Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the condolence motion. I think it is time and indeed appropriate for all of us who can do so in this place to reflect on the devastation wreaked by nature across our country as we consider the largest natural disaster in Australia’s history. I think it is ironic, and I think perhaps this has been mentioned by earlier speakers, that Dorothea Mackellar, one of Australia’s most famous poets and, of course, a New South Welshwoman, penned her much-loved poem My Country 100 years ago this year. It was supposedly inspired by the disaster that she observed to her brother’s farm near Gunnedah, in north-western New South Wales.

Gunnedah was one of the first areas to be declared a natural disaster area due to flooding when the Namoi River peaked just below 7.9 metres in early December that year. Of course, we all know the very famous words ‘I love a sunburnt country’ and so on. Less well known are the fifth stanza and the ominous warning:

For flood and fire and famine,

She pays us back threefold.

Australia has certainly seen that in the past three months.

Today we remember the personal loss suffered by so many Australians. As a nation dealing with a series of natural disasters we should not forget that far too many Australians have experienced their very own personal disasters and individual tragedies over the past months that will stay with them the rest of their lives. I join with all my colleagues and indeed all Australians in offering my thoughts and prayers to those individuals. For most, their tragedy was caused by floods that spread across the country in recent months. For others, it was caused by fire or the fearsome Cyclone Yasi. All those Australians, as I said, will live with the memory for the rest of their lives.

The months of December, January and now February have seen destructive forces of nature that have caused a terrible loss of life and wreaked havoc across our land. Like many Australians, we—I and my colleagues in the Senate—were appalled to see torrents of water either on television or in person washing away Australians trapped on top of cars and then shocked by the aftermath as floodwaters receded, leaving the wreckage of cars and the remains of homes, or to see our fellow Australians left apprehensive by cyclonic winds that whipped iron sheeting across deserted streets. Only last Sunday our television screens were lit up by fires raging in Western Australia and the sight of blazing houses.

As we watched these disasters unfold, we could again be proud of our emergency services and our defence forces, who responded with their usual spirit of professionalism and selflessness. They have the gratitude and respect of every Australian—and I think it only right to pay them that respect—as do ordinary Australians who volunteered and lent a hand to others. The heroism of many is remarkable. I have to say the ultimate hero, if there is one, would have to be the 13-year-old Toowoomban boy Jordan Rice, who lost his life in ensuring the safety of his younger brother. But there were many other heroes—the stranger who caught in his arms the woman jumping off a car on to a bridge, the young policewoman who almost single-handedly coordinated flood relief efforts in Withcott in the Lockyer Valley or, in more recent days, the SES volunteer who was out helping others while his own home was destroyed by Cyclone Yasi. Those people raised our spirits in these desperate times.

After the flash floods in the Lockyer Valley and the rising and spreading waters of the Brisbane River that destroyed so many homes and businesses and brought our third largest city to a standstill, we thought it could not get any worse. It did, with floodwaters moving across Victoria on a front 50 kilometres wide and 95 kilometres long. Then early last week we held our breath as we waited for Cyclone Yasi, which wrecked coastal areas such as Tully and Mission Beach and offshore areas in the Whitsundays such as Dunk Island. It beggars belief that only last weekend we had news of both flash floods in the streets of Melbourne and bushfires in the Royal National Park south of Sydney and near Perth in Western Australia.

Our thoughts and prayers now remain with the families of victims and those affected by the flooding, cyclone or fires. Since December, 30 Australians have tragically died as a result of floods, and news reached us last Friday that a young man died as a result of Cyclone Yasi. I say 30 as we should not forget those who died in the Queensland floods before 10 January, when the raging waters wreaked their devastation on Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley. To the friends and family left behind, I extend my sincere condolences. We feel your heartbreak; we feel your loss. I am sure many of you have not just lost loved ones but seen your homes wrecked and your lives turned upside down. Your sadness is the nation’s sadness, but that you are victims of the largest natural disaster in the nation’s history will not explain away or lessen your grief. I suppose there is a small mercy—and it is a very small mercy—that the death toll was not higher, but any death so unexpected and so indiscriminate is a devastating loss.

To my mind, reaching out to communities in need and being accessible and available is part of being an elected representative in a functioning democracy, and I want to commend in particular Premiers Bligh and Baillieu for being on the ground so much of the time and lending support and at times a hand and a hug to those who needed it. They represented all of us wanting to extend a hand or a hug. Modern politics in the glare of a 24-hour media cycle can be stilted and contrived but we all sensed the genuineness in the demeanour of both premiers. The people needed leadership and they provided it.

As a senator for New South Wales I would like to make special mention of the impact of the floods on New South Wales, noting that flood warnings are still current in many New South Wales rivers—the Macintyre, Culgoa, Bokhara, Narran, Warrego, Paroo, Barwon-Darling and the Murray upstream of Bourke. While north and south of our borders raging or massive floodwaters drew most of the media attention, many New South Wales towns and surrounding areas were also affected if not devastated by floods. It may surprise many in the chamber to know that no fewer than 63 New South Wales local government areas were declared natural disaster zones. Reports had 6,000 New South Wales residents cut off by floodwaters. While most of the areas I have mentioned do not have large populations and their names may just be a pinprick on a map to some, they represent the heart and soul of New South Wales. Because of their size, they are places where resilience and strength have been sorely tested and the Australian spirit has most shone. Places like Moree, for example, should be acknowledged for welcoming those from surrounding areas into evacuation centres set up in that town.

So what do we do now in the aftermath? I would like to address very briefly two aspects in which I have a special interest and offer some suggestions which may go some way to alleviating the hardship caused to so many Australians in the future, if not after this disaster itself.

We can only now hope that the impact can be mitigated, for Australia cannot really afford this disaster, let alone a greater one in the future. To that end, I would like to address a specific issue—the need for clarity in insurance provisions in respect of flooding—and a broader, more challenging issue, that being the need to reframe our planning laws to ensure responsible future development in areas in this country prone to natural disaster.

Plain English contracts were the catchcry of the 1990s in the legal world. Standard forms were the norm and consistency was sought. Since 1984 insurance contracts have been dealt with differently to other contracts under the Insurance Contracts Act. But why is it, some 25 years later, that when so many affected Australians are looking at their insurance policies, they are finding that the wording suggests that they were covered for floods when in fact they were not? Perhaps we should be revisiting the need for separate treatment of such contracts. In the meantime, it seems that if you were a victim of a flood in Queensland you would have been better off to have been insured by Suncorp, which with one provision provides automatic cover for floods—that is, riverine and storm flash floods. Some other insurance companies apparently did not offer such extensive cover, mostly just for storm flash-flooding. So I am very pleased to see that the insurance industry has recognised that now is the time to have a standard definition of floods and that it is expected to unveil its industry plans in the coming weeks. It will not necessarily assist current victims but it will go some of the way towards providing future consumers with certainty and security. We need to understand that insurers need to run a business and that it is reasonable that they price the risk accordingly. It may mean that market forces will make the cost of insurance unaffordable for those who choose to rebuild in flood prone areas.

Reports suggest that around 90 per cent of houses in Australia do not need riverine flood cover, so it is reasonable if those 90 per cent of consumers decide not to pay the extra premium for a risk they will not likely experience. This disproportionate risk is one of the myriad of thorny issues that surround thinking about whether we should have a national disaster fund or national insurance. While I very much sympathise with the fact that victims may want to rebuild, where it is not in the national interest that they do so, there need to be alternative arrangements. Quite frankly, I believe there is good reason for discouraging Australians from rebuilding in flood prone areas. If higher insurance costs and lower property prices act as a disincentive then that may be well and good. As the CEO of Suncorp said last weekend, risk mitigation is as important as paying insurance premiums. I would, however, suggest that risk mitigation is the more important.

This leads me to a broader second issue that I would like to address very briefly—that is, whether, in flood prone areas, we should mandate that no new development be allowed or that any development be severely circumscribed when, in a country the size of Australia, there are other places which, to use planning terms, could be both economic and sustainable. As I said in a piece published last month in the Canberra Times, we need to look at how we plan property and other development, whether of homes or businesses, to avoid the worst of these disasters in future and, if we cannot avoid it, to certainly mitigate their impact. Let us plan how we develop our future; we cannot afford not to. Sometimes it takes a disaster or, in this case, a series of disasters to shake us out of our complacency and to rethink the attitude of ‘she’ll be right’ when things clearly are not right.

So is it not time to develop a national master plan to help guide future planning and development in this country to try and stop the increasing loss of life and damage that the natural forces around Australia unleash? If you look at the past decade, there have been many natural disasters and increasingly our cities are at risk. The reality is that each time there is devastation, the cost becomes worse. The cost of addressing natural disasters may not be what this country can afford, but it is a cost we will have to pay. The federal government is going to have to pay, for example, 75c of every dollar spent by the Queensland government. In doing this, isn’t the federal government, on behalf of taxpayers, entitled to say, ‘If you want us to bear the risk, you also need to share the responsibility to make sure that all new development is as safe as possible.’ Should taxpayers be asked to continually accept the risk as the cost of these events moves from the millions to the multiple billions?

As a nation we should do our best to insure against future costs. Like an insurer managing risk, we should demand that the risk is lessened and the future cost contained. Stopping development where buildings and lives are potentially at risk is an obvious risk avoidance strategy. The federal government could take the lead to help reframe our planning laws to ensure sustainable and safe development where development is less likely to be susceptible to being ravaged by fire or inundated by flood. In the national interest, we should look at ways to discourage home owners, prospective buyers and other people from taking up residence in flood or bushfire prone areas. Compensation may be required for some.

A national master plan could draw on state planning experiences, and we have had some royal commissions into previous disasters that would no doubt inform this discussion, as will the Queensland commission that has been announced by Premier Bligh. A national master plan would be a blueprint for Australia and an aid for state governments. It would be a planning tool, based on the best science available, as to what areas are suitable for what types of development and what should be left out of harm’s way. Already the information we need for a master plan for floods has been collated. Defence has sent out mapping experts who have flown over affected areas to record the extent of the floods.

Now is the opportunity to seriously rethink the way our planning laws operate to ensure sustainable safe development—development less likely to be subject to fires or floods. It is a matter that should be on the agenda for COAG. One suggestion might be that the former Commonwealth Natural Disaster Mitigation Program be refocused to include planning to achieve that very outcome—disaster mitigation.

These disasters, as horrible as they are, provide a once-in-a-generation opportunity to look seriously at a master plan for this country—droughts and flooding rains we can live with but not live in. In these grim times we should remember that we have faced adversity in the past and we can do so again. Our Australian spirit has been tested many times before and we have not only survived but united together to help Australians looking for a hand up, not a handout. Not just now but long after the waters, winds and fires have receded, it will be critical that our spirit does not slacken, that we and our nation lend a hand. We will be up to the test and will walk with the victims and their families every step of the way.