Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I present the report Lessons to be learned in relation to the Australian bushfire season 2019-20 together with accompanying documents. I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I think this a very significant report of the Finance and Public Administration References Committee. It was my wish that the inquiry would go to South Australia; the New South Wales South Coast and the North Coast; the Northern Tablelands; South East Queensland; the Tumut, Batlow and Tumbarumba regions of New South Wales; Gippsland; north-east Victoria and to Kangaroo Island to give those communities an opportunity to be heard. Sadly, COVID-19 outbreaks prevented us from doing so. I want to thank all those communities that we couldn't visit, and I want them to know that we've had them in mind throughout the inquiry.

We received 192 submissions and held 10 public hearings, mostly by video conference. We heard from some of the people most devastated by the fires. We heard from New South Wales South Coast communities where, in the darkness of New Year's Eve 2019, the Badja Forest Road fire tore through the Wandella, Cobargo and Quaama communities in a firestorm that nobody could possibly have previously imagined. We heard from communities in the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury regions west of Sydney, where fires raged for 79 days until it rained. We heard of the experiences of communities like Walwa and Corryong in north-east Victoria, who made the best of the limited resources they had to keep people safe.

We heard from experts in emergency management, fire response, fire behaviour and forest ecology, and from local government authorities who are doing on-the-ground recovery work and whose knowledge and experience have persuaded us that there is no point in fighting old battles over hazard reduction and that a new consensus is required if we're to keep people safe.

Fires take their names from their places of ignition. Over the months of the Black Summer, the obscure names of remote places where blazes started—Currowan, Dunns Road, Postman's Track, Big Jack Mountain, Wingan, Green Wattle Creek, Myall Creek Road, Good Good, Ruined Castle, Long Gully Road and many others—became the names of unwelcome summer holiday visitors who wouldn't leave. The communities they threatened listened to their radios, watched their phones and received the escalating alerts of 'advice', 'watch and act', 'emergency warning' and the dreaded 'It's too late to leave; you must shelter in place.'

Communities along the eastern seaboard spent a summer in the heat and smoke, anxiously clearing away ignition points from around their homes, doing that long-overdue run to the tip to get rid of all those lengths of old timber and all the household rubbish. Now all they were good for was fuel. As people were prepared for the worst, the catchcry was: 'Hurry up and wait'. It is predominantly their stories that have led the committee to make the recommendations that we have. It's the stories of evacuation and stories of seeking help over and over again, and the stories of trauma and frightened kids that have shaped our recommendations around making the task of domestic disaster response and recovery more keenly focused on the humanitarian nature of what disaster response and recovery is all about. If Australian aid workers turned up in a foreign disaster zone with a competitive grant program, I'm fairly sure that we would be asked to leave.

The stories of people feeling helpless as fires that had burned remotely for weeks emerged from the bush to devour farms, houses and whole towns shaped our recommendation for a better national, aerial fire-fighting fleet. The stories of homeowners and businesses in fire affected areas who can't afford insurance have shaped our recommendation for the ACCC to investigate insurance affordability in bushfire-prone regions.

Ms Therese Kearney is a grief counsellor with CatholicCare. She described her experience of visiting schools in Gippsland after the fires. She said:

Last February I went into the primary schools around Orbost, Bairnsdale, Mallacoota—that East Gippsland area—and the feel that I got from entering the school was quite eerie. The children were very repressed and depressed. There was no children's noise in the playground. There was no joy there. Even in the play, it wasn't play.

She went on to say:

These children had such heightened levels of adrenaline that they didn't know if they were afraid, if they were angry, if they were just wanting to go away and hide or curl up in a ball, or all of those things.

Mr Graeme Freedman lost his house, along with everything above and below ground, at his home and property at Wandella in what he described as a 'fire tornado' on New Year's Eve 2019. He spoke to us about having to re-identify himself and his family every time they needed help from a different agency or charity. He said:

We are sick and tired of re-identifying ourselves as ''Bushfire Impacted''. Every program across all of government loses us half a day of our time and induces further trauma in the re-identification processes.

He said it breaks people mentally. It 'virtually takes you to tears every time it occurs,' Mr Freedman told us.

Tony Jennings has been a rural firefighter with the Candelo RFS brigade in the Bega Valley for over 45 years. He told us of his efforts to get post-trauma counselling for himself and his colleagues. He said:

I heard volunteers on the radio, because they were crying out for help. I decided to try and get help for them but I ran into a brick wall.

He told us he had had two phone counselling sessions. He said:

… I didn't realise that I needed counselling … it was because we lost two very good staff … and that really angered me and upset me … unfortunately, I couldn't arrange it for other people.

He went on to say:

There was a young guy, who was about 17 and had not long ago joined the brigade. I don't know what's going to happen to him in the future—whether he's going to have some mental issues. Hopefully he won't. … hopefully he's okay, but we won't know.

Ms Sandi Grieve, CEO of the Walwa Bush Nursing Centre, told us of the stress and strain of communities having to make applications for financial assistance in the competitive grants process. She said:

Having to make grant applications, potentially missing out on those grant applications, having to change expectations and planning around what you get and what you don't get and then having to actually project manager … carries with it a significant degree of stress for a farming population who are already attempting to undertake three jobs.

Ms Grieve's evidence about the stress of traumatised communities making grant applications for basic needs was reflected in every community that we heard from.

These are just a few of the stories of the Black Summer fires. In all of these stories is a common thread: we weren't prepared and we should have been. The warnings were ignored or downplayed, not just the warnings of the winter and spring of 2019 but the warnings of the past decade. Had we been prepared, people probably wouldn't have been driven into the sea at Mallacoota and Broulee. The death toll would have been lower and property losses would have been less. As a country that will suffer the worst impacts of climate change, we need to lift our game to keep people safe. That's what this report is all about.

Finally, there is one thing that truly bothers me and, I think, bothered members of the committee. How is it that $4 billion sits in an Emergency Response Fund announced after the bushfires, with up to $200 million a year available for disaster recovery and resilience building, yet, two years on from the fires, a mere $17 million has been spent by the Commonwealth government? How is it that there are still hundreds of homes to be rebuilt on the New South Wales South Coast and people are still living in makeshift shelters? How is it that, with the vast resources of the Commonwealth and with billions of dollars set aside, these needs have not been addressed? Something is seriously wrong, and the next parliament needs to fix it.