if I were to stand in beautiful, black fertile soil, I would disappear—in excess of eight feet and, in other parts of the electorate, 14 feet or deeper.

In addition to that, there were growers that had just purchased gypsum. They had stocked $20,000 worth of gypsum. It was stockpiled in a paddock. You looked and said, 'Where's the gypsum?' There was no evidence that it had actually been delivered. Every last skerrick of the powder had gone. Again, there is still no invoice received for the out-of-pocket costs.

The mental anguish, the psychological trauma and the emotional heartache that these people, the people of Wright, are currently enduring is something that we need to be cognisant of as a government. We can rebuild infrastructure—we can do that well—but I am truly more fearful this time as to the health, mental health and wellbeing of my electorate, as some might say: 'This is just too hard. I can't go on. I can't rebuild again. I'm maxed out with my banks. The land that I would normally rebuild on is now a creek. It is just not economically viable to go down that track.'

Let me go to another part of the electorate, because obviously it draws on my emotions to be able to hold to continuation. Take Mount Tamborine, a beautiful iconic rainforest-style part of my electorate. The trees, with their heavy leaves and foliage, were affected. Those people there were affected for a minimum of six days by loss of power. Can you imagine this? In itself, when you say in a sentence 'six days without power' it is not that traumatic. But take into consideration that most of these people and communities do not have town water and actually run things off tanks and pressure pumps. So consider it when you are getting to day 4, when you have not had a shower and your septic runs on a pressure pump so even a basic task of trying to use the toilet is beyond your capability—and all this was around the time when we were trying to get kids back to school.

Let us go then to Jimboomba and other parts of my electorate which were affected. They were cut off from their main commercial centres for three to four days by the unprecedented heights of water levels they experienced. These were parts of the community which were spared in the last flood, so there was no corporate knowledge and understanding of floods. These people were affected for the first time.

The most severe damage to our prime agricultural farming land would have been most definitely in the Fassifern Valley and the Tarome Valley. I know these people to be the salt of the earth. I know them to be great Australians. They are the people who are always the first to help within their community when there is a need. I suggest that at this time the need they require to be met is far greater than what the community can respond to. We have to now enter into a partnership with these guys, from a state government perspective and a federal government perspective. To date, through no fault of the federal government, the area within the valleys has not yet been declared category C. The Attorney-General's office is still seeking information from departments in Queensland. I will do everything within my power that is humanly possible to try to get that information. At the outset I had the benefit of understanding, from costs of the previous flood, the costs of rebuilding. I can tell you that with these areas the number is going to start at $100 million plus. I am sure that once inspections have been made of the devastation through these areas category D criteria will be implemented. We need to help these people because otherwise I am very concerned that they are not going to make it.

So I have moved through my electorate, which is 7½ thousand to 8,000 square kilometres.

I could not have been as effective in working with my communities without the assistance of our state members up there, Ian Rickuss in the Lockyer and Jon Krause in Beaudesert. I would speak to either of them two or three times a day, still trying to understand the community's needs.

We have encouraged our local communities to use the local councils as their first ports of call in trying to help with the recovery. Steve Jones, Mayor of Lockyer Valley, and his councillors, have done an outstanding job in this rebuild. It is not a great badge of honour to wear that Steve Jones becomes a very effective mayor because of the experiences he had two years ago. I am sure he wishes that he and all of his councillors had been spared the heartache of the work they have done. Mayor John Brent and his councillors from the Scenic Rim escaped a lot of the hardship and devastation in the last flood, so this is unprecedented country, unprecedented times and extraordinary circumstances for this council to fathom. They are a motivated and collective team and they work closely with their communities. I know that they will do everything to make sure the assessment process is given every opportunity.

The emergency response teams, the SES, police officers—we just do not pay these people enough. No money can substitute for their contribution when you have someone—as you walk into their business or onto their farm—before you even open your mouth to speak to them, greet you with open arms and cry for 15 minutes and wait to compose themselves. There are our volunteers, the mud army, the neighbours and those who rallied and helped people in their communities. They did not know them. They knew of their businesses but did not know them personally. Our community will be a better place tomorrow, as a result of generational change that is the next group coming through.

I will reserve my comments for the insurance companies for a later stage. As insurance companies try to sneak out the back door I do not want to miss the opportunity to line them up, because my people are in need and they should be under no illusion that we will not be coming after them.

In closing, I thank the work that the media, on all fronts, did on television, radio and in print in getting the message out as the water levels were rising, and in sending out sanitary and boiling water to communities until processes could be reinstated. I am under no misconception that this is going to take the electorate of Wright many years to rebuild. In some circumstances, regretfully, there will be businesses that are unable to rebuild. The financial hurdle will be too great. The emotional hurdle will be too great. To those people: my heart goes out to you.

7:03 pm

Photo of Ms Catherine KingMs Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Ageing) Share this | | Hansard source

I commend those speakers who previously made their contribution to this motion. I know there are a number of speakers to follow. What we are hearing in this debate and what we are being reminded of is that every one of us comes from regions and communities across this country and it is certainly very distressing to hear about the experiences and just how widespread the experiences of disaster have been, this summer, in different towns. Many have experienced it not just once but twice or three times now in a very short succession.

Combating Australia's natural disasters is something that is obviously becoming of increasing interest and certainly one that we are, unfortunately, having to talk about far too often in this place. The nation that we live in is a pretty remarkable place. So many families around this country have been impacted by devastating floods over this holiday period and many across other states have been impacted by and are continuing to combat severe bushfires and severe bushfire risk.

It is very upsetting to see people across all communities in a state of absolute despair as they struggle to cope with the impact of losing a home, having their belongings destroyed and having to start from scratch again.

During the member for Wright's contribution I was reflecting on the impact it also has on children, and children who are not necessarily directly affected as well. I have a four year old, and we often have the news on in our house. It just did not even occur to me about the floods in Queensland: he said, 'Are they near here; are we safe?' Suddenly I realised that he was thinking, 'Gosh, am I safe?' And in the same way—and I will talk a bit about this in a minute—I am a member of the fire brigade. I have a pager system which, unfortunately, has gone off fairly regularly this summer. He said, 'Is that a fire?' Suddenly I realised he was getting very anxious about what was happening. It is really important to remember that we talk even if we have not been directly affected—and I will talk a bit about my community in a minute—and that kids really have a very heightened awareness to what is actually happening across the country. It is important that we start to talk a little bit about that, about their safety and how they feel. I know Australian Emergency Management has some really great resources for kids. I would encourage people, particularly with primary school age kids, to have a look at that and to use it as a resource in their communities to talk about not only what has happened but also about how resilient they can be as communities, and as children about what they can do. That was an important reflection I wanted to make.

There is comfort for a lot of people to know that in local communities there has been such incredible support from across the country and also from within local communities. We are hearing amazing stories of people coming and getting stuck in and helping right across districts. Those of us who are not directly affected by fires and floods have watched the morning news and read the newspapers and struggled to truly comprehend the trauma to those who have been hardest hit.

On Australia Day, I often speak about the many inspiring stories we have in our own communities and across the country. There have been outstanding responses in all parts of the nation to the recent fires and to the floods in Queensland. In my own electorate I want to particularly thank our emergency services personnel, the members of the country fire authority and the DSE, and those services who worked alongside them, and continue to work alongside them this summer, the Victoria Police, VicRoads, the Red Cross and the local council staff, who have often had to come back from summer holidays to assist. They should be recognised for the significant support that they have given to local communities.

The volunteer work of many local residents should also not go unmentioned. Year after year volunteers turn out in droves to assist their neighbours when they are in a state of great need. In my community we have had a number of fires in Yandoit, Creswick, Balliang East, Blampied, Greendale and other communities as well. We have been incredibly fortunate, and there is a range of reasons why that is the case. Some of it has been about weather. It has also been about the lessons we have learnt from previous bushfire experiences; if you can get in and hit these things as hard as you can as fast as you can and stop them getting a run on, you have a better chance of actually containing them. It also obviously depends on the territory and where they start.

We have also been very fortunate about some very good decisions that have been made by both state and federal governments. Back in December when the fire season was just starting I went out to Ballarat airport—it is a very small airport—and inspected one of the nation's firefighting air cranes, the Gypsy Lady, which is one of the Sikorsky helicopters that we have. In Victoria that has been absolutely invaluable in getting fires in my region out incredibly quickly. I want to personally thank the crew of the Erickson sky crane who have been located, and continue to be located, in Ballarat. They come from all across the world and have left their families, often for long stretches of time—for up to three months at a time—to come and live in Australia. They have been absolutely integrated into our firefighting services. It has been a very important investment by both the Australian and state governments in providing financial support to get this equipment into regions, and to have it located in areas where it can be responding very, very quickly.

Obviously we have Elvis at Essendon Airport, but having an air crane in my region has certainly meant we have been able to put out fires very quickly.

I want to talk a little bit about one of the fires in Carngham. Given the job that I do and as the mother of a four-year-old, I am not as active a firefighter as I would like to be or used to be, but I went out on one day to the community of Blampied to help with the blacking-out activities. For people who do not know, often fires leave behind stumps that continue to burn and when you have hot days if they are continuing to burn internally—and you may not even notice that they are there—they can be the source of a new spread of fire. It was amazing to see again the number of crews, people from all across the community who would normally be on summer holidays and with their kids, downing everything, with their families giving them the space to go out and do really vital work to try to prevent fire, often in environments that were not safe. I know that in Blampied the hill we were on was a bit steep. We do not do anything that is dangerous and we very much look after each other, but they can be pretty precarious circumstances that you find yourself in. It is amazing to watch that.

I also had the opportunity to go out with the Premier of Victoria to visit and have a look firsthand at the Carngham fires. Again, you just realise how devastating these fires are and how quick they are. I met with the Nunn family, who had a large farming property out there and had lost pretty much everything. Listening to their stories, we could see they were still very much in the shock phase but starting to move into recovery. We learned a bit about the impact on the community. It was a real privilege. I was very pleased to be able to talk about the extension of the national disaster relief and recovery arrangements out in that community and what that hopefully would mean for their rebuilding. The Nunn's property was directly impacted, and Julie and Kim really highlighted how much work is needed to be done in the immediate aftermath let alone required to get back on your feet. So I want to thank them for having a media pack, the Premier and all of us suddenly descend on them in a period of time when they were still having to deal with some very difficult issues. More strength to them.

My thoughts are certainly with the families of the seven people who died in Queensland. Again, I think that they are just incredible tragedies. The stories of survival are extraordinary, but we need to absolutely remember the lives that we lost. There are a number of things we have learned from this flood, but it still amazes me to hear stories about people crossing floodwaters. I just cannot understand, given how much we know about it, why people are continuing to put themselves and SES and rescue services at risk. I think the more we go out and talk about it and the more we learn from every experience hopefully the more lives that will be saved. I want to recognise that seven people have lost their lives and are not with us as a result of the floods.

We watched from Victoria very much with amazement at just how much water was up north. My thoughts also go out to the resident and firefighter who died in the Seaton fires and the Victorian volunteer firefighter who died in Tasmania. Members of my own brigade in my own region went over to Tasmania and, again, I think the community of firefighters are pretty amazing people. There was not a single day that they did not have more people who wanted to go and help in Tasmania. While continuing to fight fires in our own region as well as in other parts of the state, there were a lot of people who were very keen to go and help. I want to acknowledge that a Victorian firefighter died in Tasmania but also the extraordinary works that those CFA volunteers did in Tasmania.

Again, it is important for us as we talk about these disasters to learn as we go through each of those experiences. Obviously the national disaster and relief recovery arrangements work differently in each state and territory and in each circumstances, but I do not think this is going to be the last time we are going to be here talking about these issues, unfortunately. I wish it were, but I do not think it will be. It is very important that members hear some very strong-lived experiences of how people manage through these disasters and how the recovery and relief arrangements work or do not work in certain circumstances.

I think it is really important that we make sure we bring these stories here, that we make sure we talk to the relevant ministers about some of the real, on-the-ground issues that are happening and that we make policy adjustments as we go along. I want to again commend all the members from the many, many affected electorates, across this vast, vast, land, that have been affected by these national disasters. But I also want to send out a plea: it is February; it is incredibly hot in Victoria as we speak—it is hot here in Canberra, although I have not been outside yet and so I cannot verify that—and we are in a pretty precarious bushfire circumstance still in many of the states, so I want to put out an absolute plea that people stay safe, be careful, listen to their fire authorities and also that every one of our emergency service personnel continues to stay safe this summer.

7:15 pm

Photo of Jane PrenticeJane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

Australia is yet again living through a summer of natural disasters and heartache. Communities across Victoria, Tasmania and New South Wales are recovering from some of the most devastating bushfires this country has ever seen. I extend my condolences to communities in the electorates of Gippsland, Parkes and Lyons during this very painful time.

Queensland too was not immune from the fire danger. At one stage, in early December, the Queensland Fire and Rescue Service reported 54 fires active across an area spanning two-thirds of the state: south to the New South Wales border, west to the Northern Territory border, east to the coastline, and as far north as Charters Towers. Larger indeed than many Western European countries. These fires destroyed vast tracts of grazing land in the north towards the gulf as well as in the Western Downs in the south-west. I extend my condolences to the farmers and related industries affected by this fire event and I commend their exceptional community spirit during this time. We saw, of course, volunteers in the local rural fire brigades who were out fighting fires knowing that back home their own property was burning.

For the second time in as many years, Queenslanders are also experiencing a heartbreaking clean-up following flooding and cyclone damage. Brisbane residents watched in horror as tropical cyclone Oswald left a trail of destruction as it made its way down the eastern coast of Queensland over the Australia Day weekend. Memories of the devastating 2011 floods resurfaced as rain continued to fall and the Brisbane River once again reached peak levels. Indeed, talking to some of the older residents in my electorate, they said it was more like the floods of 1974 where we had rain for so many days. Some of you will remember that in 2011 we watched the floodwaters come up in relatively sunny weather. Meanwhile, an army of volunteers including members of the University of Queensland—and once again we saw the younger generation come out in their hundreds—descended on suburbs in my electorate like Auchenflower, Torwood, Milton, Toowong, Taringa and St Lucia to help sandbag local residences and businesses.

Trees were knocked down across the electorate, cutting roads and leaving around 220,000 homes in the Brisbane region without power. The Brisbane River, which swamped thousands of homes two years ago, broke its banks in several areas and water entered some low-lying areas which were badly flooded in 2011. In my electorate, some evacuations did take place in Torwood Street in Auchenflower, but fortunately the high water levels in the Brisbane River, although they continued throughout the week, did not actually flood liveable parts of the homes. It was a frightening time for many people in the Ryan electorate, but thankfully we were spared any significant devastation and have learnt from past events and so we were able to respond quickly and effectively. I must commend the Brisbane City Council, which was able to produce more than 147,000 sandbags, and I can testify that our leader, Tony Abbott, was down there with Teresa Gambaro, the member for Brisbane, personally filling them.

The Brisbane City Council attended to more than 200,000 calls at the Brisbane City Council contact centre. They also provided important updates for the people of Brisbane through their Facebook and Twitter pages.

I acknowledge the work of the Queensland government under the guidance of Premier Campbell Newman. Working with our local councils, Premier Newman and his team were quick to assess the situation across the state and to activate a number of measures which will help residents as they recover. The government also started the Queensland floods appeal 2013, and I acknowledge the generous donations from some of our large corporations in contribution to that appeal.

The State Emergency Service worked tirelessly throughout the entire week, responding to more than 1,200 calls for assistance. Within four days more than 700 jobs had been completed. I thank the SES volunteers who helped so many people in the Ryan electorate. Once again we saw neighbours helping each other. Where I live, all four roads that I could use were cut off by fallen trees, yet the neighbours got out with their chainsaws—a little larger than Kevin's but nonetheless with the same spirit that the member for Griffith had—and they were chopping enough of the trees so that emergency vehicles could get through to people who needed assistance.

I also thank the Energex crews who worked over the course of the weekend, despite dangerous weather, to restore power to homes and businesses across Brisbane. Within four days of the event more than 110,000 homes and businesses had power restored and the rest followed shortly after.

I acknowledge the work of Connected Inc., a charity with which I am involved, who are dedicated to helping people in hardship. Connected volunteers—and I stress that everyone at Connected is a volunteer, and no-one is paid—worked around the clock to provide essential items for people affected not only by tropical cyclones in Queensland but also by the fires interstate. Indeed, they sent emergency supplies to communities as far away as Tasmania. I congratulate the CEO and founder, Craig Michaels, and president, Gwen Braeger, and their committee for their quick response and outstanding efforts at this time. Everything they provide is free, and I know they are on call to anyone who needs things, from those early emergency personal kits right through to furnishings for their homes as they start to get back on their feet.

I thank all the local volunteers, like those from the University of Queensland Student Union, who assisted in sandbagging homes and businesses not just in the Ryan electorate but also in the neighbouring Brisbane electorate. Although the storm impacted our city we must consider ourselves fortunate in comparison with the communities in Central Queensland, South-West Queensland and the Lockyer Valley who are only now beginning to see the real impact of this weather event.

Having witnessed a natural disaster in my own electorate just two years ago—and, as the member for Moreton will testify, many residents are only today getting back into their homes—I can understand the heartbreak many people will now be experiencing as they move into their recovery phase. On behalf of the people of Ryan I extend my condolences to the families and businesses who have lost so much in this natural disaster. However, I have no doubt that Queenslanders and, indeed, all Australians will once again prove their resilience during this tough time.

7:23 pm

Photo of Graham PerrettGraham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I also take this opportunity to speak of the hardship that many Australians have endured over this summer due to natural disasters—particularly Queenslanders. Sadly, despite commentary from some political leaders, climate change is not complete faeces. The reality is climate change is occurring. Science is not a weather vane on this topic; the science seems to be clearly heading in one direction, and that is the reality that we will be having more horrible, horrific weather events in the future.

It pains me to say that, again, Australia has this summer not escaped the devastating effects of natural disasters. Sadly, fires still burn across the south-east of the country and floodwaters are still receding to the north. The people in Bundaberg North are, I know, doing it particularly tough right at this moment. In my home state of Queensland ex-tropical cyclone Oswald caused destruction right along the Queensland coastline, with damaging winds, heavy rain, flooding, tidal surges and tornados, and then moved down into New South Wales.

When I drove around my electorate on Sunday, 27 January, people were making preparations in my electorate in the suburbs of Yeronga, Graceville, Sherwood and Chelmsford—I particularly spent time talking to councillor Nicole Johnson, the independent councillor for that area—and also in my suburbs of Oxley, Corinda and, particularly, Rocklea, an area of my electorate that seems to flood every six months or so.

I would like to commend Cameron Crowther and the Annerley ALP branch who took time to go out and help people to move their furniture, an example of the Labor Party getting out into the community and doing what is right at the ground. I would also like to thank Jenny Goulburn, one of my friends in the Sherwood area, who pointed out some of the streets in her area that needed help. Thankfully, my constituents mostly escaped major damage. Sadly, those in Bundaberg, in Gayndah, in Mundubbera, in Gladstone, in Gympie, the Fraser Coast and many other areas endured extreme levels of flooding—some people are saying it was a once in 200 year flood—that will affect these communities for many years to come. Sadly, the water was about the same level as the floods of two years ago. So when you are talking about a once in 200 year flood things are changing. As the flood water recede, the massive extent of the damage is becoming clear with thousands of homes, businesses, roads, bridges and services inundated. Six people have died in this tragic crisis and my condolences go out to their friends and families. I would especially like to mention Yu-Kun Pan, a 25-year-old from Taiwan, who was here on a working visa. He was from the Taoyuan county, south of Taipei, and I especially pass on my condolences to his family. To lose a son so far from home must be truly heartbreaking.

The authorities are estimating more than 7,500 people are affected and 3,000 homes flooded, not to mention the power outages that affected so many people. I know it is not the same as losing a life, but I had no power for three days so I got to eat a lot of steak and ice cream to clean out my freezer. I know that some people are still having power problems. These troubles are obviously nothing compared to the many Queensland residents who are dealing with catastrophic flooding for the second time in two years. The impact from these floods comes as many people are still recovering and rebuilding their lives after those floods that seem so long ago. In fact, I had organised to send out a letter commemorating the two-year anniversary of the floods and, as you know, to send out a letter to 40,000 homes takes a bit of preparation. I wrote the letter, got the letter ready to go out and in between time the floods for 2013 came. So, some people received letters in mailboxes about the anniversary event two years ago while they mailboxes were under water. It was unfortunate timing.

Sadly, so many people of my electorate have had the insurance premium hikes that go with a flood event, and they have had to deal with those for the last two years. Like most of the people in Moreton, I well recall seeing water on my streets, water everywhere, and then after the water went away, the stink of the mud. Even at the end of my street, I remember the stench and how it affected the skate park, and then going to other houses in my electorate that were totally underwater in 2011, especially in Rocklea.

As we see time and time again, the volunteers stepped up. They came from everywhere to help their fellow Australians and Queenslanders in a time of tragedy. It is a Queensland thing to do and a very human thing to do, wherever you come from around the world. As I have a particularly multicultural electorate, it was heartwarming to see my varied and various communities working together to rebuild; neighbour helping neighbour, business helping business, stranger helping stranger, and I express thanks to those who have donated to the flood appeal, helping those in a time of great need. And more needs to be done.

I commend the volunteers who came together across the south-east of Australia during the catastrophic fires that have caused much pain and heartache for many Australian families, which previous speakers have mentioned. I would like to thank the hundreds of ADF personnel, especially the reservists, involved in the emergency response to the Queensland floods and storms. I would also like to thank the SES, the Rural Fire Service, the Australian Red Cross and all the many other community organisations involved in helping out over the summer throughout these devastating times, particularly the service organisations in Moreton. It was their finest hour for Moorooka Lions—where I live—Macgregor Lions, Archerfield and Salisbury Rotary to name but a few. There were also the Crescents of Brisbane—an Islamic group—and the Taiwanese communities many organisations.

Thankfully, as I go around the Moreton electorate, I see evidence that our community has worked hard to rebuild, and has mostly returned to normal and maybe dodged a bullet. I am sympathetic to the words of Premier Campbell Newman—please do not quote me on that—and his comments about rebuilding properly in a way that we will not be swept away in a year or two.

I would like to finish by quoting one of my local constituents, Martin Finbow from Graceville, who was talking about the priority infrastructure plan and what we needed to do. I would ask Campbell Newman and the Lord Mayor of Brisbane to bring in backflow devices in my suburbs—not just New Farm and Milton which are LNP electorates, but in my suburbs. Hopefully he is not punishing the independent councillor Nicole Johnston because she used to be LNP but has switched to become independent. My suburbs need to be considered in round four of the natural disaster resilience program. Some of that $10 million needs to come to my electorate. We raised $1.7 billion from the flood levy and the reality is that it cost the community about $5.7 billion to rebuild. I note that the Libs voted against that flood levy, but the reality is that there are going to be a lot of expenses. Campbell Newman—when he was the Lord Mayor—said that the state should pay when it was a Labor government, although now that he is the premier he says that the federal government should pay. It is a weird journey to Damascus that he has taken. Australians are pretty tough, but these natural disasters really put to the test. The nation's response shows the true sense of community spirit as we come together to clean up and rebuild. I thank my constituents particularly for their great efforts.

Question agreed to.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 19 : 30