Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on a matter of public importance, the serious policy issues arising from the experience of the Blue Mountains bushfires. It is now 48 days since the bushfires in the Blue Mountains. There has been inconsistent treatment of Blue Mountains residents in relation to the disaster relief payment. There has been a nondelivery of the policy promises for small business to receive a consequential damage concessional loan. That was promised by the Prime Minister and Minister Billson prior to the election. There has been a failure to coordinate the demolition and waste disposal using a best practice approach, as was achieved both in Victoria and Tasmania.

In Victoria, a contract was in place to remove all debris and do all demolition within 21 days. That was a fire that affected some 2,000 homes, as senators will be well aware. The Blue Mountains fires affected just over 200. In Tasmania, where there was an equivalent number of homes involved—just over 200—they had a contract for demolition and removal in place within eight days. In my view, there is a need for an analysis of the longstanding arrangements on the responsibility of the various levels of government in a bushfire event or any other emergency situation.

There are three key areas to disaster handling. One is prevention and mitigation. Another is the response to the bushfire or flood. The third is the recovery activities that take place after the disaster. There is significant scientific and practical work on prevention and mitigation. I was fortunate this morning to be at a CSIRO breakfast presentation on what is being done in relation to floods and bushfires. This included new products being developed for building houses, the new analyses that can now be done and the computer modelling that is being used to track fires. All of these things to do with prevention and mitigation are world class.

On the response, I do not think that anyone would argue that Australia does not have a world class response to disasters. We respond through our firefighters, including our volunteer firefighters from all over the country, who came to the Blue Mountains emergency to assist, as they do to other areas of this country and New Zealand and elsewhere overseas. Those firefighters from around this country were fantastic in coming to the Blue Mountains. The emergency services were fantastic. The community organisations came in and put their shoulders to the wheel. Volunteers were there to help anyone who needed help immediately.

There is another area that you do not hear a lot about, but I want to place on the record my appreciation for the work done by the ABC. You hear lots of critiques and criticism of the ABC. But the ABC are a disaster response agency in terms of getting messages out there. The ABC were fantastic in that regard. They, through 702 in Sydney, have been extremely supportive of the Blue Mountains community. They have helped with fundraising. They have conducted support. They were there last weekend at a community function in Winmalee. They did a great job. The CSIRO do a great job as well. The area that I have shadow responsibility for, the Department of Human Services, do a fantastic job in chipping in with state public servants as well.

There are a number of recovery issues that are problematic in the Blue Mountains. The state government established a Blue Mountains recovery committee. I am a member of that committee. I have attended all of the meetings when I have not been in parliament. There are serious issues being dealt with. There are hard-working and committed public servants and volunteers on that committee. The council has representatives on that committee. I want to give my thanks to Councillor Greenhill, the Mayor of the Blue Mountains, who has done a fantastic job. New South Wales Public Works have been excellent in their support for that committee.

But my view is that, regardless of what eminent person is in charge of that committee—and in the Blue Mountains it is a highly respected individual, Phil Koperberg, former fire commissioner in New South Wales—no individual has got the ongoing professional experience to bring with them the strategic knowledge of all the bushfire problems that have been experienced in this country over a period of time. That is a big problem. There is a big gap in our knowledge in dealing with the recovery from bushfires.

I believe that we need an increased professional overview of the recovery process. I say that because we did not learn the key lessons of the Victorian and Tasmanian bushfires. We did not take that into account. When I heard about the coordinated response to the bushfire clean-up in Victoria and Tasmania I asked my staff to look on the internet and see if they could find me an overview of how those recovery issues went. It took Mark Andrews from my office five minutes to come up with a disaster-waste-management case study of the 2009 Victoria bushfires. It was by an independent research organisation called Resilient Organisations; research report No. 4, of 2010. That report said that the most successful part of the bushfire recovery in Victoria—and remember there were 2,000 homes destroyed—was the government sponsored clean-up, which was hailed as the best post-bushfire government initiative.

Senator McKenzie interjecting—

Senator McKenzie, this is a serious issue. If you want to interject that is okay but this is a very serious issue. People in the Blue Mountains have lost their homes, people in the Blue Mountains are traumatised and people in the Blue Mountains have lost everything they have worked for, so if you want to intervene in this that is okay but I would just ask you to have a bit of respect for my community of the Blue Mountains.

Resilient Organisations said that there were five key decisions to be made in any bushfire recovery: (1) the establishment of an overview committee, which was done in the Blue Mountains; (2) a single waste classification for waste-handling procedures, which was not done in the Blue Mountains; (3) a government decision to fund the demolition and debris removal from private property, which was not done in the Blue Mountains, and we are getting some spasmodic response now after nearly seven weeks; (4) having a single contract for these works, which was not done in the Blue Mountain; and (5) the construction of a new landfill cell. They are the areas seen as important in the recovery. The report said that this decision on the overall clean-up assisted in quick business regeneration and allowed businesses to get on with it, providing an economic stimulus; people had an opportunity to rebuild and get local tradespeople and businesses involved, and it resulted in the reduction of dependence on government assistance.

Those lessons that were so important in the bushfires of Tasmania and Victoria have not been learnt in New South Wales. I understand that there are long-established strategies, such as the National Strategy for Disaster Resilience, back in February 2011, but those strategies need constant updating; they need constant renewal. The lessons we learnt in the Blue Mountains should be available for communities and recovery processes elsewhere in the country. There has been political indecision on the recovery after the bushfires in the Blue Mountains. Implementation of fundamental lessons has not been undertaken. There are a number of lessons on the role of the federal government—one is for the federal government to show leadership. The days of simply handing money over to the state governments and hoping that they are competent and committed, understand the issues and will spend the money wisely should be over. There is a role for the federal government, in a disaster, to have a strong overview. We cannot rely on the effectiveness of a state government if there is ineffectiveness in the approach by the federal government.

I also believe there should be a proper analysis of the literature on disaster recovery around the world, and the Attorney-General's Department should do that. It should look at experience overseas and in Australia and put together the literature to see what lessons need to be dealt with from that. On the National Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements, I take the view that there should be a team of professional recovery experts, under the auspices of the Attorney-General's Department. We cannot rely on part-time commissioners. We cannot rely on amateurs coming in to run the show. We need professional recovery experts who understand the issues and who understand the problems. They should be deployed in a disaster, with a broad based strategy, using the lessons from previous disasters. That broad based strategy should set the tone and direction of local-level planning, and that local-level planning is extremely important.

The lessons learned show clearly that there needs to be a national overview. Blockages to any strategic approach to disaster recovery should be done through the Prime Minister and the Premier removing any blockages. I do not believe that there should be an absence of the Premier or the Prime Minister from disaster-recovery arrangements in this country. The lessons learnt should be documented and we should hit the road running with future disasters. We should make sure that the problems we have experienced in the Blue Mountains are not experienced by other communities facing natural disasters in this country, because the CSIRO and the national disaster recovery group are saying that we will face more disasters, many of them because of changes to the climate, and they will be ongoing problems.

I had a response from the Hon. Michael Keenan to correspondence I sent him over a month ago. It is now clear that the residents of the Blue Mountains will be treated as second-class citizens by this federal government. I have had correspondence from the Minister for Small Business, and it is clear there is another broken election promise in the Blue Mountains, where the concessional loans that were promised have not been paid.

Senator Abetz interjecting—

You can chortle all you like, Senator Abetz. You have broken a promise. (Time expired)