Henry Pike (Bowman, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to have my first opportunity to speak from the dispatch box. I am pleased that I have the opportunity to be up front here because the topics I want to cover tonight are matters of incredible importance. You wouldn't believe it, but it's actually been 12 months since Tropical Cyclone Alfred made its way to South-East Queensland. It's interesting that we've got three members representing South-East Queensland electorates in the House right now, which is good representation to hear this message. It's quite unbelievable to think that it has been 12 months, given how much has happened inside and outside this building over that period of time. In some ways, it feels about 10 years ago.

I want to reflect on the journey that my community has been through since that cyclone and make a few comments about the preparedness that we will have for the next likely event and on some of the lessons that have been learnt and some that haven't. In the immediate aftermath of the cyclone, I was pleased to see disaster recovery and hardship support made available. These payments mattered. They helped families keep food on the table. They paid for urgent repairs and for people to steady themselves in the most uncertain of days.

The Redlands was very much overrepresented in the number of locals who were accessing those payments. My electorate was one of the hardest hit, particularly the communities on the Southern Moreton Bay Islands and Stradbroke Island. I acknowledge the work of the minister opposite, who, as the former aged-care minister, contacted me at different stages throughout, particularly when we had evacuations of areas within my electorate. In the spirit of bipartisanship, I'd like to also thank Senator McAllister in the other place for her work as the former emergency services minister. We worked closely in getting the Australian Army out to the Redlands to assist in the clean-up. It was greatly appreciated.

But there have been things that haven't happened, which should have happened, since those 12 months. One of my major concerns is island resilience. After Alfred, my state colleagues and I called for serious long-term investment in resilience for our island communities, which were some of the hardest hit. They're growing communities. They're families, retirees, small-business owners and Australians that deserve the same level of infrastructure protection as anyone on the mainland. They need stronger infrastructure, yet 12 months on there has been no meaningful progress in trying to get some of the funding or some of the federal commitments that they need to try to improve their resilience and their capacity to deal with the next cyclone when it inevitably comes.

One of the major concerns that I have on the islands is the amount of makeshift housing that exists, particularly on North Stradbroke Island. We're talking about people living in uninsured structures that were never designed to withstand severe weather events on land known to flood, without proper safeguards and without any serious plan to address the risk. I'm very concerned about the risk, particularly to our Indigenous community on North Stradbroke Island, of the proliferation of these dwellings. There are more of them every month, and we've got to have a coordinated effort to ensure that proper construction is happening on the islands.

The other concern I have is the failure of the national messaging system. I understand the government's now saying that this will come into place later in the year. I also understand that the original estimate of $10 million has blown out to $130 million. But that would have made a significant difference to the capacity of all of South-East Queensland to be prepared for that disaster and to ensure that they had the messages that they needed. We were told it was supposed to be ready by 2024—now we're in 2026 and we may go out to 2027. I'm very concerned that that hasn't been progressed as quickly as it should have been.

The major concern that my community had was in relation to telecommunications; we basically lost all telecommunications and all power. I've written to the minister about the need to change the rules around the Mobile Network Hardening Program. Thankfully, the minister has committed to have the department investigate what options are available to expand that so we can use that for infrastructure that's further upstream. It's great to use it for the island infrastructure, but we need the mainland networks to work when we get into these sort of disasters, so they can actually feed the signal from the islands. I've written again to the minister. I trust it will be dealt with.

I trust that we'll have some commonsense changes that will allow my community to be prepared the next time a tropical cyclone makes its way as far down as South-East Queensland. It seems like a rare event, but it has happened, and it's going to continue to happen.