The SPEAKER ( Hon. Tony Smith ) took the chair at 12:00, made an acknowledgement of country and read prayers.
BUSINESS
Rearrangement
Mr PORTER (Pearce—Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Leader of the House) (12:01): I move:
That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent the following from occurring in relation to proceedings of the House today:
(1) the Prime Minister to move a motion of condolence in relation to the recent bushfires and debate on the motion to have precedence over all other business;
(2) debate to continue until adjourned or resolved, if necessary beyond the usual time of adjournment of the House;
(3) the Federation Chamber not to meet;
(4) the House to adjourn on the motion of a Minister, without debate; and
(5) any variation to this arrangement to be made only by a motion moved by a Minister.
Question agreed to, with an absolute majority.
CONDOLENCES
Australian Bushfires
Mr MORRISON (Cook—Prime Minister and Minister for the Public Service) (12:02): I move:
That the House:
1. acknowledge the devastation across our nation occasioned by the bushfire season including the loss of 33 lives, the destruction of over 3,000 homes, the unimaginable loss of so much wildlife and the devastating impact on regional economies across Australia;
2. extend its deepest sympathies to families who have lost loved ones and to those who have suffered injuries or loss;
3. place on record its gratitude for the service of David Moresi, Geoffrey Keaton, Andrew O'Dwyer, Samuel McPaul, Bill Slade, Mat Kavanagh, Ian McBeth, Paul Hudson and Rick DeMorgan Jr, fire-fighters who lost their lives during the fires and extends its deepest condolences to their families;
4. recognise the contribution of thousands of volunteer and career fire-fighters and the dedication of emergency services personnel across Australia;
5. honour the contribution of 6,500 Australian Defence Force personnel, including 3,000 ADF reservists, and the work of Emergency Management Australia throughout the summer;
6. recognise the generosity of individuals, families, schools, churches and religious groups, service clubs and businesses from across Australia and elsewhere in the world during the evacuations and following the fires;
7. express its gratitude to Australia's friends, allies and neighbours who provided or offered support;
8. recognise the unceasing efforts and close cooperation between state and local governments, demonstrating the strength of our Federation;
9. commit itself to learning any lessons from this fire season; and
10. pledge the full support of the Australian Parliament to assist affected areas to recover and rebuild.
We welcome the families of those who were lost who are here with us today.
In past times when Australia has been tested by fire, we have given the fires a name based on the name of a day or a locality: Black Thursday, in 1851; Black Friday, in 1939; Ash Wednesday, in 1983; the Canberra bushfires of 2003; and Black Saturday, in 2009. Just saying these words brings back such chilling memories. This year we are faced with, and we are still facing, a terrible season of fire, national in scale: fires that reached our highest mountain range and our longest beaches; fires that consumed forests, grasslands, farms, suburbs and villages; fires that jumped rivers and highways; fires where days became night and the night sky turned red; and fires that raged into the heavens as clouds of fire, with it all a merciless smoke that lingered across our cities—fires that still burn. The smoke from burned bushland that left an oppressive tightening in our chest told us that all was not right.
This is the 'black summer' of 2019-20 that has proven our national character and our resolve. It is a national trauma, best described by Indigenous leaders, who love our land so much, as a grief for the victims, a heartache for our wildlife and a broken heart for the scouring of our land. These fires are yet to end and danger is still before us in many, many places. Today we gather to mourn, honour, reflect and begin to learn from the 'black summer' that continues and to give thanks for the selflessness, the courage, the sacrifice and the generosity that met these fires time and again, and continues to.
Many of the stories of our 'black summer' we will never know. Some will become known and others have already been taken to our hearts as Australians. Across Australia we witnessed unparalleled firefighting and relief efforts. Thousands upon thousands have stood together to fight fires and protect communities. While our hearts are heavy for the loss of 33 people and the destruction of over 3,000 homes, we know our emergency services, ADF personnel and firefighters have undertaken a mighty effort to save so many more homes, so many more communities and so many more lives.
Along with the loss and, at times, seeming failure, there has been perseverance, courage and a willingness to give all to prevail. None have given more than the nine firefighters we lost. I again extend my welcome today to the many family members of our lost firefighters who are with us today. I also welcome the ambassador of the United States, Ambassador Culvahouse, who stands here in the stead of the three American families who also gave and lost so much.
Every one of these firefighters was loved. All were brave and had lives that meant so much to those around them. At the funeral of Geoffrey Keaton, there was a coffee mug—a mug no different to those most of the dads here have surely seen at some time—placed on his coffin. It had the words, 'Daddy, I love you to the moon and back.' Geoff's son, Harvey, was 19 months old when he lost his father. Geoff's fiancee, Jess, held their son as they mourned his loss together with his family.
Geoff died alongside his fellow volunteer Andrew O'Dwyer, from the Horsley Park brigade—an amazing group of people—fighting the Green Wattle Creek fire. Geoff and Andrew were mates, together with their captain, Darren, who has honoured them so many times now. Some even referred to them as brothers—new dads, two together with their children born days apart. Andrew's daughter, Charlotte, almost two, was also at his funeral—where Jenny and I joined them—innocently unaware of her horrible and terrible loss. Charlotte was wearing a little white dress. She had pigtails that only her mother, Melissa, could have lovingly made and on top of the pigtails she put on her father's white firefighting helmet. Like Geoff, Andrew loved what he did, with the brigade captain, Darren Nations, saying his love of the fire brigade was as thick as the blood that ran through his veins. Like Geoff and Jess, and Andrew and Melissa, they shared a life together of such promise that is so sadly now a memory.
We lost David Moresi fighting a fire in East Gippsland. He was a husband, a father and a grandfather. He had been supervising the creation of vital fire breaks and died in a vehicle rollover. He was a bushman. He loved to shoot, fish and hunt. He had planned on Boxing Day to travel to the Philippines to help build a school there. He had already supported the building of schools in Thailand.
We lost Sam McPaul. He was just 28, the world at his feet, married to Megan for just a year and a half, expecting their first child. The son of a loving single mum, Chris, for whom Sam was her entire world. There will come a day when that young boy or girl will imagine what their father was like and will ask questions, and when that day comes, we want that precious child to know their dad was even better than they could have ever imagined. He was the best of us.
Mat Kavanagh was a young father of two children—six-year-old Ruben and four-year-old Kate—and a devoted husband who loved his fly-fishing and who had been a member of the Forest Fire Management Victoria for 10 years. On the day of the accident he had been extinguishing untended campfires. His older brother Mike said his family had lost the most special person in the world.
Bill Slade was just as loved and his wife, Carol; daughter, Stephanie; and son, Ethan, know how much he was loved. Bill had worked in land and fire management for 40 years and was about to retire. It was said there was no-one more experienced and no-one as fit as well. He even fought the Ash Wednesday fires in 1993. He was described as a true gentleman with the kindest and gentlest of souls. I spoke to Ethan and Stephanie. They could not have been more proud nor more devastated by their loss.
When we thought we couldn't hurt any more, we lost three men who travelled half a world to protect us. We honour our American friends. We have no greater friend than the United States. Captain Ian McBeth, First Officer Paul Hudson and Flight Engineer Rick DeMorgan Jr were lost when their C-130 Hercules aircraft crashed near Peak View. Captain McBeth, an experienced firefighting pilot, is survived by his wife and three children. He had served in Iraq and Afghanistan and was a member of the Montana Air National Guard. His daughter, training to be a pilot, said she wanted everyone to know he was just a wonderful person. First Officer Hudson had served in the Marine Corps for 20 years, including as a C-130 pilot. He is from Buckeye, Arizona and is survived by his wife Noreen. Across Arizona, they lowered flags in his honour. And Flight Engineer DeMorgan has served in the US Air Force, with 18 years as a flight engineer on the C-130. It was said his passions were flying and his children.
On Australia Day, I announced the National Emergency Medal would be declared for the 'black summer' of 2019-20 for these fires. The New South Wales Rural Fire Service and Forest Fire Management Victoria have advised that, once the bushfire response is complete and eligibility criteria for the medal will has been set, all nine of these firefighters who lost their lives will be nominated to be posthumously awarded the National Emergency Medal. In addition, the government has reconsidered the criteria of eligibility for the National Medal. This is Australia's most awarded civilian medal, with more than 237,000 medals awarded since its inception. It recognises the long and diligent service by members of eligible Australian government and community organisations that risk their lives or safety to protect and assist the community. It is awarded after 15 years of service.
It has not been awarded posthumously to long-term members of eligible organisations who have lost their lives in the line of duty. I am also pleased to announce that Her Majesty has agreed to amend the regulations for the National Medal to be awarded posthumously. This change will allow the National Medal to be awarded to those who died in the service of their duty and who would have reached 15 years service if not for their death. This amendment will be retrospective to the creation of the medal in 1975, meaning that others who have died in the service of others will now be eligible.
We have witnessed the most remarkable actions through these fires by our volunteers and our defence forces in recent months: tens of thousands of volunteers—all of them doing things that were extraordinary, although they would consider themselves ordinary. They were joined by 6½ thousand Defence Force personnel, including 3,000 reservists who were compulsorily called out. So much of it was difficult and dangerous work: ordinary people, extraordinary actions. One New South Wales firey, Alex Newcombe, from up near Blackheath, returned to the fireground just 12 weeks after a kidney transplant. His doctors weren't pleased! But, as Alex said: 'It's just what we do. We get stuck in.' His kidney donor was none other than his wife, Kate, a fellow firefighter in the same brigade. Alex had been a volunteer for 20 years, and on 21 December his truck was overrun by flames. The truck had run out of water, meaning it couldn't activate the sprinkler system. After all he'd been through, it was touch and go. He drove his crew to safety. That's the story of this summer: remarkable Australians standing by each other, struggling, persevering and taking the wins where they could find them.
And it wasn't just firefighters. Behind our fire crews have been caterers, logistics officers, radio operators, fire control centres and a support apparatus that did not sleep. Our communities were backed up by volunteers at evacuation centres and by service groups, such as the CWA, Rotary and Lions, and wildlife groups, such as WIRES. And there were the charities: the Salvos, St Vinnie's and so many more. Some of it was organised, some of it not. Together, these efforts resulted in the most tremendous outpouring of generosity our country has seen: big businesses, small businesses, superstars, mums and dads all giving what they could.
That was the wonder of this summer: tens of thousands of volunteers fighting fires and then joined by 25 million of their countrymen and women supporting them—trusting each other and backing each other. Twenty-five million acts of kindness, all of them reminding us about the country we love. More than money, it spoke of our resolve—a reminder that what unites us as Australians is always more enduring and lasting than what divides us. With every action was a reminder of who we are—like the owners of the Indian restaurant in Gippsland that I referred to on Australia Day, who cooked thousands of free meals of curry and rice. There was the chemist at Malua Bay who, despite their own home burning down and not having an electronic payment system, kept the pharmacy open to get the medicines through. These businesses include the ones up at Yeppoon, which saw a survivor and took no payment for clothes or meals. And there were the wildlife volunteers, one of whom even gave the shirt off her own back while looking for koalas, kangaroos, wallabies and wombats to tend and protect.
There were the men from the Islamic community in Auburn who drove for six hours to Willawarrin with 30 kilograms of sausages, to cook a barbecue for a devastated community. That's faith. There were the convoys of trucks that took supplies through to communities that needed them and an army of angels that loaded 150 trucks of supplies and got them to Buchan and Omeo. Tradies knocked on doors and, at no charge, climbed on roofs and cleared the gutters of local homes, and there were families who opened up their own homes to strangers. Then there were the children: cake stalls, lemonade stalls and giving away their pocket money and their Christmas money. The kids of this country give us every reason to hope.
The generosity of the rest of the world was also so humbling: 70 nations offered us assistance. Over 300 firefighters were sent from the United States, Canada and New Zealand, to whom we are so grateful. We also had offers of assistance from the UAE, which is greatly appreciated. There was military assistance from New Zealand, the United States, Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea, Singapore and Japan, and from our wonderful family in PNG and Fiji. When the 54 engineers from the Republic of Fiji Military Forces arrived in Melbourne they placed their hands over their hearts and sang a hymn, 'Angels Watching over Me'—and they have been—to us. Our Pacific family has been so incredibly generous. Our neighbours, such as Vanuatu, Tuvalu and Solomon Islands, have given generously from not much—reminding me of the widow's mite—to our bushfire relief. In PNG's second-largest city, Lae, the young people began a wheelbarrow push, collecting donations and giving them to our consulate. Having stepped up for our Pacific family, we are now being so blessed by seeing our closest neighbours step up for us. We are so grateful to our Pacific family.
The actions of every level of government have been exemplary. I pay tribute to our premiers and to their agencies and local governments, who have all been doing exceptional work. I acknowledge Commissioner Fitzsimmons, who is here today—an amazing job, Shane.
In our own ranks I want to acknowledge those wonderful workers the electorate staff, the members here—not just the members that sit on this side but all members in this and the other place—and their teams, who have worked under extraordinary pressure. As members of this place we are all so proud of our colleagues and what they have done during this time, and those who serve with them.
Across government there have been tremendous efforts. I want to acknowledge the outstanding contribution of Emergency Management Australia and its director-general, Rob Cameron, who is here with us today. I also pay tribute to the contribution of our Australian defence forces. Six and a half thousand personnel have been providing support in the field, at sea, in the air and from defence bases in fire-affected communities going back to September of last year, and continue out there today. That includes reservists, the first compulsory call-out of reserves in our history for these purposes. The compulsory call-out will end this Friday. The ADF task force, led by Major General Jake Ellwood, have been undertaking vital on-the-ground tasks like delivering emergency food and water, evacuating stranded people, reopening roads, restoring services, clearing debris, building fences and burying dead animals. This reflects the transition of ADF support from assisting to save lives and properties to relief and recovery operations. Their sheer presence presented such encouragement and boosted morale when Australians, so devastated, could look up and see them there and know they were supported. They will continue to provide that support wherever it's needed, for as long as it's needed, with the full-time forces and, now, those volunteer reservists.
The recovery operations require a whole-of-government response, and that is why we established the National Bushfire Recovery Agency under the leadership of former AFP commissioner Andrew Colvin. It is overseeing a national bushfire recovery fund, which will support all recovery efforts across Australia over the next two years and for as long as it takes. We've allocated an initial $2 billion to fund this agency to ensure families, farmers, business owners and communities hit by these fires get the support they need as they recover, working closely with our colleagues and state and territory governments. Already the government has made major commitments, providing funding to clean-up operations, tourism support, wildlife recovery, local government assistance, small-business reconstruction, primary producers, farmers, graziers and families, as well as vital mental health support. In addition to that, over $100 million has already been provided in emergency payments.
However, today is not the day to speak in detail of these initiatives. Today is the day for memorial and commemoration. We know that recovery takes time, and we're all here for the long haul. Following a national disaster of this magnitude we must also heed the lessons. These fires have been fuelled by one of the worst droughts on record, changes in our climate and a build-up in fuel, amongst other factors. Our summers are getting longer, drier and hotter. That's what climate change does, and that requires a new responsiveness, resilience and a reinvigorated focus on adaptation. Today I've written to the premiers and chief minister to seek their feedback on the draft terms of reference for a royal commission, which I've flagged now for several weeks, along the terms that I've outlined in public. The royal commission will be led by former Chief of the Defence Force Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin AC and will shine a light on what needs to be done to make our country safer and our communities more resilient. We owe it to those we have lost, we owe it to those who have fought these fires, we owe it to our children and the land itself to learn from the lessons that are necessary.
Over a century ago, Henry Lawson wrote a poem about a bushfire in a place called Dingo Scrubs:
It is daylight again, and the fire is past, and the black scrub silent and grim,
Except for the blaze of an old dead tree, or the crash of a falling limb.
In his reminiscence, Lawson writes about three men who wipe away tears of smoke and put themselves in harm's way to save a family. When the fire is past, he writes of the men:
When they're wanted again in the Dingo Scrubs, they'll be there to do the work.
And that's what we'll all do here in this House and across Australia. To do the work; to do the work of recovery; to build back better; to do the work of learning; to do the work of repairing shattered hearts, broken communities: that is what we owe our country. That is what we owe each other. Australians are overcomers. Despite the scale of this disaster and the tragedies, Australia is not and will never be overwhelmed. As we face the challenges that remain active, as we confront and face the devastating drought compounded in so many places by these fires, as we confront and contain the challenge of the virus, indeed, that threatens the world, Australians will not be overwhelmed. We will overcome, as our national anthem encourages us, with courage all. Let us proclaim advance Australia fair.
So I conclude in memorial. I conclude in thanks. I conclude in honour to those we have lost, and the deepest of our sympathies and condolences to you. We simply hope and pray that, as we've gathered here today to acknowledge your great loss and the heroes you have lost, this will make your journey just that little bit easier.
Mr ALBANESE (Grayndler—Leader of the Opposition) (12:27): I thank the Prime Minister for agreeing to the proposal for today to be devoted to this important motion of condolence and commemoration. I honour the families of those who have lost loved ones, who are joining us here today. We are united in shock and in sadness: lives lost, dreams shattered, homes destroyed, communities devastated, native animals pushed to extinction, livelihoods gone up in flames. So much of our country has been consumed by fire, and yet amongst this terrible loss we have seen bravery, we have seen courage and we have seen resilience. We have seen our fellow Australians up against the inferno. We have seen our fellow Australians on the beach in unimaginable scenes, huddled together in midday darkness with nowhere to turn but the sea, a horrific illustration that this was anything but business as usual. It was the impact of our changing climate tragically played out before us, those who were directly affected but also those who were far away from the flames but who could see, smell and, indeed, touch its fallout. We do yet not know fully what we have lost because we are still losing it. It's not over. Australia is still burning. It's significant that in the past some of our worst fires have been after the date on which we commemorate this motion.
On the weekend, the fires burnt their way into yet another month on the calendar. This catastrophic fire season, which stretches right back across summer but began in spring, has taken so much. It has taken lives and it has taken loved ones. For those who've been lost and those who have lost partners, family or friends it has stolen the future. For many who have seen their homes and the physical, sentimental accumulations of lifetimes go up in flames it has robbed the past. It has hit the economy, but just how greatly is something we cannot yet piece together. It has hit our society. It has taken a toll on mental health, and we will be feeling the reverberations for some time yet. It has taken so much of our unique wildlife that it's going to take us a while to even measure the full scale of the calamity.
But through it all we've seen our brave firefighters. They do not want to be there but they feel compelled. They feel a powerful sense of duty. They feel driven by the overwhelming notion that when it comes to defending their communities, their country and their fellow Australians their contribution matters, their contribution counts and their contribution can make a difference. We've been humbled by the arrival of so many foreign firefighters who've come not to defend their homes but in the name of humanity and in the name of friendship, and we've been amazed by the crews on the planes and helicopters attacking the fire from above. As we have been reminded so tragically, it is a dangerous task. We are awed by all of them, by their courage and their sacrifice. It is an awe that has taken on a terrible sense of regularity, but the awe never feels just routine. Our brave women and men who get into those trucks and those aircraft have no illusions about what they're up against, and yet they keep going. Day after day, week after week, month after month they head back into these hellscapes. They live with moments of fear. They live with long stretches of boredom. They live with exhaustion and moments of adrenaline. They witness suffering, both human and animal. Those who haven't experienced the fires directly get glimpses of it through video footage of fire trucks dwarfed by ember storm and fireball. Even when it's shrunk onto the small screen and viewed from the safety of our homes and workplaces it is simply terrifying—the devastating impact of a changing climate seen around the world and felt, touched and smelt by Australians hundreds of kilometres from the fires.
We offer our deepest gratitude to their families, who are also put through it again and again and again. We cannot doubt how proud these families are of the firefighter in their midst. Indeed, as I've travelled around the country, that is the sense that I get: in the morning tea hosted by the Prime Minister this morning, these extraordinary family members, in mourning of their loved ones but proud of their wonderful contribution to their fellow Australians and the sacrifice that they have made.
Alongside the professionals, so many of our firefighters are volunteers. I've met them around the country. One of the things that strike you when you meet them is just what extraordinary Australians they are. I met people in Bilpin in December, on Christmas Eve, including one gentleman who'd begun fighting fires in Tenterfield, in northern New South Wales, in September. I met a firefighter, Mike, in Cudlee Creek in the Adelaide Hills. When I said to him: 'How long have you been going here for? Have you had a break at all?' He said he'd been going for a couple of weeks: 'Just a couple of weeks here.' I said, 'Oh, that's pretty tough.' He said, 'Oh yeah, but before then,' and he went on to outline he'd been on the Hawkesbury and he'd been on the north coast of New South Wales. When I was with Susan Templeman on Australia Day in the Blue Mountains we went to Glenbrook. There the head of the local Rural Fire Service, who we were chatting with, said, 'Not all of the brigade are here today because some of them went off to Moruya yesterday.' These are men and women who have been fighting fires for months, protecting their own homes and yet going to help their fellow Australians. I met people in Nowra and in the Hawkesbury who were there protecting other communities but were worried about what was happening where they lived. In the meantime, while they'd travelled to another destination, the fires had then been brought much closer to their own homes. But they stayed, protecting strangers' homes—quite remarkable.
It is important—and I support very much the proposal—that we honour these Australians with appropriate recognition into the future. When our brave volunteers keep giving us so much, over such a long time, at such a cost to themselves, I believe it is time to consider expressing our gratitude in a more practical way in the future. It is not sustainable for people to not receive an income over such a long period of time—and I'm pleased that that was recognised during this crisis. But we do need to, in any assessment, look at what the changing climate and the changing expectations of future events mean for the way we structure our response.
Through this bushfire crisis it has been an honour, and very humbling, to engage directly with people in these affected communities. Firefighters, volunteers, small business owners, defence personnel, local government, men, women, girls and boys—I've listened to their stories and heard their practical suggestions. Throughout this crisis Labor has been constructive in forwarding proposals for national coordination, for resources and support for our firefighters, including our volunteers in affected communities. And I acknowledge the fact that Minister Littleproud has returned every call and has responded to every request that I have made—which has been pretty regular, it's got to be said—working with our shadow minister, Murray Watt.
We are guided by a single thought: that as Australians we're all in this together; working together is our only way forward. I have every confidence that, as Australians, that is what we will do. That is who we are. We have been tested in so many ways. It will not surprise anyone that the toughest of times has brought out the very best in Australians. I've been humbled by it as I've travelled through the fire zones. It is what so many of us across Australia have seen; indeed, it is what so many have lived through. Neighbour helping neighbour, friend helping friend, stranger helping stranger, humans comforting animals—through the long hell of this bushfire season, we have held each other. We have lent each other our shoulders. We have pushed through. Communities have pulled together.
We must acknowledge the crucial work that has been done by the ABC, a proud national institution, in keeping communities informed and up to date in what is often a dangerous and fast-changing environment. To say our national broadcaster has been indispensable is simply an understatement. Likewise, we must acknowledge the vital and tireless efforts of the personnel from our parks and forest management bodies. We also thank all of our maritime workers and defence personnel who've thrown themselves into the effort. We have done everything in our power to hold on to hope. And just as we have seen hope rewarded, we have seen it defeated. As this season of fire has reminded us, none of us is invincible. Each death leaves a terrible hole in a community. Each death is the cruellest of blows to a family, one that inflicts a hurt that may one day soften but will never fade. We feel each one of them in our hearts. As a nation, we have lost our own. We have also lost those who crossed the sea to help us. We embrace them as our own. We think of the tragically growing list of names.
Each one of those names belonged to a human being who was the centre of a universe. Each one a name that no-one will answer to anymore. But we hold onto them. Among those we have lost are Geoffrey Keaton and Andrew O'Dwyer, firefighters and also young fathers. I got to meet Geoffrey's son, Harvey, before—a wonderful young boy—and Andrew's daughter, Charlotte. They were born just days apart. Our hearts break to see children so small and so young attending their fathers' funerals.
Firefighter Samuel McPaul: his child is due in May and will only ever know him second hand. His wife, Megan, will never see him holding their baby. She'll never see him give his first fatherly kiss. They will not share the first steps, the first words, the first birthday or the first day at school. But that baby will grow up knowing they are the child of an amazing man and one who we're all proud of.
Bill Slade, a veteran firefighter, who picked up his first fire hose in 1979, was a husband, a father and a proud member of the Australian Workers Union. He fought fires on Ash Wednesday and Black Saturday before he threw himself into what would prove to be his final fight in the East Gippsland blaze. His heartbroken wife, Carol, said via a relative: 'I will miss him. I will miss the great times we had yet to come.'
Dick Lang and his son Clayton Lang: Dick was a pioneering bush pilot and a safari operator; Clayton was a talented plastic and reconstructive surgeon. Father and son had been fighting the fires on Kangaroo Island for two days when they lost the fight. You will not be forgotten.
The three Americans lost in the crash of the Lockheed C-130 Hercules air tanker were Captain McBeth, Paul Clyde Hudson and flight engineer Rick DeMorgan Jr. They came for us. We talk about friendship between nations—this was that friendship, expressed at the profoundest level.
Father and son Robert and Patrick Salway stayed to defend their home in Cobargo and their precious hard-earned farming equipment. Patrick's wife, Renee, wrote, 'We are broken.' Our hearts embrace Patrick and Renee's young son, who will grow up with a father who lives on in memory and in the stories told by those who knew him and loved him.
There have been so many. We mourn each and every one of them. As the fires finally leave, communities are left to deal with the aftermath—physical, financial and perhaps, most importantly, emotional. Then there is wildlife that, having miraculously survived the inferno, is left in desperate need of the second miracle—namely, finding food and shelter amid the desolation.
So what now? Yes, fire is part of who we are; our recorded history is heavy with its grim poetry: Ash Wednesday, Black Friday, Red Tuesday, Black Saturday. But we are at a turning point. This is not business as usual. This is not even fire as usual. We can no longer fall back on the poetry of Dorothea Mackellar and comfort ourselves with the thought that it's always been like this, that this is the price we pay for living on a beautiful but sometimes harsh and unforgiving continent, nor can we soften reality with the fiction that we had no way of predicting this. We have no choice but to turn to face the harsh new reality. The scale and intensity of the fires has been unprecedented.
But the responses to the fire from our fellow Australians have been completely as expected. There has been toughness, resilience, generosity, and, amazingly, through it all there has been a sense of humour. All of these qualities have been put to the test during this time of fire, and Australians have shown their true character. In this time of upheaval, the only certainty we have is that they will be tested again. We must be ready.
I pay my respects to all those today who have lost loved ones. I pay my respects also, to those who are still suffering physically and mentally and say that we, as a parliament, will provide every assistance—and I'm sure that we can all agree on that. In conclusion, I also pay tribute to all those extraordinary men and women who, in the face of incredible danger to themselves, have put their fellow Australians, their communities and their nation before their own interests. We thank you. We praise you. We honour you.
Mr McCORMACK (Riverina—Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure,Transport and Regional Development and Leader of the Nationals) (12:45): I thank the Prime Minister and the opposition leader for their generous, eloquent words.
Australians stand in solidarity today with those who have suffered damage to property, stress and in some tragic cases bereavement as a consequence of the devastating fires across eastern and southern Australia and parts of Western Australia. We acknowledge the deep economic, as well as social, consequences, the impact on the way of life of so many communities, so many families, and those personal impacts that will linger, in some cases, for lifetimes. Much has been written and spoken about these fires already, and I've noticed in particular one theme recurring time and again: we stand shoulder to shoulder. The Prime Minister has echoed it; the opposition leader said it as well. That's what Australians do. We have each other's backs. It means that together we will always overcome, we will always prevail.
The toll has been immense and the fires aren't out yet. The funeral at Holbrook of southern New South Wales volunteer firefighter Sam McPaul was a time of deep emotion. The toll of these fires has simply been enormous. Sam is one of the brave volunteers who lost their lives. He studied animal science at Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga, where he met his wife-to-be, Megan. Their child is on the way; due in May.
I spoke to Sam's mother, Christine. She's a remarkable person; so very brave. Such loss has she suffered. I have the service booklet here from his funeral . You see a face: so young; so full of life. I asked Christine: 'What sort of boy was he? Was he cheeky? Was he fun?' She said: 'Yes, all of that, but he was always there for others. He was always there to care. He was always there for someone else. That was my boy.' You could see it in his face. A beautiful life lost. Sam epitomised a selfless Aussie spirit where others come first. He will be forever in our memories. He is amongst so many more who've lost some or all of their cherished possessions, including their homes, and, in too many cases, have lost their lives.
Late last week I represented the Australian government at a most moving repatriation ceremony at Royal Australian Air Force Base Richmond, led by the New South Wales Rural Fire Service, for the three American pilots lost in southern New South Wales: First Officer Paul Hudson, Captain Ian McBeth and Flight Engineer Rick DeMorgan Jr. They came to Australia from the United States to protect our country. Our nation will forever owe them a debt of gratitude. Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons spoke magnificently at that service, as he did at Sam McPaul's, as he has done this entire summer. Commissioner, we pay tribute to you. You are an exemplar of what we all strive to be. Thank you for what you have done this summer.
In all, more than 30 Australians have died, with 2,900 homes confirmed lost and more than 10 million hectares of beautiful, magnificent Australian country burnt out—beautiful Australian country like Sugar Pine Walk in the member for Eden-Monaro's electorate, in the Snowy Valleys local government area. Mike Kelly and I spoke way too much this summer—we don't normally do that, Mike!—but it was almost on an hourly basis. I know you weren't well, and I know your thoughts were with your people at Batlow, Tumbarumba, Adelong—which was saved, but in those other two towns many homes were lost; many businesses, many farms, apple orchards and pine plantations. I know you were feeling that loss, and I know Senator Jim Molan was out there supporting those people alongside myself and others as well. Had it not been for the huge effort of so many personnel, from volunteers to full-time firefighter leaders, the toll would have been so much higher. Standing shoulder to shoulder means so much more than just ensuring funds and practical assistance are available.
I do want to commend Minister Littleproud for what he did and Minister Robert as well for responding so quickly. I know the opposition leader has already commended the minister for emergency management for responding every time. It means literally standing with communities, being there, understanding and sharing the raw emotion. That's what the Prime Minister and I, ministers, all of us, have done because that's what we have to do. We have to turn up and put our arms around our communities, being there at their time of need but being there also for the long haul, and we all will because that is what Australians do.
Let me offer a sense of the bravery and determination I've been privileged to witness over the days from mid-November until now. Indeed, the fires began back in September. It was a very early start to the fire season. In Caloundra I met with many fire service volunteers who had been out on the ground for 18 hours straight, along with police and other emergency personnel who fought such a strong, such a well coordinated fight against the elements.
In Noosa I met the team from Helitak, a local engineering firm designing large water-carrying and dispersing devices which attach to the undercarriage of choppers, before meeting displaced residents at the well organised local refuge centre. That refuge centre was replicated right across the nation. Australians dug so deep.
The Yeppoon property of lychee producers Ray and Jack Cowie lost 1,000 trees. But the member for Capricornia and I marvelled at how we saw how that blaze had been fought back to save their home and the family were so, so grateful.
I was privileged to address a meeting of at least 600 people in Tumut on 3 January as the community prepared to do whatever they could. They were worried. I looked out at that sea of faces and they were just racked with fear, racked with the unknown. But, whilst the fire was looming large up in the hills at Batlow and Tumbarumba, they dug deep. Among the hundreds were Rebecca Dean and Mia Hardwick from Adelong. Two girls—just young kids, teenagers—they were simply exhausted from placing themselves on the frontline, battling the fire front in their region. They looked so good in their uniforms. They were tired. They were exhausted. They were fatigued. But they were ready to go out again because that's what Australians do.
In Cobargo I met with family and friends of father and son Robert and Patrick Salway, both lost in the effort to protect the area. The local councillor Tony Allen showed us how the flames had nearly taken his entire dairy herd but also took us to the local pub run by his son David. It was point of community interface where people could share their experiences and lift each other's spirits at a time of such tragedy.
I spent time with my counterpart, New South Wales minister for transport, Andrew Constance, the member for Bega, right there in the midst of his community effort. Andrew took us through not just the low points of suffering of these people but also the high points of bravery, of courage, of selflessness and the never to be defeated Aussie optimism. This was the attitude I found time and again, not least in the story of a local leader, young Anthony Bellette in Malua Bay on the New South Wales South Coast, who stood firm on the scorching roof of the local surf lifesaving club. Imagine that—the fire whipping all around, smoke billowing into the air, hundreds of people needing direction and there was Anthony giving it, shouting directions to those below until he was hoarse, coordinating the effort against the fire as the threat escalated, getting people and marshalling them onto the beach. He saved countless lives. What a guy.
We have stood, and will continue to stand, shoulder to shoulder with all who have been impacted, and, sadly, with those who may yet be impacted as the dangerous conditions continue, not least of which in and around our national capital. That is why the government has moved quickly to implement a comprehensive suite of relief actions. We will be there for our people. I know the opposition will join us in those efforts not just in the weeks ahead, not just in the months, but in the years.
I would say to those people affected: don't keep the pain to yourself; be brave enough to seek friendly, helpful advice. There are specific local bushfire clean-up programs in action. Small businesses may be eligible for recovery grants, concessional loans and other backups. Small businesses are what makes this nation great, along with, of course, our fantastic volunteers. Tailored, personal advice to the Rural Financial Counselling Service, with such immense experience in rural and regional matters, is readily available. An extra 60 counsellors have been made available to support eligible bushfire-affected primary producers.
They've gone through so much. First of all, they had the drought and then, of course, they had the fire. But they are strong and resilient. Emergency support for primary producers includes grants for everything from fodder and water to sheds, fencing—87,000 kilometres of fence has gone just in New South Wales, by the way; it's just incredible—and farm equipment replacement where their needs are not covered by existing insurance policies. The Australian Taxation Office may be able to help with specific actions, and I urge and encourage people to seek out assistance. Don't self-assess, please! Seek out that assistance; it is available. The government has responded to the fast-emerging needs of communities with a number of well-placed and new initiatives.
The Prime Minister changed the Australian Defence Force posture from 'respond to request' to one of 'move forward and integrate', issuing a compulsory call-out to our talented Defence reservists in response to domestic natural disaster. Once those uniformed people—young and some not so young—were on the ground, what a difference that made! As the Prime Minister said recently, we thank the states for their cooperation with this decision, and stress, again, that it was not made because of any questioning of state efforts or preparedness. They have been magnificent too.
The recovery effort for our vital tourism sector is there, with recovery packages to protect jobs, small businesses and local economies by bringing tourists—domestic and international—back into fire-impacted regions. Regional Australia has been through a lot, but it ain't broke. It never will be. Regional Australia is the backbone of this nation; it certainly is. When the regions are strong, so too is our nation, and we need to be there for them. I know we are and I know that we will be into the future—everyone.
I will also mention work to protect and help the recovery efforts for our precious wildlife. Our wildlife, I know, was highlighted by the member for Grayndler. We need to protect our wildlife—our beautiful animals. And that, if anything, brought it home on the international scale—the effort that so many people went to to save our beautiful wildlife.
I will also commend the efforts of charities. I know there has been some debate about the speed of assistance. I say: keep in contact with charities. Let them know your needs. They are there to help. I say to those who have donated: thank you. Thank you on behalf of every Australian who will experience real benefit and relief from your generosity, your efforts. Together, Australians—I say it again—are standing shoulder to shoulder. Much has been done and much will continue to be done. I encourage all to seek the resources available and to make sure that, if you need help, you reach out and get help. A good start is the website bushfirerecovery.gov.au.
I look forward to this season of fire risk coming to an end, as I know we all do. As it does, of course we can consider what has been done well and what we can do better to protect even more lives and assets into the future. I strongly accept there are things we can and must do. This must be our focus in the weeks and months ahead. Yes, there is a legitimate policy debate to be continued. I fully accept that climate conditions and changes are an important part of this.
No, there is no single cause for these fires. There is absolutely no justification for trying to turn these events into something that they're not. I certainly know that fuel loads and build-up must be part of our forward thinking. I stress again the actions of arsonists warrant strong discipline to discourage a repeat of such dangerous, antisocial and life-threatening behaviours. This current fire season is not without precedent; we know that we have had fires in this nation before. These have been dreadful, though.
There is much to be done. Communication from fire authorities in the various states through communities and emergency services personnel has been consistently strong. We thank them for that. Of course there is always room for improvement, but I believe our forebears would be proud of just how much we've made the most of modern technology to keep people alert to trends and to help in preparation for the fire when it does arrive. I know that Anthony Albanese commended the ABC, and I join him in that—I do. Also, I would like to commend David Eisenhauer at Sounds of the Mountains, in Tumut. He worked 20 hours day after day—I see Mike Kelly nodding—until he was exhausted to put those alerts out. Thankfully, the signal held. Well done, David. Thank you. You saved lives. You saved properties.
I'm pleased the Australian government has been able to do so much and to respond with the necessary speed. I thank the Prime Minister for his responsiveness and for his leadership throughout the summer. I'm pleased we've been able to lay the groundwork for a comprehensive outlay of funds because we've been managing the money carefully and have prepared for these sorts of contingencies. Australians can depend on their mates always. Australians can depend on the resources being made available as they are required and needed.
I do pay strong tribute to the many, many Australians who were impacted by these fires but stood against the threat. We're standing together, shoulder to shoulder. Thank you, Australia. You are a magnificent country. It is the best country of all to live in, but the international efforts which have helped us are also acknowledged and recognised too. Thank you very much.
Mr MARLES (Corio—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (13:00): Ian McBeth, in his mid-40s, had been a C-130 Hercules pilot all his working life in the military, in the Wyoming Air National Guard and later in the Montana Air National Guard. As an experienced Hercules pilot, he was a qualified instructor and a qualified evaluator pilot. In recent times he'd been flying a modified C-130 Hercules with Coulson Aviation, fighting fires. For anyone who knew Ian, he was a man completely devoted to his family.
Along with the member for Macquarie, a few weeks ago I visited the firebombers at RAAF Base Richmond. We spoke to another pilot, also an American, who was flying a modified 737. I asked him what it was like to engage in that kind of flying. He said the trick was to fly as low and as slow as possible—just 250 kilometres per hour, just 50 metres above the ground. That's amazing flying. I said, 'At that level, you must in some way experience the fire.' He said, 'Not the heat so much, but certainly the smoke impacts visibility.' Fires create their own microclimates and their own winds, and those winds will buffet the plane. This is not a smooth flight at 50 metres. It's bumpy. There's turbulence. As the plane dumps its retardant, in a matter of just a few seconds it will experience a radical change in its power-to-weight ratio, which means the pilot has to in turn manage a dramatic shift in the plane's performance. This is astonishing flying and yet it makes such an incredible difference. To be able to draw a line right across the front of the fire, to stop it in its tracks, has saved lives. It saved countless homes. It saved the Wollemi pines. Compared even to the Black Saturday bushfires 11 years ago, it represents a game changer in our ability to fight fires today.
But with this great impact comes great danger, because this is really risky flying. That danger was given its full expression on 23 January, when Ian McBeth and his co-pilots, Paul Hudson and Rick DeMorgan Jr, lost their lives when their C-130 Hercules crashed at Peak View, fighting a fire in the Snowy Monaro area. Right now in Great Falls, Montana, halfway across the world, the full loss wrought by the Australian bushfires is being felt with a searing acuteness, in a way none of us would want to contemplate, by Ian's wife, Bowdie; and his three children, Abigail, Calvin and Ella.
Ian's sacrifice stands alongside that of eight others who lost their lives going to fight the fires. These are people who were not in the way of the fire but went to fight the fires to help others. That is actually a much larger number of firefighters who died even compared to Black Saturday. Their sacrifice in turn speaks to the service of tens of thousands of Australians—volunteers; paid firefighters; emergency service workers; park rangers; surf life savers; members of the Australian Defence Force and its reserves; along with 350 members of other defence forces around the world, from six other countries, who came to help, and other firefighters from around the world who came to help. In one form or another, these people have been fighting fires since September of last year. When you compare this event to the great bushfires of our nation's history, it's really clear that they're responsible for saving the lives of hundreds; the homes of thousands; and, with them, livelihoods, memories and the personal treasures that lie within. And so our nation truly does owe these people an enormous debt of gratitude.
And yet the human toll has been boundless: 33 lives lost, almost 3,000 homes destroyed. Economies—particularly the tourist economies involving small businesses in fire-affected areas in Queensland, up and down the New South Wales coast, in the Blue Mountains, in Gippsland, in parts of Tasmania, on Kangaroo Island, in the Adelaide hills, in parts of WA and the Northern Territory and, just recently, here in Canberra—have been ravaged, and the pain that is being experienced in these communities is profound and it is fundamental.
In Cobargo, in the Bega Valley, Robert and Patrick Salway, father and son, died as they tried to defend their property in the face of an utterly horrifying fire. Heartbreakingly, after the fire had passed, it was Robert's wife who found them. Dozens of homes were lost in Cobargo alone. The main street of Cobargo was devastated. Pictures of it remind one more of a war zone. The impact of these fires on the people of Cobargo is really unimaginable.
And yet in other ways—to be sure, lesser ways—the bushfires have been experienced by millions of Australians. Over the last couple of months in Melbourne there have been nine smoke days. In Brisbane there have been 20. In Sydney there have been 28. Here in Canberra there have been 49. These are days on which the air quality has been rated between 'poor' and 'hazardous'. There's a lot of fear about the smoke and what its long-term impact might be, and it's important that we do the research to understand that, but one matter is really clear: if you can't see down the end of your road because of smoke; if kids are being kept home from school; if the outdoor lifestyle which so characterises us as a nation, particularly over the summer months, is being brought to a halt; then this smoke, at least by reference to our past, is certainly not business as usual.
And the smoke is the most palpable sign of what has been an ecological catastrophe. These fires have burnt vast swathes of our nation. And, yes, fire is a natural part of the Australian landscape. It clears away the undergrowth. There are certain species of trees which require it for germination. But when the frequency of fires is such that it's actually small sapling trees which are being burnt to the ground or when the fire burns so hot that the adult tree itself dies then we're actually talking about ecological change which is permanent. It's been estimated that up to 100 species of wildlife will have been endangered by these fires. For some of them, these fires may ultimately prove to actually be an extinction event.
And the vast scale of these fires is simply astonishing. Compared to the 2018 California wildfires, the largest in that state's history, where 62,000 hectares were burnt, or the Black Saturday bushfires, where 450,000 hectares were burnt, or even last year's Amazon rainforest fire, where 906,000 hectares were burnt, since September across the country we've seen 17 million hectares burnt. Indeed, the Gospers Mountain fire last year is believed to be the single biggest fire caused by one ignition source, in this case a bolt of lightning, in human history. It is simply staggering.
With never before seen events there is a demand for a never before seen response in the way in which we care for those families who have lost loved ones; in the way in which we care for those who have been injured, in the way in which we deal with the question of mental health, particularly as it impacts children; in the way in which we provide support to volunteers; and in the way in which we provide support to businesses in affected fire communities, whether or not they've been physically touched by the fire.
It is impossible, in talking about this, not to mention the question of climate change. I know those opposite understand this. Whatever one's view is of climate change here in this chamber, in this building or in this city, the fact is that, over the last couple of months, it has been spoken about in a way that we've never seen before. Obviously Australia, and I know people understand this across the House, must have a credible response to climate change, and clearly Australia on its own is not going to be able to solve the global challenge of climate change. But with an unprecedented level of international attention to events that are unfolding here in Australia comes an unprecedented opportunity in the way in which we respond locally and in what we say about climate change for our voice to be heard around the world. I truly do believe that the people of Australia want the people in this chamber to take that opportunity up right now.
The fires have been devastating. The grief has been immense. From Dick and Clayton Lang and their family on Kangaroo Island through to the family of Geoffrey Keaton in Western Sydney, in every state and territory of our Commonwealth right across our nation, and indeed throughout the continent and even to Great Falls in Montana, the grief has been overflowing. To those who have been suffering in many and varied ways, I want to say that this parliament, with complete unanimity, stands with you.
Mr CHESTER (Gippsland—Minister for Veterans and Defence Personnel and Deputy Leader of the House) (13:13): I rise here today as a proud Gippslander. I couldn't be prouder of my community and their response to the unprecedented events we've experienced over the past three months. It is with a heavy heart but also with enormous resolve and determination that I make my remarks here today on behalf of the people of Gippsland. Like the Prime Minister and the opposition leader, I think I should start with a couple of thankyous. I want to thank my family and my staff in particular for their personal support. I thank you, Prime Minister, the opposition leader, the Deputy Prime Minister and the many opposite who sent me kind messages of support—don't worry, I won't name you; I don't want to expose your preselectors to an unfortunate outcome! To my colleagues on this side of the House as well: thank you for your support; it has been quite extraordinary; we are so grateful in my electorate.
We are thankful in particular to our firefighters. They kept us safe in the most extraordinary of circumstances, which began way back in November but really peaked just before New Year's Day. To the emergency service workers, the police, the ambos and the SES workers: your contribution during that initial response phase was extraordinarily important to us. After the main fire front passed through my community was when the Australian Defence Force came into its own. There were unprecedented scenes on the beaches of Mallacoota, which I'm sure many of you saw. Daylight turned to dark, there was the red sky and people huddled under beach towels or fleeing on boats to the inlet. To have our Australian Defence Force available to carry out the most extraordinary evacuation by sea and by air was something that I never thought I'd see as a local member of parliament. We are forever grateful to those young men and women in particular who put aside whatever break they were planning to have in January and who came to our aid.
They're still on the ground there today. The Army, Navy and Air Force have been amazing in our community, carrying out the evacuation, first of all, and then supply drops and clearing roads in trying to maintain some sort of normality for my community. The Prime Minister touched on this himself as well: the morale boost they provided was something that I think our community desperately needed at that time. We thank everyone, from the Chief of Defence Force down. The gratitude that my community felt was repeated to me on many, many occasions.
Thanks go to the paid staff at our state government departments and our federal government departments, and also to the East Gippsland Shire Council staff, who worked long hours. Then there were the volunteers from all over Victoria; the ones you usually expect to see—the Red Cross turned up in numbers, and the Salvos—and some who you don't expect to see: the Sikh Community Kitchen from the member for Latrobe's seat. The Sikh Community Kitchen was probably the most popular community kitchen—no-one wanted bickies, coffee and sandwiches once the curries turned up! It's fair to say that they were very well received. The Governor-General himself thanked them personally.
So there has been an extraordinary outpouring of support. It is a remarkable nation where you actually have to go on air and tell people to stop donating stuff! 'Stop sending us food, stop sending us clothing—your generosity has reached our capacity to accept any more.' We actually had to tell Victorians to stop sending things to Gippsland, but if you want to help us out by all means send a few dollars to the Gippsland Emergency Relief Fund. It was extraordinary, hearing the Premier having to make that request. I want to go on the record, actually—as you did, Prime Minister—to congratulate the Premier for his response in those very early days, when things were pretty tough in my region.
Another huge thank you that I need to make is to the farmers from around Victoria, I think, and certainly from New South Wales as well, who loaded trucks and started bringing fodder in. I'm not sure who organised it to begin with, but to see convoys of 20 and 30 semitrailers rolling through towns gave people hope. It gave people hope in the knowledge that help was coming and that they would be supported.
The losses have been enormous, and other speakers have touched on that already. We are still counting the cost in my electorate of Gippsland. There are families who are grieving the loss of loved ones right across the nation, but in Gippsland itself we lost a couple of people during the firefight. Mick Roberts from Buchan was lost in the firefight. Old Freddie Becker from Maramingo Creek was well known in the community. He passed away from a heart attack as he prepared his property. We've heard about David Moresi today. He was a contractor, working at Gelantipy. His wife, Judi, and two of his family members, Kelly and Luke, are here today. I thank the Prime Minister for hosting them at that morning tea earlier on.
There was Bill Slade, from Wonthaggi, just down the road from my electorate in the member for Monash's electorate. He was working on a fire on the recovery line at Anglers Rest near Omeo when he was struck by a tree. He was an experienced forester, and that just reminds us that there are risks still in the environment today—risks in the recovery mode are almost as severe as the risk during the original firefight. It's a dangerous environment in the bush right now, and we encourage people, please, to pay attention to the warnings that are provided to them by the forestry workers.
These were all tragedies. Each and every one of them will be grieved by their families. But I am actually amazed—and I think you probably are as well, Mr Deputy Speaker, having lived through the Black Saturday experience—that there wasn't greater loss of life in our community. A lot of people, I believe, had learned the lesson from Black Saturday in Victoria. A lot of people made very good decisions. They made those good decisions, I think, firstly, from the lived experience of the previous bushfires they'd been through but also through the information that was made available to them. We were well informed. There were the Emergency Management Victoria messages, and the technology used for the emergency app certainly helped. And there was our own ABC Gippsland. The ABC Gippsland radio team was broadcasting right throughout the response phase as the disaster unfolded. Having that emergency services broadcaster is very, very important to regional communities. I know every member who lives in a regional area understands that, and their capacity to keep broadcasting to get those messages out and also to allow people to ring in and provide some on-the-ground information that perhaps the emergency services themselves don't necessarily know. That feedback was very important, and gave some very localised information which I'm sure helped people to make the good decisions that they made to stay safe.
As I said, we'll be carrying the costs for a long time, and the full costs will only be known once the fires are out. We've still got active fire in Gippsland at the moment. I flew up here—what day was that? Sunday. It seems like a lifetime ago. I flew up here on Sunday and there were still active fires in the landscape in Gippsland. We lost some more property at Cape Conran just yesterday and over the weekend, with the Parks Victoria facilities being burnt there. We've lost at least 200 homes. We've lost outbuildings. Obviously the stock losses are well understood right throughout our nation, but particularly through the northern parts of my electorate. And we've lost hundreds of kilometres of fencing. Here I should recognise the work of groups like BlazeAid and Bushfire Assist, who go in there and provide practical, on-the-ground assistance perhaps even more quickly than we as a government can do it. I congratulate those volunteer organisations for getting in there and cracking on with the job.
We've talked about the wildlife. Everyone who speaks here today will acknowledge the loss of wildlife that was experienced. But there were some things about the fire that I took a little bit of comfort from as I flew up here on Sunday. While we've had a large area burnt—we're talking about more than a million hectares—it's not all burnt. As I flew up here I noticed areas where the wildlife would have been safe, where the burn wasn't as severe, where you can already see the green shoots of recovery. So, while there's no underestimating the level of devastation, we should have cause for hope, as we're seeing some of the bush already recovering. And seeing our dedicated wildlife volunteers and their determination to make sure that our native species are looked after gave us all enormous comfort.
We've lost a great deal of public infrastructure across Gippsland, and our shires and public land managers, state government and federal government, will need to work in cooperation to make sure we work as quickly as we can to replace the bridges, the lookouts, the walking trails and that type of thing. But, Mr Deputy Speaker, we've also been lucky. Dozens of little communities in Gippsland suffered significant losses, like Sarsfield, Wairewa, Clifton Creek, Wiseleigh, Club Terrace—tiny places that most people had never heard of. I pitied my poor ABC Gippsland colleagues trying to pronounce some of the names. Bumberrah, Wangarabell—you name it; they were struggling over them all but they battled on. But the major towns are all intact. They're little places but important places. Buchan, Nowa Nowa, Omeo, Bruthen, Cann River—they're all intact. Yes, we lost some houses around the outskirts, but the towns themselves are basically intact. Even at Mallacoota, which bore the heaviest losses in my electorate—we've lost in the order of a hundred homes—the town itself, the CBD of Mallacoota, is still intact. When it's safe to do so, we'll be encouraging people to return as quickly as they possibly can.
There are the indirect impacts on those who didn't lose homes and didn't lose property but are in the small-business sector in our community. A lot of businesses in Gippsland in their reasonably short tourism season of five or six weeks can sometimes achieve 50 to 60 per cent of their annual turnover. We like to call the tourism season 'harvest season' for small business. They got only a few days of the harvest season. We had to send everyone home. It will have a long-term impact on towns like Orbost, Marlo, Lakes Entrance, Metung, Paynesville, Mallacoota, Gipsy Point and Genoa. Those towns, which rely very heavily on tourism income, are really going to struggle over the next six to 12 months and into the long-term recovery phase.
Having these fires happen on top of the drought, though, has just added to the complications for our region. We've already had some structural economic concerns around our farming sector; around our timber industry, through cuts to the industry; and the commercial fishing sector. We already had some significant economic challenges in my region. This will, I guess, play into our longer-term need to work as a community and to work with all levels of government to support those business men and women. They're a tough and resilient bunch, a determined bunch. Many members have spoken today about the determination of regional Australians. My community has been through fires before. They've been through floods. They've been through droughts. From the fires, I've seen enormous community spirit come to the fore. Our community is heeding the message of the Australian bushfire recovery leader, Andrew Colvin, that we need to build back better. We do need to build back better.
Mr Taylor interjecting—
Mr CHESTER: Who's going to get a fine for that? That's a slug from Angus Taylor for the people of Gippsland. You'll have to deliver it yourself. If your phone goes off in the chamber, Angus, you've got to pay up!
Mr Deputy Speaker, we do want to build back better, but I also carry one simple message from the people of Gippsland: don't forget Gippsland. They want us to remember them when the cameras leave. We have to stick together and we will stick together. I appreciate the unity of purpose and spirit that people have expressed here in this chamber today. Issues around mental health support are already coming to the fore. We know that people won't necessarily seek that help straightaway. You've got to keep an eye on your mates and make sure they're not afraid to reach out and seek help when they need it. There is help available, right across Australia. Help is there, but often people don't seek it. We need to make sure people reach out and get that support.
This is a complex natural disaster to deal with, because we've still got a fire response, a fire relief effort and a fire recovery effort all happening at the same time in my region. So we certainly welcome the cooperation we've seen from local, state and federal governments, and the announcements that have already been made; they will be well received in my community. And I'll have plenty more to say in the future as we work through the full recovery mode. But there are a few early learnings and feedback from my community that I feel compelled to share with the parliament here today.
Hazard reduction has emerged as a critical issue in all of the feedback I've had from my community over the last five weeks. The people in my community absolutely accept we need to do our bit to reduce the emissions and to make a contribution to limit the impact of climate change in regional Australia, but they want to see us do more in terms of hazard reduction. They want to see us improve our risk appetite, to have us burn on more days and to provide the resources to make it happen. They want to see us using Indigenous burning techniques; it's come up time and time again. And, at the risk of making jokes—I will try it anyway; the opposition leader spoke about the humour that comes out of disasters—I was at the Bemm River CFA about three weeks ago, and the CFA captain said to me that he'd known an old Indigenous fellow who was right into the Indigenous burning techniques. The captain, perhaps naively, asked him, 'How did you guys know when to burn?' He claims—and I'm sorry it's going to end up on the Hansard now—that the Indigenous fellow said, 'Well the original Australians didn't wear a lot of clothing, and when the grass started touching the old fella it was time to burn.' That's some of the gallows humour we had in Gippsland to get us through.
Another bit of gallows humour was a young family I knew, driving out to see their burnt-out home for the first time. The 15-year-old son, having only seen photos and driving to the house for the first time, said to his mum, 'Well, at least you won't whinge about me cleaning my room anymore.' The house had been burnt to the ground. That sort of humour in the Australian laid-back way is going to carry us a long way in the months ahead.
Another early learning for us, other than hazard reduction, is that we need to see more staff on the ground. We need to have more boots and fewer suits. We need to see more boots on the ground doing the roadside clearing, doing the safety zones around our regional towns and doing that hazard reduction work, when safe to do so. We've got to help these communities prepare, protect and look after the bush.
Critical to me over this last month has been the failure to maintain safe transport corridors in my region. I'm not looking to lay blame at anyone's feet, because I know what a difficult task it was to clear the Princes and Monaro highways, but it's simply not acceptable in 2020 for major arterials like those two highways to be closed for over a month. We have to make them more resilient in the future. That will mean more roadside vegetation clearing to a safe limit so that when we have these events we can get the roads open sooner. On that note, I have to acknowledge the work of our forest contractors and harvesters who went out there with the heavy equipment. They had the gear to get the job done, and they worked side by side with our forest industry workers and with our Australian Defence Force personnel to clear the road. Safety has to come first—everyone knows that—but it shouldn't take us so long to maintain our major arterials. There were businesses bleeding cash for weeks and weeks while the highways remained closed.
Mobile communications went out in the immediate fire response, but also after that date. Once your mobile tower is compromised and you lose power to it, it's only a small amount of time until you start losing the mobile communications. In the interim, we may need to look at flying or driving in satellite phones in some of those more remote communities before the fire season starts. It will be a hell of a lot easier to put the phones in before the season starts than trying to drop them with Blackhawks, as we did immediately after the fire front went through. So there are things we can do to learn from this immediately.
The other thing I have to raise in this place is the concern in the community about the way donations have not got to the ground as quickly as people would like. It's not intended as a criticism of any charitable organisation; they do some fantastic work in our communities. But, once we raise this money, the community expects to see it in their pockets as quickly as possible. Perhaps even more importantly, the people who donate the money expect it to get to people's pockets as quickly as possible. In my electorate we've been lucky to have the Gippsland Emergency Relief Fund, which has been able to turn around grants in 24 to 48 hours. In many cases the fund has money in people's pockets well before any other source of funding. I congratulate them on that.
I need to mention small business support. We're giving support at a government level. But, right now, it is up to the communities to get back in there and support those regional communities. If you get out there, there is an empty esky campaign. You turn up with an empty esky and you fill it up with goods from those regional communities. Again, people supporting each other will get that support rolling quicker than anything else.
Finally, I thank the House for this opportunity. I thank the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition for bringing forward this condolence motion. My community wants to see a better future. They don't just want us to build what we already had. They want us to work hard to make sure our tourism industry is not so seasonal. They want us to put infrastructure in place to make our tourism season more resilient. They want to see us working together on things like bike paths and walking tracks. They want simple, practical things. They want to see us harvest some of the trees that have been knocked over, to clear the roads—to salvage them and put them to good use. They would be happy that we have made available some free firewood for our pensioners and vulnerable people. We have collected some of the wood and put it at local footy grounds and let people collect it. Things like that will make a real difference as people deal with the challenges in the weeks and months ahead. And they want to see an opportunity for locals to participate in the recovery. It is all very well to have major national contracts—that is important—but the locals need to have the chance to get the economic benefits that come from this recovery period. Locals want to have their say; they want more control.
I will finish where I started—with a simple thank you. In the Australian spirit—the Deputy Prime Minister talked about it—whether it is your brother, your neighbour or a complete stranger, Australians rush to help those in their time of need, when they need it most. We see it on display throughout Australia and in my electorate of Gippsland. We are grateful as a community. We are thankful for the support we have received. We just want to build a better Gippsland.
Dr MIKE KELLY (Eden-Monaro) (13:32): I'd like to begin my comments with a vote of thanks to several individuals and organisations, in the spirit of getting the message out to our communities that they should be proud that we reached across labels and political divides to address this situation. I want to thank the Deputy Prime Minister for all of the communications that we engaged in at the time. We were in communication with him more than with our wives, I think. It has always been that way between us; we shared some of the same turf with the vagaries of redistributions. I'm a proud custodian of the Tim Fischer walking stick for the Tumbatrek, which we hope will continue in our tortured landscape in the future. Thank you for taking on board the ideas we've passed on. And there are many others, of course. There is my good friend the member for Gippsland, another neighbour across the border. Even if you are a Mexican, you're not a bad bloke. Thank you for all your efforts. The member for Fadden helped me with the Bega Centrelink issues that we faced. And there are others who have reached out, like the member for Forde. I appreciate your care and concern. And there is my good friend the member for Berowra. I appreciate your contact as well. And then, of course, there are my colleagues on this side, particularly those who have been severely affected. The member for Macquarie has a lot of empathy on this issue, having lost a property in a previous fire. The member for Gilmore is another neighbour who did it extremely tough during all this. And there are many others besides them.
We've talked about our first responders and our fireys—an amazing story. It was a privilege to have Shane Fitzsimmons in the chamber. I have spent a lot of time with Shane visiting our many RFS fire stations on presentation nights. His is an incredible story. He joined the RFS at the age of 15—sort of like I did in my time. More than that, he lost his own father in a hazard reduction burn in the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, along with three other firefighters who died on that occasion. So he brings to this not only a wealth of experience and professionalism but also a deep empathy that we have seen demonstrated in the past traumatic days. I thank him enormously. What he's had to say about these fires we need to take on board. As he said, hazard reduction is not a panacea but it is important.
I want to reinforce the comments by the member for Gippsland in relation to cultural burnings. We have a wonderful framework that we can use to explore taking that further, through the Firesticks Alliance. I was at a meeting with the Bega land council the other day and they were ready, willing and able to do that, and it's so important because a lot of their lands actually border national forests and coastal communities. So it can be of assistance to protect those communities and to engage in those cultural burnings. They understand how you have to tailor those burnings to the landscape. They took me through the differences in terrain and vegetation and the issues around how you manage those burnings. The Firesticks Alliance have teamed up with the RFS and are more than willing and open-minded to, and in fact do embrace, the latest science and technology around those issues. I would like to see the funding that was promised to them at the state level followed through on. There is a huge opportunity now for us to take on board these offers and this expertise that we can use in the future.
There are so many people—through the Insurance Council and others—that are now quite practiced at this unfortunately, going back to the far south coast fires and others, but I want to pay special tribute to the regional general manager for Telstra, Chris Taylor, and his team. They have been incredible. We are in touch on an hourly basis—literally, even as I have been sitting here—and his teams have been stretched to the limit. Their infrastructure has been smashed; their redundancy systems tested like never before, and damaged because of the scope of what has happened across the landscape. He has done a tremendous job, and I really want to thank him and his teams who have been out there, at personal risk, from the very first day of the loss of the telephone exchange in Tumut—for other reasons, but it just snowballed from there. There are a lot of lessons to take away from that. The member for Gippsland talked about mobile communications. There are so many lessons learned about our communications that we have to take on board from this experience. It was such a central issue.
Through that cooperation, we were able to do things. Senator Murray Watt was helping network our team with the minister for emergencies, and that was so important. We had situations that I'm proud to say our shadow minister for health helped out with. We had a facility not far from Cobargo, Nardy House, which deals with profoundly disabled residents. The problem we had there—it's one of the lessons learned that we have to take away from this—was there was no real protocol or disaster evacuation system in place for them. It was an incredibly traumatic, distressing situation for the nurses and the residents of that organisation. The fact was that we were able to reach out and engage with Minister Brad Hazzard—the minister at state level—who talked to me directly. He has always been fantastic to cooperate with, from my perspective, and he weighed in and helped out in that situation. But certainly those are the things we have to do a better job of in the future.
I just want to emphasise the confidence people should have in our cross-party collaboration. The reference group that we've set up across our region involves Steph Cooke, Joe McGirr, Justin Clancy, Andrew Constance, John Barilaro, my federal colleague the member for Gilmore and I doing regular phone hook-ups and regular phone hook-ups with the recovery committees. There have been no labels; we've all just been gathering information about the needs for recovery and better disaster response and feeding that into that process. It has been working very well, so people should feel reassured about that.
Across Eden-Monaro we have lost 11 people, and these are people who, in our kinds of communities, as many will understand, we cannot afford to lose, frankly. I think people would be familiar with the Salway family story through the Four Corners program. Aaron Salway told that story last night. Robert and Patrick were absolute pillars of that Cobargo community. They come from a traditional dairy farming family that we're very proud of in the Bega valley—that's my own family's story—and they have been there since 1870, engaged in that industry. Beyond that, they have been so involved with their community throughout that family history—the show society and all community activities—and their loss is going to be felt deeply by that community. They'll never get over it, but we hope to do honour to their memory with how we carry ourselves and recover from here. Janelle and Aaron, all our thoughts and our heartfelt condolences to you and your family. We will be there for you as that community is always. Beyond that, we've had a number of other losses, whose names haven't been released, in Belowra, Coolagolite, Batlow, Nerrigundah and Cobargo.
Reference has been made to the brave US firefighters in the C-130 crash that took place in Peak View. We've talked about the wildlife issue and, ironically, those firefighters were helping to fight the fire in the Two Thumbs Wildlife Trust area where a lot of koalas and sanctuaries for koalas were being maintained and sustained. Unfortunately, that's all been burnt through with tremendous loss of wildlife. Those firefighters are now part of our local family. We embrace them. We will always remember them. I've talked with local colleagues, and we will establish a memorial in their memory in the Cooma-Monaro area. I know there are colleagues in this chamber who have served side by side with our US brothers and sisters in many foreign lands in the past. They were here with us during World War II as well. In fact, the 1st Marine Division's anthem is 'Waltzing Matilda'. In my own family history, every generation has served shoulder to shoulder with the US. These three brave men—Ian McBeth, Paul Hudson and Rick DeMorgan Jr—have added their page to what is one of the proudest and most important stories of our nations together. I pass, through the ambassador, the grateful thanks of all of Eden-Monaro for their sacrifice during this disaster.
We've had across Eden-Monaro over a million hectares and counting of country burnt, every day, every hour that goes by, more and more. We are a long way from being out of this. This disaster, we are told by the Bureau of Meteorology, and the conditions that have been at the heart of it are likely to continue through to May. We are just gut-wrenched at what we have experienced. It's been a massive kick in the guts to our entire economy. There is no aspect of the economy of Eden-Monaro that has not been devastated. The hit that businesses have taken and the loss of the timber industry will take 20 years to recover from. For a lot of our orchard growers in Batlow, it will take maybe 10 years to recover from that damage. These are longstanding hits that will take a huge recovery effort. Seeing the courage of those communities facing those hits has been one of the most enduring moments I will take from this.
The economic hit extends not just to the businesses damaged by fire but has a ring-barking effect. Every business, whether it was near a fire front or not, has been devastated by the loss of the tourists and the damage caused by power outages et cetera. I think of the brave general store owners in Quaama, Ellie and Alex, who, during the heat of this, were donating their stores and stock to the fireys while suffering damage from power loss and threat from the fire itself. Alex stayed behind at one moment during the evacuation to fight the fires to save the general store. It has suffered some damage but not enough to qualify for the insurance that would normally kick in. They are crying for help, for quick-hitting action that will assist all these small businesses. Many suggestions have been passed, including perhaps tax relief for people, engaging in accommodation in fire affected areas taking holidays. We need to look at a whole range of measures. We'll be saying more about that and talking more about that in the days ahead.
Across all 42,000 square kilometres of Eden-Monaro, which is bigger than 66 countries, we have been under siege and still are. With our fireys out there, one of the big takeaways from this mega disaster has been the holes and gaps in the system that we need to take on board as a lesson learnt. I think Mark Binskin is a fantastic appointment. He's a good friend who I've served with for many years. He's a constituent, so he'll be empathetic to all of this. He's a fine leader, a competent officer and also a very empathetic person in his own right—a wonderful human being. We need to do a deep strategic analysis of the holes in our system. As part of our gratitude I want to acknowledge the ADF, proudly. I'm grateful to the government for responding to our calls to get them out there on a wider scale, because we were so familiar with the sorts of capacities that they could bring to this—the skills and relevant capabilities; the ability of the engineers to do break cutting with heavy plant; the combat engineers, whose job in life is to do root clearance and mobility facilitation; bulk water carriers; transportation; logistics—there are so many skills. The feedback I've had from the community as I move around is that they've found that Defence Force presence so reassuring. That is a contributor to the mental health issue that we have talked about. It has been important to do, and the lesson that we need to take away from this is: how do we do this better and in a more efficient, effective way as soon as we can do it? How do they coordinate that? We've seen some disconnects in issues of communication and coordination. These are lessons to be learned. There's no blame to be handed around here. There is so much we can do better from what we've learned.
A disaster on this scale has really revealed a lot of the problems that we are facing now with the extension of the fire season. As we know, since the seventies it's 19 per cent longer than it used to be, and that's just increasing. We're overlapping with the Northern Hemisphere with these fire seasons, as we saw in this situation with the fires in California and the fires in New South Wales, so we need to be more self-sufficient in our air assets and we need to take urgent steps for the fire seasons ahead to make sure that happens. We also need to explore the possibilities of drone technology. This is happening in Israel and the US as we speak—things like Project Maven in the US, which is applying military technologies to their disaster response. We can use that during high-risk periods in high-risk areas and around population centres to detect ignitions as early as possible so we can vector to them before they become mega disasters—deploying our assets and rapid response teams and the like. These are key prevention approaches that we can possibly take. I urge that we do look at that in this process of review that we're about to launch into. We do need a national plan that embraces all this and hopefully that will emerge from the process that we're about to launch on.
I will also comment on the climate change issue, because it is a bipartisan position that climate change is real and that there is a human-induced factor in this issue. We agree wholeheartedly, I believe, across this chamber on the steps that we need to take to embrace the mitigation of and the response to what we know are going to be worsening conditions with each year that passes. I also urge, and this is just me speaking—I'm begging and pleading for this on behalf of my tortured, bleeding region—that we now work across this chamber to create a mechanism for forging bipartisan policy for what more we need to do on climate change and how we can then take that to improve our advocacy internationally to get this done, so we can give our fireys a fighting chance into the future.
I'm talking to them now and getting feedback where they say: 'Look, Mike, with our team and our brigade, our record for rotations has been four weeks. We're out there for eight weeks now. We are buggered.' The numbers are just not there to respond to these mega disasters in our RFS structure. One of the things we're going to have to do is review the whole framework, the whole model, for how we respond and how we can incentivise volunteers into the RFS. How can we support them better? I've suggested things like looking at the ADF Reserve structure that we may be able to wrap around them to help them and incentivise voluntary participation in this scheme. They need a lot of help. They need funds restored to them and they need mental health support and support to those stations across the region. I've noticed so much logistical and other support that they really do cry out for. I've asked the Queanbeyan RSL branch to invite our fireys to participate in the next Anzac Day parade, and I'm very proud to say that is happening. I know they're doing that in Tumbarumba. I urge all of our fellow RSL branches to invite their fireys to march with them. I know as veterans we're going to be very proud to have them alongside us. The sacrifices they have made well and truly earn that honour.
But to honour that memory particularly I think it's incumbent on us, as well as all of these practical measures, to tackle this strategic issue for the future. I urge us to go forward on this. It has happened in every other OECD country. Boris Johnson is out there calling for zero net emissions by 2050, reaching out to Australia to do more, and hosting the next COP. He'll be talking to us about that. It doesn't need to be about politics; it needs to be about the facts. I'm hoping that we begin this analysis, as the New South Wales inquiry is doing. They're having a scientist in there. Let's get the facts and the projections on the table and listen to our agencies. The Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO, Academy of Science—those are the people we have to listen to. Get the facts right up-front and then go forward. That is sound military procedure. We call it the appreciation process: you start with objective facts, you go through a process that eliminates subjectivity and you get to an objective result. I'm begging you to engage now in that sort of process.
Finally, to finish: I could not be more proud of this community, Eden-Monaro. They have shone in this. They have discovered wells of inner strength and compassion and love for each other that have brought me to tears as I've been out there amongst them. That is the strength of this country. That is the basis of our voluntary spirit. We should all be proud of that, but we should all pay tribute to it by responding now as we should. What we do now will define us to future generations. We must honour the spirit that exists in our rural communities.
Mr LITTLEPROUD (Maranoa—Minister for Water Resources, Drought, Rural Finance, Natural Disaster and Emergency Management) (13:51): One of the greatest honours that I've been bestowed in my professional career was to be made the emergency management minister of this country, not because of anything that I've done but because of what I've seen: our brave men and women. The professionalism of the emergency management personnel is something I will never forget, the way that they have responded to this emergency and the fact that nine of them have given the ultimate sacrifice to this country. While three of them are from overseas, they are Australians now. They are one with us. They are our brothers.
I remember meeting a number of Canadian and US firefighters at Sydney airport. It was a day after we lost two of our own, two of our very first firefighters. I remember saying to them, in welcoming them, that your family, the firefighting family, is one that has lost two brothers. I saw in their eyes that understanding, that appreciation that they had lost brothers of their family, because it is a family. The professionalism and the commitment that these men and women are prepared to make for us are something I think we should be profoundly proud of. It shows that we are part of a global family that works. It does work. For us to have sons and brothers from the other side of the world prepared to come and put their lives on the line for us speaks volumes about our nation and our place in the world, and what we mean to those other nations around the world that have helped us in the past. And we help them.
Those men and women, the emergency service personnel, those that are full-time paid and those that are volunteers, they are the heroes. They are ordinary Australians doing extraordinary things. The only difference between both is the pay grade, one firefighter said to me. The professionalism of both the volunteer and full-time firefighters is exemplary and world class. We should be proud of them. We should be proud of the fact that our fire commissioners from around the country have planned meticulously. They are some of the best in the world—not just Shane Fitzsimmons, but right up in Queensland, right down into South Australia and right across this country.
If I may indulge at a local level, it is my electorate in Queensland that was one of the first to experience these bushfires. In fact, we've had many in my electorate in western Queensland. To some extent it has always been a little bit of a 'she'll be right' attitude. But what sheeted home the gravity of this event was when Assistant Commissioner Megan Stiffler, who was handling the fires at Stanthorpe, rang me and in such a sobering moment said that these fires had now gone to a catastrophic level and we expected to lose life. That is something that my communities had never experienced. It's something that sheeted home exactly what we were going to face over the ensuring season. To hear the professionalism of an assistant commissioner and the fact that she had prepared herself for fatalities—people that I knew who could possibly could lose their lives—is something that I won't forget. I understood the gravity of the position I then held. I understood not only what the Queensland emergency fire service but what all fire services have achieved. While tragically we have lost 33 lives over this summer, they have saved countless more. They have saved so many lives and so many homes. These aren't houses; these are homes. Over 3,000 homes have been lost across this country—that is peoples' identities, that is them, that is what they've achieved, that is what makes them and makes our country so great. The fact is that rebuilding will happen. It will be about rebuilding their lives more than their homes because their lives and the rebuilding of their lives, emotionally, is something that is far more important than an infrastructure piece.
I saw that firsthand in Bilpin with a young man who has one daughter about to go back to school. He could hardly stand in telling us the trauma that he and his family went through in having to evacuate his home. This was a strong, fit, brave young man but he was ground down to the ground in absolute sorrow, anger and grief that this had happened to him and his family. He was a lost soul, simply a lost soul, and I haven't seen anything like that in my life. I hope I don't see it again in a hurry. This is a human being. This is one of our fellow Australians that has seen something they should not have seen. I have to pass great thanks on to our state agencies right across this country—up in Queensland, down in New South Wales, South Australia and particularly in Victoria—for the way that we're able to work together.
I remember when the fires were going on in Mallacoota, I was able to pick up the phone to Lisa Neville, after the local doctor rang me about an issue, and within 20 minutes Lisa Neville had had that fixed. That was leadership. That was more than beyond politics. That's what makes us great, that we can reach across the divide. We do care about our fellow Australians, keeping them safe, making our nation better and safer. I think that that's something that will have to stand us in good stead as we move forward, that hand of bipartisanship in making sure that we engage and learn from this disaster and many others.
I acknowledge members opposite. In fact, it was one of my first visits to the member for Macquarie's communities, and I acknowledge the strength and leadership that I saw in her. She had experienced her own disaster a couple of years earlier. I think it is something that showed that our parliament is richer for the diversity of those people that come to this place with the life experiences that they have to be able to lead their community. It is something that we as a parliament, regardless of political divide, should be so proud of. The care that she showed—and understanding—is something that I think will help her community heal quicker. In fact, the member for Macquarie led off our press conference. I don't think that's ever been done before, where an opposition member has led off a press conference for a government minister, but this was about people, not politics. We as a parliament should be profoundly proud that we can do that, that we are here to make our nation greater.
I have to say the role that the Australian Defence Force played was significant. I didn't really understand the gravity of it until I was out near Cobargo, and I had just been to the pub with David Allen and I had a beer with him, and I understood the real gravity of the loss, for the funerals that were about to happen the next day and the mental anguish that community was having. But, leaving Cobargo, we were driving back to Canberra and, in fact, came across ADF personnel fixing a fence of a farmer, Greg. We pulled up and Greg was pretty emotional. He is 68 and he said to me: 'Look, mate, two days ago I got up and said: "Bugger it; I'm out. It's all too hard." Yesterday, the Australian Defence Force turned up, and they're rebuilding my fence.' He said, 'Bugger it; I'm going to have another crack.' For that man that was about to give up something that was his life's work because it was all too hard, to have the Australian Defence Force walk in and be able to help them, fellow Australians—and the pride on those Australian Defence Force personnel to be able to stand there and to work to build a fence that meant so much to a man that had done all he could—was something that I think put in perspective what our Australian Defence Force is to this nation and means to this nation.
And so learnings out of this moving forward are about how the Australian Defence Force gets engaged, how we work with our states in coordinating that better, how we make sure that Australians feel that safety after a disaster—that their fellow Australians are there.
There are many other issues that we will continue to work through. There are economic issues that we have to work through, and Andrew Colvin, through the disaster recovery agency, will lead that. This won't be a Canberra-led recovery; this will be a locally led recovery. It's about, firstly, giving some dignity and respect to those people that have lost it all, about making sure they can have some essentials of life, putting money in their pockets to get them by in the short-term. But this is a long-term recovery. This will be a marathon, not a sprint. This will be making sure that we're there not in 12 months, not two years but probably in 10 years, still making the commitments as a government. This is not about money; this is about people. Andrew Colvin will make sure that he understands the complexities and the nuances of communities from down in South Australia right up into Queensland, right across the country, in understanding how we build back better, how we rebuild their lives, how we rebuild their communities.
We will also undertake the learnings, and our First Australians are ones that I think have been ignored for far too long. Our First Australians are the ones who can direct us, take us in a direction that will make sure that these types of disasters in the future can be mitigated to an extent. Our First Australians have thousands of years worth of knowledge. Their culture is the richest in the world, and we should draw on that. We should draw on that to keep our country safe but also to make our country better—to build on the pride of our First Australians and what they mean to our nation. The rich tapestry of our nation and the framework of it is built from our First Australians. There is so much that can be learned from our first Australians not just in this but in others. As I said before, one of the failings of my education is I was taught French, not one of our Indigenous languages.
This is an opportunity for all Australians, whether they be the Australian Defence Force, emergency management, the community or First Australians, to come together, to take something out of this disaster that will make our nation greater. Our commitment, whether it's my side or the other—this whole parliament, I know. Having been here only three years, I have learned enough to know that out of these disasters the best comes out of us. It really does. We can reach across the aisle and we can make sure that this is above politics and it's about people.
Mrs PHILLIPS (Gilmore) (14:03): I rise today with a heavy heart and a sorrow of pain that I know I share with everyone in our community. All of us on the New South Wales South Coast have been through what can only be described as hell on earth. Not since New Year's Eve but for months, firestorm after firestorm, when day turns into night, when all we can see is redness—ash rain, mud rain and so it goes on. We in this place must not forget the incredible emotional and physical toll this has taken on absolutely everyone. We just want it to end. Throughout the days and weeks, which are now rolling into months, we have leaned on each other—a shared experience that has bonded us forever. There are so many people and organisations to thank for being there in our time of need. I can't possibly thank them all individually here today, but they are magnificent. They have my absolute heartfelt gratitude for all they have done.
Our fireys, emergency service workers and volunteers are our heroes. They have worked night and day to keep our community safe for months, often leaving their own homes exposed while they went to protect someone else's, putting their lives at risk to save the lives of others. That's just the type of community we are. Then there is the amazing HMAS Albatross, which is a huge part of our South Coast family. These crews fought the fires on the North Coast, along with our fireys, only to come back home and start all over defending local homes, property and even the base. Our first responders have done a simply remarkable job; where would be without you? So, on behalf of our entire community, I would like to simply say, 'Thank you.' It hardly seems enough for what you have done, but thank you.
Thank you also to the many, many people in our community who have kept our fireys fed, donated water and looked out for those who were looking out for everyone else. In particular, I want to acknowledge the amazing work of the Milton RFS catering team, who for weeks worked selflessly to feed our fireys while worrying about their loved ones and their own homes. Your work was not unnoticed. Thank you.
John Hanscombe from the South Coast Register was correct when he dubbed the fire the 'forever fire'. John and his team have done an extraordinary job covering the fires since they began in November. This is true of all our local media teams—the MiltonUlladulla Times, the Bay Post/Moruya Examiner, WIN TV, Channel 9, The Beagle, About Regional and all our community and commercial radio stations. Special mention must of course be made of ABC Illawarra and ABC South East New South Wales, whose rolling coverage of the fire no doubt saved lives.
Our local media and the national and international attention that followed means we know the statistics. We know them too well: the loved ones—family, friends and neighbours—we have tragically lost; the hundreds of homes and businesses full of memories gone; the hundreds of thousands of hectares blackened; and over one billion animals lost. I don't need to repeat these statistics here for you. What I want to talk about today is people: the personal, heart-wrenching stories that I've heard of people's lived experience of these bushfires, both as they impacted and since; the hugs I've given and received; the tears that have been shed; and the grief shared.
When I had that sinking feeling and decided to leave this place early in the last sitting week last year, I had no idea that we would still be dealing with active fire more than 60 days later. In that time I have spent every day in my community talking with local people, asking how they are doing, listening to their stories and being a shoulder for them to cry on. I have spent it with people like Sherrie from Mogo, who told me how she sheltered in her house with 21 people as the fire came through. When someone tells you that they thought they and their family were going to die, it is hard not to feel the impact of that. While she watched the trees throw fireballs, she feared she might never see her kids again. She said it was the most terrifying thing she has ever experienced—words I have heard often. Shane from Conjola Park told me how he and his wife, after staying to defend their property, fled into the lake in a small boat to escape the flames and save their lives. Luckily, Shane's house was saved and he and his family spent the next days and months helping to coordinate the donations from community groups, ensuring his neighbours had the supplies and help they needed. Rae runs a kangaroo sanctuary in Runnyford. Her whole sanctuary, including her home, has burnt to the ground. She told me how lucky she was to be rescued by boat by a neighbour after the hose she was defending her property with lost pressure. But Rae is simply devastated at the loss of so many of her kangaroos—two-thirds of them are still missing. She has been living on her burnt property with no electricity, no running water and no septic system for weeks just so she can care for the ones which are left.
I have talked with so many people who ended up at the beach at Malua Bay and described Armageddon-like scenes—now the frighteningly familiar words that people from Kangaroo Valley to Sussex Inlet, Bendalong and Nelligen have used to describe this summer. The roar of the fire will stay with us forever, like something out of a horror film. But the trauma we are still living with in its aftermath is raw and real. In small communities like ours, when something tragic like this happens it happens to us all. No-one is left unscathed. I have seen the hidden pain of those who have lost everything and the guilt of those who escaped the worst—emotions that change on a daily, and even an hourly, basis.
But if there is one thing I know about our South Coast community it is that we are strongest when we stand together. The stories I hold close to me are the ones that show our community cares. I have heard so many examples of this spirit. I had the privilege of seeing the amazing work that the Batemans Bay Surf Life Saving Club was doing to help those in Malua Bay and the surrounding suburbs who were without power for weeks. People from near and far were bringing supplies—food and other essentials—into the area. Wonderful generosity! But this meant we needed people to organise these deliveries and make sure that they got to where they were needed. The surf club stepped up to that challenge. There were volunteers in the kitchen, cooking meals for local people, and rows of tables with everything you could need, from food to shampoo and nappies, set up almost like a supermarket. With no electricity or telecommunications, members of the club even drove around the local streets letting people know that help was available. The selfless help and kindness of local people in the face of such tragedy is remarkable.
After the fire that tore through Kangaroo Valley, the Friends of the Brush Tailed Rock Wallaby were out in force taking water, sweet potato and carrots into the impacted colonies. Devastatingly, the group's president, Chris, lost her home in the fire. Despite that, she managed to put her own tragedy aside to make sure that these much loved endangered animals were receiving immediate help and care.
These are stories of resilience, courage and strength that I love to tell. There are just so many examples from up and down the South Coast. Bawley Point was one of the first communities to be impacted, in early December. Liza shared her story with me at the local Murramarang markets in Kioloa not long after. Liza lives right near her local RFS station, and she saw firsthand the work of the local fireys that literally saved her home. After the fire, Liza marshalled a small army of volunteers to feed the local emergency services workers and volunteers who helped to save her community. She organised goods, created a GoFundMe page and was instrumental in bringing her community together in the aftermath of what happened. Liza is a truly remarkable individual. I have spoken to her on a number of occasions since then, to see how she is going.
Peter Dunn, a retired ACT emergency services commissioner, has also been on the ground with the Conjola community, making sure that those who have lost everything are well looked after. I was reassured to meet Peter and see him in action at the Lake Conjola Community Centre a few weeks ago. He is running a very well-oiled machine there. Deputy Speaker, you may have heard of Peter Dunn: he is one of the ex-fire chiefs who have called out the government for their lack of climate action. I am sure that the Prime Minister would benefit from meeting Peter and hearing what he has to say. He has some interesting insights to share.
We have also seen simply remarkable efforts by so many local charity organisations. Our local volunteers from the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, Anglicare and Vinnie's have all been there throughout this crisis. Well-established groups like WIRES, local Lions Clubs, Rotary, Wildlife Rescue and Ulladulla charity Treading Lightly have all been there every day, doing their bit to help people and animals recover from the bushfires. We have also seen new organisations pop up to try and fill gaps, like Wildlife Stations Shoalhaven. This community-driven group has seen more than 2,000 members join together to build water stations out of PVC pipes. They have also coordinated food drops to hungry native wildlife that are doing it tough with so much bushland burnt. To put it simply, we have seen a fast and strong community response to these bushfires. Sadly, the same cannot be said about the response from government, which has been nothing short of disappointing.
People on the South Coast have been dealing with these bushfires since November and still we have individuals who cannot access payments. When tourism is your largest industry and a bushfire dominates headlines for most of summer, you want more than simple platitudes and thoughts and prayers. I wonder if the Prime Minister would have a different attitude if he'd met Simon from Walking on Water and Ulladulla Surf School. Simon teaches swim safety to kids from across New South Wales on the beautiful beaches of the South Coast, in places like Lake Conjola, Fishermans Paradise and Narrawallee. Devastatingly, Simon lost 100 per cent of his bookings because of the bushfire, bookings all the way up to April, a tough thing to deal with for any business that has to pay the bills by the end of January. The Rural Assistance Authority, the New South Wales government body administering the initial $130,000 for small business loans, told Simon he would only be eligible for help if he owned his own home or had $100,000 in the bank. To say Simon was distressed by this advice is an understatement.
When two weeks ago the government announced their new small business relief package, like Simon, I got my hopes up. Perhaps Scott Morrison had finally been listening to my calls for an immediate cash injection to help rescue our economy. Sadly, no. The grants are still only available to physically damaged businesses. And the loans? Perhaps I shouldn't be shocked. The government announced the $2 billion package 16 days ago, but the guidelines were only made available today—16 days later.
Simon isn't alone. Michael has a beautiful antique store in Batemans Bay, but he relies on trade with Canberra and Braidwood. With the Kings Highway cut for two weeks, Michael's business took a huge hit. He told me he didn't know how he would pay the rent. In small towns like Batemans Bay, it is not as simple as asking your landlord not to charge you. They are your neighbour, your doctor, your friend. But Michael has not been able to access any help from this government. Katrina runs a unique catering business specialising in weddings in Kangaroo Valley. She lost $85,000 worth of equipment in the fire and the kitchen she rented. Now she has also lost a whopping $1 million in bookings for this year.
It isn't just the small business owners that suffer either. Katrina has already had to let go two of her employees; she can't afford to pay them. But it is a story I hear over and over every day—the casual workers people can no longer employ, the lost opportunities for young people on school and uni holidays. In the Eurobodalla alone, early data suggests the economy has lost $130 million and 900 jobs. In a region that already has one of the highest unemployment rates in Australia, what will happen to all those workers? Will they just be forced onto Newstart, which we have known for years simply pushes people into poverty?
People have told me how the government is asking contract cleaners and seasonal workers to provide two months worth of pay slips to prove they have lost income. They just don't get it. When most of your yearly income comes in December and January, your October and November pay slips will not reflect what you have lost. The entire system, from individuals, to small business to the stagnant tourism campaigns: it is purely inadequate and shows how out of touch the government are with reality. Businesses have already started shutting up shop, and this government takes more than two weeks to release the guidelines for their assistance programs. The government has left our friends, families and neighbours feeling abandoned, alone and desperate. It has left people jobless, struggling and distressed.
I invite Mr Morrison to come to the New South Wales South Coast to talk with these business owners. I can introduce him to Simon, Michael and Katrina so that he can listen to what they have to say. He can hear what it means to go through hell on earth only to be left high and dry by the government. Maybe that will make the Prime Minister finally stand up and take notice.
In the meantime, I will continue to back the bush by telling everyone who will listen how much we need them. What our businesses want more than anything is for people to come and enjoy our beautiful beaches and rolling hills, taste our wonderful fish and chips, and drink at our luscious wineries. So come and see us. Take a road trip in 2020. Spend with them. Bring your empty esky. Shop South Coast. Buy local. Shop at a store with a door. Rejuvenate Shoalhaven. Love the bay—BB. We are open for business and we miss you. The South Coast is still the most beautiful place on earth. I promise you won't be disappointed.
Mr BROADBENT (Monash) (14:21): There was clearly a lot of passion in the member for Gilmore's address. I think that all members who are fire-affected members have been touched by this tragedy and tragedies that have gone before.
Not one word spoken in here today will assuage or ameliorate the pain of those who have been directly impacted by these fires and previous fires. What it brings home to all of us who have memories is that there are people out there affected by previous bushfires whose memories are being torn back to the tragedy that they faced all those years ago—or, perhaps in my case, in February and March last year with the Bunyip North bushfire. These people are really hurting today. Their trauma is deep. It is extremely hard for them to handle. We cannot even try to identify their pain, their trauma and their shock ourselves because we didn't stand in their shoes, we haven't stood in their boots and we haven't been there in their thongs—if that's all they've got left. The Slade family lost an integral, very popular local man in Bill. He was connected to everybody in Wonthaggi and surrounds. He was hit by a falling tree that wasn't burning.
In Victoria there are 1,500 firefighters working today, just out of Parkes, backed by 1,600 staff, and there are 18,000 kilometres of fire edge. Of course, communities are feeling under threat. Only a few days ago there were houses lost here, for heaven's sake. We are in the middle of the same fight, the same war. We're living it today, each and every one of us. I honour those who have spoken before me, each of you, so well and with compassion. But we cannot enter into the devastation that has taken place in these fires and previous fires in the Blue Mountains, in the south of New South Wales and in Gippsland especially, and the devastation, of course, across our businesses that is coming home to roost for every one of us here. That's without Attenborough saying Australia is on fire. Well, parts of Gippsland are not. We're still open for business, as has been said.
My pain is for the people really doing it hard today. I can hear you. I want you to know this parliament can hear you in your devastation. There was a gentleman here I met in the Prime Minister's office who was part of the upper Beaconsfield tragedy I was part of for Ash Wednesday. He was left with his pyjamas, he was telling me, begging for some money to get some food to have something to eat that night. It brings back the memory for everybody of what has gone before. I know there are people out there, who, every time the fires flare, are reliving their tragedy, the loss of their family, and we hear what you're saying. Right across this nation, this great southern land, we hear what you're saying and we're identifying with you.
I was at Bairnsdale the other day for Macca Donnelly's funeral. Craig didn't die of the fires; he died of bowel cancer. Craig ran 10 kilometres a day, even in his 60s. He was fit as a fiddle, tough as nails and had a great sense of humour—I won't go there; it has been done badly once today. He was a fireman in his youth. All the kids in our community had to be in the fire brigade; that was automatic, as it is today. Craig was a firey. His dad was a firey before him and a PoW. Craig had one message for the hundreds gathered there in Bairnsdale. He said, 'When the bowel test comes, take it.' If that one message gets out to the community then that's really important because he shouldn't have died.
Outside the funeral parlour was a great big sign. It didn't say 'save yourself'. It didn't say 'be careful'. It said, 'Fires and storms—tune into the ABC'. I knew exactly what they were on about because the ABC was the only way our fire controllers could get messages out when there was no communication, because people still have battery transistor radios and they can get the messages. When it came to telecommunications, we were found wanting. When it came to our planning authorities and rules, we were found wanting. When it came to state and local government regulations, we were found wanting. When it came to fire management, we were found wanting. We were found wanting. We've allowed these things to happen. We have resourced our firemen.
By the way, I don't think they want to be called heroes. They'd like their professional training and volunteerism recognised, yes, but they don't see themselves as heroes; they see themselves as very good at what they do. They've saved hundreds and hundreds of houses. But faced with that onslaught, you can't save everything and you are going to have losses. For the Victorian members, we're just coming into our most difficult time now. All the country members—sorry, I'm not separating country members of parliament from those city members who do understand—are coming into our worst period now.
The Bunyip fire started with two simple lightning strikes—all over, rover, straight through—and smashed that community to pieces. I won't speak for a long time today because I'm actually identifying a bit with what has gone before. I've got to say this to you: we've been through this before. At Nowa Nowa, where the fire stick had been used, there was protection. When are we going to learn?
In this Fire Wise magazine, I read Fireman Sam over the back. It says it all. Deputy Speaker, I'd like permission to table his article.
Leave granted.
Mr BROADBENT: Thank you. I table Fireman Sam's article.
When you talk about habitat and we talk about how people respond to this, I want to say just this, and I won't say any more: when human loses their habitat—and on the ABC we heard that lady say, 'And my husband has lost all his working dogs,' and then burst into tears. That was years and years and years of breeding to enable him to run the property. These are the sorts of grief and loss that we are dealing with today and will take years. I heard what the Prime Minister said when he said recovery takes time and we're here for the long haul. Well, I say to the people of the Bunyip North fire, we're here with you for the long haul too, even though your fire was in February. I will make sure that you get every benefit that every other person on the firegrounds today is getting. We have to treat every Australian that has been impacted by these fires equally. There are going to be businesses devastated by this fire that are going to have the nearly impossible task of rebuilding themselves and putting themselves back in play. This has affected the whole of my electorate and the whole of everybody else's electorates. Everybody is impacted. They need to know that we as parliamentarians as one are with them and understand them. We can't be in their shoes, as I said, but we can do our very, very best.
Sadly, the hands of time may not be enough for a lot of people's pain, but that's the only hope that we have. I know this: with the blood of the victims, the ash of the forest and the sweat of those facing the foe, when drowned in our tears will bring forth new life. Until that day comes, until the sun rises over the southern hills of the Great Dividing Range to a clear, smokeless sky, we've got work to do. We've got men, women and little children to care for. We have communities to rebuild and fires to suppress. But most of all we have a lot of grieving to do, and we will do that together, arm in arm, hand in hand, teardrop by heartbreaking teardrop.
Ms TEMPLEMAN (Macquarie) (14:32): I thank the member for Monash for his very heartfelt words. Relentless: that's how this summer has been for people living in the Hawkesbury and the Blue Mountains, as it has been for many people around the east coast and in South Australia. Our fires began in late October, and our first evacuation happened in early November in Woodford. Our first declared catastrophic day was 12 November, and it hasn't really stopped since then. As I drove to Canberra on Sunday, the fire was again at a watch-and-act level. That's the second-highest level. We've thought of nothing but fire and smoke for months. We've worried and we've waited, and for some the waiting has resulted in destruction, and for many it has resulted in trauma. It's an understatement to say that it has been an anxious summer.
This was not just one fire; this was fires all around us, without the sea to the east to provide even one side of sanctuary. This was the Gospers Mountain, Grose Valley, Ruined Castle, Green Mile and Erskine Creek fires. The Gospers Mountain fire has been described by the RFS incident controller. She was told that it was the largest fire recorded in the world from a single ignition point. It was in the heart of Blue Mountains World Heritage. The lightning strike was impossible to get to early, and from there it spread. Given the conditions, the drought, the winds and the fact that this area is already one of the most bushfire prone places on the planet, the fire behaviour was constantly described by the professionals as unusual or surprising. In the middle of the night, with high humidity, it was still racing up the sides of valleys. With all that, we know we were relatively lucky. We count ourselves relatively lucky on the lives that weren't lost in our region, but we know how close we came. We join others in mourning the lives tragically taken by these firestorms, whether on the ground or in the air.
As a community, we have watched with relief and heard the welcome sound of planes and helicopters as they carried water and fire retardant to combat the flames, travelling from our RAAF base at Richmond or the various helicopter staging posts around the electorate. I have seen from the air how that retardant has saved so many homes in the Colo Heights region, stretching right across to Mount Victoria—the full spectrum of where the fires travelled. But we felt the loss of those three US aerial firefighters, who were doing such a difficult job. I heard their C-130 take off from Richmond that morning and not return. Our hearts go out to their families.
Only a week earlier I had been at the RAAF base with our shadow minister for defence and our shadow minister for emergency services, speaking with pilots and airmen about their work—its challenges and satisfactions. I want to acknowledge their work and also the support provided to them by RAAF Base Richmond. I also acknowledge the ADF work that is happening on the ground. But, for us, the Richmond RAAF base was the real hub of that aerial fighting—and we certainly want to see more of it.
In the Hawkesbury and Blue Mountains we count ourselves relatively lucky on what didn't burn—the thousands of homes we didn't lose and the businesses that are still standing, although empty because people are staying away. Thanks to the efforts of so many, most of our views are still magnificent, most of our gardens are still splendid, and the apple pies are more delicious than ever! But we are deeply saddened by what has been destroyed and the trauma that people have endured as they watched the fire burn their homes and properties and as they fought that fire—the people in Colo Heights, Bilpin, Berambi, Mount Tomah, Mount Wilson and Bell. The 44 homes and the businesses lost is devastating. When you include places like the Macdonald Valley, Webbs Creek, Mount Irvine, Mount Victoria, Blackheath and the Megalong Valley, which all faced weeks, if not months, of fire activity, the region faces the replacement of dozens of small accommodations, outbuildings, sheds and hundreds of kilometres of fences.
These things feel overwhelming for our community at times. But, as well as the businesses and properties, we've got our agriculture—our orchards, our grapevines, our pastures. On top of that, the fires took so much of the wildlife we've carved our niche among. At least 80 per cent of the Greater Blue Mountains world heritage area has been burned through. That's nearly one million hectares. This is beyond anything that has happened before—and we don't really know yet what recovery is going to look like. There are the effects on the breeding and feeding habitats of the brush-tailed rock wallaby, which has been mentioned by the member for Gilmore. It has very few, and small, places that it breeds, and all of them in our region have had fires through them. Our swamps have burned. And yet, the only known Wollemi pine grove, which has been there since long before any humans walked this earth, was saved. These are the little things we hold onto that give us hope for the future. And there was a particular koala who lifted our spirits during the fires, thanks to the Grose Wold Rural Fire Brigade. It was known as Kevin, although it turns out that it is actually Kelly! But the saving of one koala, when we know so many others have been lost, is something we hold onto.
Lives have been changed by this spring and summer. The volunteer and paid staff—whether Rural Fire Service, National Parks and Wildlife or Fire and Rescue—faced the fires day in, day out. Whether on the front line or making decisions in the instant command, they knew their decisions would have an impact on people's lives. We owe them such a debt. The summer has changed them. Some started fighting the fires at Tenterfield and, after months of volunteering, are now still supporting RFS crews down on the South Coast. They worked 12- to 15-hour days. These were not days in pleasant air-conditioning; these were hot, sweaty, dirty, smoky days. And by Christmas they were exhausted—and that was when there were weeks still to go.
If you've never been in an incident control room you've never seen the faces of people like fire controllers Karen Hodges, Greg Wardle and David Crust as they get a weather forecast or a drone report and realise what the day might have in store or what the night did hold; as they get reports of 30-metre or 60-metre flames over crews and homes, knowing that the decision to light up a back-burn might or might not work but it's your only hope of slowing a fast-moving fire that isn't for turning. Theirs is the reality of making decisions knowing that animals will not be able to escape the flames fast enough and that the Blue Mountains World Heritage area, listed for its biodiversity, will stand no chance; of knowing that the members of the RFS were busy saving other people's homes as their own homes were destroyed and under threat; of knowing the seriousness of what we faced. Yet their own feelings were set aside as they managed the safety and morale of their people on the front line and those who supported them—the SES, police, ambulance—some of whom found themselves facing flames that they hadn't imagined. We have asked so much of them. We've asked too much of them. Their lives have changed, as have the lives of many who supported them—the volunteers from Rotary, the church groups, people who just stepped up in so many ways, day after day.
It was a privilege to be an unremarked on attendee at daily briefings, the handover between the night shift and day shift, or a day shift and a night shift, and to work alongside the dedicated mayor of the Blue Mountains, Mark Greenhill; the New South Wales shadow minister for emergency services and local member for the Blue Mountains, Trish Doyle, who lived this fire as the parent of a frontline firefighter, not just a politician; the Hawkesbury mayor, Barry Calvert; and the state member, Robyn Preston. All of them cared about what was happening in their communities.
For those whose homes did not survive the firestorms, who are being forced to deal with the grief of losing things that they feel hold their memories and the gigantic and overwhelming task of starting again—and I know this because we've only just managed to move back into our house after a rebuild, six years later, and I know life will never be the same—there will be before the fire and there will be after the fire. People are being forced to make decisions they weren't ready to make and should never be asked to make: about where they live, about the work they do, about what more sacrifices they must make because—in too many cases—their insurance will not be enough to allow them to replace the home they had. I say to those people: it is impossible to imagine right now, when the loss is so raw, but, provided we give you the support you need when you need it, you will get there bit by bit and find a way through the fog that envelopes you. For those whose properties were destroyed—whether it was a cafe, like the much loved Tutti Frutti at Bilpin, or thousands of apples or figs, or a mud brick bungalow that housed a building business—there is also a dreadful sense of loss.
Sitting in the gallery today are a group of people going through a mix of all these things I've mentioned. Residents from the broader Bilpin region—Berambing, Kurrajong Heights, places all along the Bells Line of Road in the beautiful Hawkesbury—whose lives have all been changed by these fires got on a bus at six o'clock this morning to be here because hearing what we said was so important to them. They also want to show the resilience and the strength that they have in the face of some immense personal tragedies and loss. I join them in their determination to see our region revitalised. We have Helen, who lost her home; and Margaret and Simon, who lost half their huge apple orchard and many figs, just as fig season was coming in. Lionel, Kooryn and Lichell all have accommodation where the surrounds have been burnt, and they have no-one to come and stay in it. But even in its burnt state it is starkly beautiful. There are also Jana, Matilda, Annette and Greg, and John, who has had the trauma of the fire followed by the devastating loss of a son. I really thank you all for making the effort to be here. This is the sort of community that we have. They know that we have much to do to recover from these fires, and to learn the lessons that they present.
Their lives, like so many around St Albans, Mount Tomah, Mount Irvine, Megalong and Bell, were at greater risk because of the fragility of the phone systems. Landlines failed and there was no mobile coverage in so many of these areas. We can't ignore those issues, and Telstra needs to take a leaf out of the book of Endeavour Energy. They got in fast after the fire moved through and they reconnected electricity. But, unfortunately, many people are even now without phone lines.
The recovery has to begin even as the fires burn elsewhere, or nearby. In fact, this is a lesson for governments to learn: not only was there a delay in recognising the seriousness of this fire season, but the recovery has been far too slow and that's why we face a second crisis in our region, in Hawkesbury and Blue Mountains. Since November visitors have stayed away, and every part of the local economy is feeling it. Small businesses have had to reduce shifts for workers, with casuals the first to go. Their takings are down by 70 or 80 per cent in what is usually their best season. Three hundred businesses in the Blue Mountains joined me last week to share their pain and beg for urgent support. Today the government has released details of its promised small business concessional loans, up to $50,000 over five years for businesses who need help with cash flow. I welcome this as a useful measure, but it will not be welcomed by every small business, who fear additional debt, and I will continue to tell the relevant ministers what the needs are in my community.
I do want to thank the minister for emergency management, David Littleproud, for reaching out during the fires and for bringing the head of bushfire recovery, Andrew Colvin, along with the foreign minister to the Hawkesbury and Blue Mountains to hear these things directly from constituents. My own leader, Anthony Albanese, was a rock during the fires, as was shadow minister Senator Watt. They were untiring in their support of my community, in wanting to see what more could be done. These are the sorts of things that make it possible to go through a fire season like this and maintain your belief that this parliament is made up of really good people who really want to make a difference. I was also grateful for the support of the members for Eden-Monaro and for Gilmore. Those phone texts where we could share what we were going through at different stages of the fires were a lovely little lifeline at times.
I really hope the spirit of cooperation continues. I urge people to resist the temptation to do political pointscoring. I certainly won't be, but I also have no intention of shying away from robust discussion on the issues that matter, even as we mourn. We will need more targeted assistance to get my community through this. We want to see local access to and input into the tourism funding that has been announced. We need to shout loudly to the world that the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury are open for business, but it needs to be a coordinated campaign across all the impacted areas. We each have different things to offer, and while I love a hashtag campaign that is not going to get us the visitors that we need.
Surely now is also the time to bring insurers to the table, to demand a better deal for customers so that the underinsurance that I experienced and that people are facing every day is not repeated fire after fire. It's bittersweet to me that, as a result of reading of my experience, one family in Bell increased their home insurance only a short while before their home was destroyed. Having a good insurance policy does make your rebuild a little less difficult. It makes your choices easier. In fact, what it does is give you choice.
There has been mention of the ABC, and I want to add to that. When your landline dies and your power goes off, which means your mobile signal through your wi-fi fails, then all you have is the ABC. And how lucky we are to have it. You don't have your Fires Near Me app, you don't have Facebook and you don't have any way to communicate with people. You listen to those wonderful ABC reporters and presenters telling you in detail exactly where the fires spread, hoping that you don't hear a mention of your own suburb or your street. It was such compelling broadcasting that one Saturday night I listened to the horrors unfolding down south, thanks to the ABC and Simon Marnie—very human, bringing to our lounge rooms just what was happening. We must ensure that these broadcasts are properly resourced.
These fires could have been worse but for some major strategic hazard reductions. We need to ensure that New South Wales national parks are properly funded to be able to do the ones they think will really make the difference, based on the best information. We also must have a conversation about what landholders should do on their own properties and how we can incorporate traditional burns. We all know there's more we could do in this area.
Another lesson is planning. None of us can pretend that this won't happen again, as much as we hope that this is a one-off. All the science tells us that this may well be the new norm unless we act. Federal, state and local governments need to have the best plans in place, as do charities and not-for-profit groups, so they can activate much faster. How we make sure we've got people on the ground willing to wear that yellow uniform and that our fire and rescue teams know how to defend in bushfire situations is vital.
I want to finish with the obvious, the thing that you can't ignore: the role that climate change played in exacerbating these fires. It's my community that's already paying the cost of climate change not metaphorically but literally. We're paying higher insurance. We're paying higher building costs. We're paying for fire systems that we haven't needed before. That's a cost being borne by individuals. We've paid in a season of sadness, and the mental health impacts are simply unknown. I don't think we can accept that all we should do is adapt. Our WIRES volunteers and those who construct the water and feeding stations in the Men's Sheds need to know that we will take seriously our responsibility not just to rehabilitate our national park but to protect it in the future and to protect the animals that they are working so hard to keep alive.
We have paid in a season that changes what summer is. As we mourn the losses and we honour the efforts of all those, we know how much worse it could have been, but we must make sure that none of this was in vain.
Dr GILLESPIE (Lyne) (14:52): On 8 November my electorate became the epicentre of a ferocious bushfire season that has hit our region and continued across the nation incredibly hard. During that bushfire that week in November and the week subsequently, over 250,000 hectares was wiped out, including over 100 homes, a school and many businesses—a frighteningly devastating blow for so many in all our local communities. In the MidCoast Council area the November fires resulted, unfortunately and sadly, in the death of one Johns River resident. In the MidCoast Council area 379 buildings and outbuildings were destroyed and 175 were damaged. Bobin Public School was burnt out save for the original old building, which was the library. I was really pleased to see that it has reopened, with a massive rebuilding program continued over the December-January holidays. The Rainbow Flat Rural Fire Service building and three bridges were also destroyed.
Further north, in the Port Macquarie-Hastings area, 37 homes were destroyed or damaged. Facilities included a couple of sawmills, two bridges and 68 outbuildings. Over 500 rural landholders had their properties impacted in some way.
After the fires, the recovery has commenced. When I was speaking to David West, Mayor of the MidCoast Council, the resilience was shining through everywhere, and he certainly attests to that. But the true recovery will only commence when people see the burnt-out buildings being cleared and removed and the new buildings literally rising from the ashes. The accepted feelings are and have been that, even though this has been really devastating for so many people, it could have been so much worse. We were lucky when our fires came through, because it wasn't as hot as it has become over the height of summer and because of all the forces that were marshalled into MidCoast and Hastings, and then up into the Coffs Harbour region. If the fires had started simultaneously with what's been happening on the South Coast, it would have been totally overwhelming and the losses would have been far greater.
Whether they are RFS or SES volunteers, council workers or people volunteering their help and support in Rotary and Lions clubs, so many people are so grateful to so many people who put their lives on hold to come and help. We also had visiting firefighters from around Australia—from interstate and intrastate—and from New Zealand and Canada. The Australian Defence Force and the emergency services created firebreaks and conducted major water bombing operations and transport logistics.
There were countless acts of bravery and selflessness during this. A couple of people I contacted who did amazing things have mentioned to me that their names should not be mentioned. That just attests to the character of these people. But one of them is worried he might lose his job because he showed initiative and created firebreaks, which were forbidden by adjacent national parks and wildlife services. There was a fellow in the Johns River fire who was seen by many, including myself, pushing his backhoe up and literally pushing the fire away from houses. It could have ended in a much worse situation, with ignition of the machinery. That fellow, the hero that he is, really did go above and beyond what any normal person could expect. I also think of a local Wauchope volunteer firefighter, Ryan Channells, who, despite being diagnosed with stage 4 cancer only a day before the major bushfires struck, went out to fight fires and help save many, many homes and properties because he thought he would just prefer to help other people, and that's what firefighters do.
Heavy smoke had clogged the local area for months beforehand, because, before the devastating fires, we'd had a couple of peat fires in dried-out wetlands. The electorate was really grateful for the support it got from the Prime Minister and emergency services and from the Premier, who visited. I can say that the speed of the response from the Commonwealth services during this bushfire crisis was exceptional. We've seen other natural disasters take weeks to get a disaster declaration and an emergency declaration passed through the machinery of local government, to state and to federal, but these processes were completed by the Sunday after the fires had started.
The bushfire recovery effort has begun, as I mentioned, and I have visited many areas that have been affected, particularly Killabakh and Bobin—cases in point. Amongst them are various measures that the Commonwealth has announced. Social services were delivered expeditiously due to the help of the minister responsible and we had mobile Centrelink services turning up around the electorate within days of the emergency being declared. I'd like to thank BlazeAid, all our local charities, our councils, our service clubs, our schools and tradies, and people interstate and from Sydney and Newcastle who drove up with white goods or food and any amount of support for people who were devastated by the fire.
The thing that we do know is that these local country halls are really a treasure for the local community. In so many bushfire affected areas, the local community hall was the epicentre of the recovery effort, as well as helping people. We had multiple community leaders pop up, just by their very nature organising people. The government's rollout of assistance for farm, fishery and forestry businesses is really appreciated. The $100 million will go a long way towards keeping them afloat until their businesses recover. Our councils—MidCoast Council and Port Macquarie-Hastings Council—have both been helped with the up-front $1 million emergency payments. Also, many small businesses are going through the work of obtaining the financial assistance that the Commonwealth has put up, including low-interest loans and cash payments for affected businesses. Many volunteers have accessed the $300-a-day payment, because many of them have done weeks—months now—of service as volunteers. I'd also like to thank Company D in the bushfire effort from the Australian reserve forces, who turned up to work with BlazeAid. I was very pleased to meet with them at Wauchope Showground and have a get-together with the BlazeAid people and thank them personally.
The mental health issues from these bushfires will linger. So many people are so stoic. The fact that people are getting involved and helping them is quite therapeutic for them, but the support that they will need through the beyondblue initiative and through other mental health agencies that the PHNs are running will be really important, because the scars will linger for a long time. It will only be when we see the new buildings rising from the ashes that people will really feel that the recovery is underway.
Because our fires happened in November there are many learnings of what has been done that we can make other councils and other electorates aware of. MidCoast Council has excused fees for a whole range of building applications for the original buildings to be replaced. It is really ahead of the curve. It has managed to not only control the fire that ran in one of the huge garbage dumps but establish asbestos pits so that there is somewhere to put the waste from asbestos identified buildings. It has put extra space in the tip. It is so ahead of the curve that it means when Public Works comes through with its contractors we will be able to do it all locally. It's a really important thing that all the work coming out of the recovery effort be given to locals. We don't want to have all these contracts for clean-up and construction put out to non-locals. There may be overwhelming demand for buildings and we may have to rely on non-locals, but it is so much better for local communities for local businesses to receive the contracts.
We have learnt in the telecommunications space that when one of these supercell fires comes through everything can go out. Mobile phones and satellite phones are taken out because the clouds prevent the satellite signal coming through. The heat of the bushfires can trip fuses in the mobile towers. They are not actually burnt, even though many of them have got really large cleared areas; it's just that the really intense heat flips the switches, and the communications are lost. The telecommunications workers can't come in until the fire has long gone and it is safe.
Fixed line exchanges were taken out as well. Many of them tripped over because the power to the exchanges was lost. In a normal situation, a diesel generator or huge batteries might run the exchange for up to eight to 12 hours, but, because of the ferocity of these fires, this is an area where we need to do something. I've been in numerous conversations with the telecommunications providers to make sure they have bigger reserves and that they have either much more battery storage there or automatic kick-in of diesel generators to keep these exchanges going.
One of the other speakers today mentioned that wonder of technology, the old battery powered radio. A lot of these impromptu emergency centres were community halls. They all should have radio contact, a diesel generator, satellite phones, emergency refrigeration—it's an easy fix. That is one of the other learnings. What we learned in this fire crisis was that the number, the extent and the breadth of the fires were overwhelming state capabilities and local capabilities. What we have to remember is that we here in Canberra can't do it all. With the way the Constitution is set up, a lot of the entities that have been running emergency services—the SES, the RFS, the police—will need to do the processes that we're doing: looking back and seeing what they have learnt and what we should do.
I'm advocating that every area should have a designated emergency centre, because we've had massive floods on the north coast in the last few years where whole townships were isolated, like Bulahdelah, and showgrounds become an emergency gathering spot. A lot of horses and animals that were saved from certain death had to go somewhere. The caretakers of the Wauchope Showground—impromptu, without any organisation—turned themselves into a constant holding bay for all these evacuated animals. Other entities got half an hour's notice and were designated as emergency centres, like Club Old Bar and Club Taree. Club Taree, which normally looks after fine dining, a bit of entertainment and supporting the golf club, all of a sudden was home to roughly 720 people for a couple of days. They had to have enough supplies to feed and support those people, but the practicalities of it were quite challenging. Because they were a centre, I'm sure, they will now have learnt from this, as Club Old Bar has. There are things like having a register of everyone who arrives at these emergency centres so that there is a register that the police can go to and family members can be notified. We need systems, as the member for Eden-Monaro said, like all the military procedures. We need to apply them and have a spreadsheet of all the things that we need to have.
You can see the weather pattern is changing with the monsoonal lows starting to come in. Odds on, we're going to get—like we did after the '64 huge drought—huge floods. Up and down the North Coast, some of these townships can be caught by floods which make them isolated for days, like in bushfires. If we had a system in place where everyone knows where the emergency centre is, and the centre had radios, satellite phones, emergency generators and maybe an underground tank of water—because many of the tanks around these places were burnt—it would be a great initiative. But, like I said, we can't do all this in Canberra. This would be a local government and state government initiative. I would also like to compliment the work of my state members during all this. Stephen Bromhead and Leslie Williams were particularly active in this regard. There are the mayors, like Peta Pinson, and the people from the Port Macquarie-Hastings Council. There are Paul De Szell, Mayor David West and Adrian Panuccio. There are too many for me to name them all, but local councils have really stepped up in this situation.
The other learning we have to take from this disaster is that we need to have a granular plan to get the timber industry back to recovery mode. In the mid-coast area and further north, there are 1,200 direct timber workers. As I mentioned, there are a couple of mills that have been burnt out. The employment of those workers and the businesses that run off those mills have summarily ceased. But these same timber workers have gone out as contractors for national parks and wildlife, for local government, for RMS, to help with the clean-up. Their businesses are paying their wages but their businesses have not been paid. I know this is overwhelming a lot of government processes but we have to look after these businesses that have put their assets at their behest across the state, not necessarily in our local area but up in other electorates in the north of the state. We really do need to support them.
People mentioned how the knock-on effect of the bushfires on tourism has been quite devastating. It has been. Overnight, the bookings ceased coming—and then came the cancellations. Many of our tourism businesses on the coastal strip are still suffering—let alone those in the hinterland in these burnt areas, which have had no business. The casualties in business turnover have been staggering. We do have, at a federal level, a local and international tourism program, but I'm calling on everyone to take a three-day break in these bushfire affected areas. There are corporate groups that have given a commitment to hold their meetings or seminars in bushfire affected regions, and I would like to compliment those businesses. There are big, medium and small businesses that have signed up for it. As locals, if you are having a reunion of schoolmates, take a trip to a bushfire affected area—or a drought affected area, for that matter. The turnover from you staying in a hotel for a weekend, getting counter meals, buying drinks and visiting the local things will really get these businesses back on their feet.
Other speakers mentioned the learnings of Indigenous Australians in regard to fire. They have used fire for thousands of years to shape their environment for their own protection and we can learn so much from them. It was called firestick burning. There are groups that have been named after that, publications about it. The fact is that Indigenous burning practices made life a lot safer for the Indigenous people. And the flora and fauna benefit from regular low-level burns. Early settlers learned that. Foresters from generations past learned that. You protect your asset if it's low level and it's frequent.
Many of the national parks in the Port Macquarie-Hastings and MidCoast Council areas were, 30 and 40 years ago, state forests. The old foresters still live, and they talk about how they used to burn their forests every couple of years. But the fires were lucky if they got above your waist; they weren't the big canopy fires, where you get all the eucalyptus oil igniting. I heard a lecturer from the University of Technology give a wonderful dissertation on the radio about how it increases biosecurity. A lot of the Australian fauna and flora benefit from a clean-out of the forest. It allows dominant species not to be so dominant. All species of flower get a rejuvenation when a small low-level cold burn comes through. The green shoots that come out support the native animals. Koalas don't get burnt like they have in these supercanopy fires because they're way up above the fire. There are so many things we can learn from the Indigenous in this regard.
As I said, the old foresters and the old graziers all used to look after their bit of bush on their land. It was common practice every winter for landholders to put a little fire through their stand of trees or the 20 or 30 acres of forest that hadn't been cleared because it protected their property. It also helped keep weed and invasive species down, because after a fire the native species flourish quicker. The smoke after a fire actually causes the seeds to open. For the last 40,000 to 60,000 years or more, Mother Nature has included Indigenous practices. The idea that we lock our national parks up and leave them to nature doesn't protect species. You've now seen many threatened species, unfortunately, die because the fire is so big and so large and the forest litter hasn't been cleared. The natural history is that low-level fire regularly through these areas will help the forest, not take it out like these supercell fires do.
We should take note of and learn from what has been observed in former royal commissions. There have been so many royal commissions after bushfire crises. All the recommendations are a recurring feature, and we need to take stock of them. If they had been followed, we wouldn't be in the situation we are in now. The areas are so large and have been built up so much with forest litter and debris, and road access has been lost because national parks have been locked up that it is very hard for anyone in the middle of winter to do a controlled burn. You need access roads to do that, and you need to do it low level and regularly.
Again, the true character and fibre of the Australian public in these towns and communities that have been affected by bushfires really has shone through. Like I said, so many local community people have put their own lives on hold to help their colleagues. All the volunteers, who have done so much, have really shone through. Who would have thought that people would be fighting on a roster basis as a volunteer for two and three months, but many of our people are and many have come from all over Australia to do that. I would like to thank them on behalf of my electorate from the bottom of our hearts.
To anyone who is listening: please come and visit the beautiful MidCoast and Port Macquarie-Hastings area and all the way up the coast of Australia. Take a trip across the mountains. If you go west from Coffs Harbour, you can do a big loop and then come down and visit these towns and put some money in the businesses' tills. You can stay in the motels, visit the pubs, visit their restaurants, spend up big. You'll see what all these wonderful people have been through.
Dr HAINES (Indi) (15:18): This has been the most awful of summers, a summer that has visited upon the nation grief and loss. Today the parliament of our nation stops to mourn and honour that loss and to honour the service. When we left this place in December many of us were fearful of what we would face. What has unfolded demonstrates that perhaps we were not fearful enough. The summer sound of cicadas was replaced by the ping, ping, ping of the emergency app. It's like the heart monitor of a nation in the intensive care unit. Our anxiety is turbo-charged.
These fears and this anxiety were very real in Indi. The summer weather forecasts were menacing, so on 12 December I arranged a fire briefing by the CFA and state government, and I invited my fellow state MPs and local government mayors from our nine local shires. In my mind, it was crucial that we were informed and that we were united. I'm so grateful to Adrian Gutsche, CFA District 24 Operations Manager; Brett Myers, CFA District 24 Commander; Paul King, CFA Regional Commander, Northern Victoria; and DELWP. At the Wodonga incident control centre we heard detailed analysis of the forecasts, the risks and the emergency liaison. In less than three weeks, the faces around that table would all be confronting devastating fires across the Walwa, Corryong and Alpine Valleys zones. All our resources and unity would be called upon, and the professionalism that we saw that day we saw day in and day out in the weeks that followed.
At the end of December, fires broke out around Corryong. This blaze would eventually merge with the Jingellic fire across the Murray and stretch for hundreds of kilometres, razing homes in Cudgewa and Tintaldra—394,000 hectares were lost. Our beautiful alpine towns would soon join them, with fire breaking out around Dinner Plain and Falls Creek—44,000 hectares lost. Finally, fire would break out at Abbeyard, just minutes from my home town of Wangaratta, and stretch from Carboor to Omeo—142,000 hectares lost. Driving across these fire-affected parts of Indi these last months—the traditional lands of the Dhudhuroa, Waywurru, Taungurung and Bangerang peoples—I have seen, like others here, terrible and numbing things.
Tom Griffiths, an environmental historian at the ANU, said on ABC Radio the other day that we describe fires as though they were monsters: bushfires have flanks, fingers and tongues; they lick, they rage, they hunt and they devour. We call them vicious, angry and cruel. Those who have lived through fires know why we describe them like this. Paddocks blackened, homes razed, towns evacuated, camps erected, soldiers deployed, highways emptied and animals incinerated—this season has left us grasping even for the language to describe what has happened. We used to name bushfires after days of the week: Red Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, Black Saturday. These fires were not a single day of devastation but a prolonged and continuing assault. Some have called it 'black January', but that's not enough, for the fires started well before January. Some have called it 'the angry summer', but this is not even enough, for the fires started in spring and it may be autumn before they end. We have always had droughts and fires but not like this. In our hotter and drier climate we need new language to describe the country that we are becoming.
In my travels across Indi I have spoken to hundreds of people and heard many stories about the impacts of these fires. And this I hear: we are devastated by the loss of life. The fires are devastating for our farmers, who were already experiencing drought. These fires have wiped out Christmas holiday tourism. They are pushing small businesses to the brink. They are reconfiguring our natural environment and they are taking their toll on our people's mental health. Many people are literally gasping for breath. As we move from disaster response to disaster recovery, we cannot lose sight of how people are affected, and today is about giving respect to those people and to their stories.
Indi is a border electorate. I share the border with the member for Farrer and the member for Gippsland. Their communities, I acknowledge today, are suffering tremendously; indeed, as are the communities of so many of my colleagues in this place. Indi is a border electorate, and across the Murray River 28-year-old Sam McPaul died on 30 December after a freakish weather event flipped his truck while he was fighting the Green Valley blaze in Jingellic, just 70 kilometres east of Albury—just across from my patch—in Walwa. Sam, the beloved son of Chris, whose adored wife, Megan, is expecting their first child this May. Mat Kavanagh, 43 years of age, a dedicated Forest Fire Management Victoria employee and father of two, was tragically killed on the Goulburn Valley Highway while on duty. Mat lived with his wife, Jude, and two young children, Reuben and Kate, in Alexandra, in the south of my electorate of Indi. Bill Slade, from Wonthaggi, has been spoken of many times today. The beloved husband of Carol and father of Ethan and Steph—a family I met today at morning tea—Bill was struck and killed by a tree while fighting a fire near Omeo, saving our iconic mountain country of the north-east, again on the border of Indi. They are the too many loved people whom we speak of with grief and whom we honour today.
Many survivors bear scars. In the immediate aftermath of the new year firestorm, I spoke with an elderly dairy-farming couple at the Corryong relief centre. They were dazed and grieving. They sat in a rudimentary school basketball stadium, a stadium that had been packed with 600 people only a couple of days before. It was a refugee camp effectively, littered with mattresses and bedding and tables of donated goods—a supply of food large enough to see the Antarctic mission through the winter. The couple had been rescued from their dairy farm, their home burnt to the ground. They told me they'd run for their lives and had only survived because two young blokes had rescued them. Their home had contained all the furniture and history of their great-great-grandparents, who were early settlers in the upper Murray. They told me they'd seen a few things in their 50 years of farming together but nothing like this. They uttered the words that have become the chorus of this disaster: 'We are luckier than some. Many others are worse off than us.' There are dozens of stories such as this—kindness, counsellors, chaplains, departmental officials, tired CFA personnel, police, cups of tea, noticeboards, briefings, forms, updates, too much information or not enough. I thank everyone for everything that happened in those relief centres to support these people.
In the Towong shire alone, over 6,000 stock died and 926 hectares of field crops, 33,800 hectares of pasture and 20,000 tonnes of fodder were lost. The Mayor of Towong, David Wortmann—CFA volunteer, farmer and local leader, a calm man in a crisis and not one for hyperbole—told me that day: 'Helen, we need the Army. We simply cannot bury this stock alone.'
The local health service at Corryong, led by Dominic Sandilands and his team, were evacuated because the most fundamental infrastructure—water, power and communications—could not be guaranteed. The frail and aged, dialysis patients and pregnant women were loaded onto buses and sent to other towns for safety. Staff were working around the clock in between defending their own properties. The water did run out. The power did fail. So did the radio transmitter; there was no ABC there. And the mobile phones—well, they rarely work, and they were gone that day as well.
The Cudgewa pub miraculously survived after heroic efforts from the CFA. The proprietors—Tracy, Carol and Ralph Fair and community worker Kate Fair—provided food, shelter and companionship for weeks to all who walked through their doors. The one mobile tower in town was destroyed, and roads in and out were closed for days. In all, 30 homes were lost in just that small district.
Fires raged through the alpine high country. Close to 30,000 tourists were evacuated in a day. But we were lucky in Indi. We could get them out safely and quickly. We didn't have to leave them on the beaches. But not everything could be saved. Stef Antonello runs a family-owned grape-growing business in the Alpine Valleys. They were not physically touched by fire, but their vineyard, like much of Australia, was blanketed in smoke for much of the summer, and smoke spoils grapes. They're looking at losing 100 per cent of their crop to smoke taint, meaning almost half a million dollars in lost profit. That affects not only Stef but his family, including his brother, his two kids and his 82-year-old mother, who proudly tells me she has never taken a pension in her life. Small businesses across the region have similarly been hit hard. My office is inundated daily by business owners in deep distress. Shane and Ashlee Laing run the cafe Teddy's Joint in Tallangatta. They've seen an 80 per cent drop in income since the onset of the fires in December. Teddy's Joint employs five people, so if they fall over so do five jobs in a very small town.
Some of the damage we will not be able to see. I've spoken in this place before of a University of Melbourne study called Beyond Bushfires, into the impacts of the Black Saturday fires. That study found in the worst affected areas that six years down the track one in four people showed signs of unmanageable mental health problems—one in four six years on. There are scores of stories of PTSD and anxiety among people who survive bushfires. Recently, one farmer wrote to me saying he suffers PTSD from a previous fire and that his trigger is dead animals. He has lost his cattle again and he's not doing well. But the Beyond Bushfires study found that it was not just the fire event that affected people but the knock-on effects, the lost income, lost homes and lost way of life, that affected people. Countless people have written to me saying the experience of negotiating complex government assistance packages with labyrinthine eligibility criteria is 'traumatising them again'. We need to radically simplify the process of delivering assistance in crises like these. It must be fast and it must be effective.
Much has been said today about the community response to these devastating events, and my community, like those around the nation, stood up to the test. Our CFA volunteers and professional firefighters acquitted their duty with valour, professionalism and endurance. Victoria Police, Ambulance Victoria, the State Emergency Service, the many service clubs, church groups, schoolkids, nameless volunteers—they are still at it as many fires in my region continue to burn. The staff of our local councils have worked with minimal respite and the most stretched of resources. The local councils are the frontline of this. Food, fodder, shelter and compassion from near and far have supported us.
ABC broadcasts: I'll add my voice to those who have gone before me in this place speaking on the ABC. What an extraordinary service. In my electorate, local rural ABC journalist Ashlee Aldridge was on location everywhere, supported by an equally dedicated crew. Matt Doran from here came over to help. Yesterday I read that since July there have been 900 emergency broadcasts across our nation from our ABC; the year before there were 371.
Community relief centres were spun up on a dime in Wangaratta, Tallangatta, Wodonga and Corryong. Volunteers poured forth to staff them. Friends and strangers alike all helped, and I thank them. Our communities are humbled. Our communities are exhausted.
In our bushfire ravaged communities the question being asked is: 'What now? Where do we go from here?' Well, when I stood for election last year I promised to fight for three things: the regeneration of our regions, a national action to mitigate and prepare for climate disruption and to return integrity to our broken politics. Renewal, action, integrity. We will need each of these if we are to find the phoenix in this fire. I believe the tasks that follow this disaster are actually quite clear. We must work together to find what I know can be our common ground.
First, we need a national disaster response plan suited to the new threats we face. This plan must tackle the realities playing out before us; a new compact on how the Commonwealth government and Australian Defence Force should assist states in responding to emergencies; a standalone aerial firebombing fleet which does not depend on aircraft from North America; sufficiently trained personnel to fight longer and fiercer fires; and to support health services and local councils. We can't keep our volunteers on the ground for indefinite periods.
Second, we need a nationwide plan to adapt our country to a changed climate. The Prime Minister has acknowledged that adaptation needs greater attention. Well, let's work together to match these words with action. Restore funding to research organisations leading this work, adopt my calls from last September to introduce an adaption plan for the agricultural sector and develop a plan to make sure our regional communities are resilient in the face of a changing climate. This means greater investment in fundamental infrastructure that sets us up to succeed. These bushfires have exposed the brittle skeleton of years of underspend in rural Australia, and we cannot wait for disasters to hit before we start investing in regional Australia.
Third, we need to deal with the underlying driver of our worsening fires: our climate is changing. We here are responsible, we are responsible for turning this around, and we can and we must do something about it. There's a simple truth which people out there in the community have already accepted and which we, as political leaders, must now address. People in my electorate who have never approached me about climate change before are now coming to me, passionately wanting us to address climate policy. They know that as long as greenhouse gas emissions continue then our temperatures will rise, our rainfall will fall, our bush will become dryer and these fires will get worse.
We have to reduce the likelihood and severity of these disasters by cutting carbon emissions at home and abroad, and to say this should be as controversial as saying, 'Water flows downhill.' To do nothing from here is to sign up to a future where we lose more lives, our mental health suffers more, our small businesses suffer more, our farms suffer more, our once incredible natural environment suffers more. Imagine if our firefighters were seized by indecision, by complacency, by infighting when fires crested the hills of our towns. Our leaders have praised firefighters a lot this summer. I think the time is right not just to praise them, but to start emulating them. We cannot be indecisive. We cannot be afraid to change. We cannot be complacent. We must come out of our corners and find our common ground, just as we have this fire season. I've been contacted and offered support by my federal parliamentary colleagues of all stripes. I thank them. And I thank the Premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews, the Victorian emergency services commissioner, Andrew Crisp, and the many ministers, both state and federal, for their support of me and my electorate.
In conclusion, today I join with my federal parliamentarians to honour and to mourn the people who have lost their lives to this terrible fire, to pay respect to the brave people from all walks of life who protect our country in its time of need. And I believe the best way to respect that sacrifice is by remembering the lesson that they have taught us—that when our home is under threat, Australians will try everything to save it. This has been the summer that has broken our nation's heart. Let it be the summer that forges our resolve.
Ms LEY (Farrer—Minister for the Environment) (15:38): May I acknowledge the words of my neighbour, the member for Indi.
There are many stories to come from this summer of bushfires, and there will be many more to emerge as the analysis of this fire season continues. One of those stories that I'd like to reflect on is from my home community of Albury. It was two days after a firestorm killed a local Rural Fire Service volunteer, Sam McPaul. People began flocking to a small steel shed on the northern outskirts of the city, home to the Lavington Rural Fire Brigade. A constant stream of cars, utes, small trucks and people were lugging donations of water, tonnes of non-perishable food and all sorts of goods, clothing and other essential items. People were dropping them off and then asking what else they could do. As the local Lavington fire captain Bruce Barnes noted: in 40 years as a volunteer firefighter, he'd never seen anything like the support shown by the Albury community on that day. Prompted by no more than a single Facebook post and a brief mention in the local Border Mail newspaper the city came together, galvanised behind the local New South Wales Rural Fire Service and their amazing volunteers to honour Sam.
Of course, there's always been admiration and respect from the Albury-Wodonga community to the drop-everything, can-do approach of our fire volunteers from both the RFS and the CFA. News of young Sam McPaul's death, however, seemed to move this sentiment into a different zone. He was a young man from the tiny country community of Morven, 60 kilometres north of Albury, between Culcairn and Holbrook, hopping on the back of an RFS truck to help defend another small country community an hour or so away. The fire had originally started as a reasonably benign outbreak of one to two hectares when lightning struck in dry and rugged terrain outside Jingellic, around 70 kays east of Albury, on Sunday night, 29 December. But after 15 straight days of extremely hot, dry and above-average temperatures the forest and farmland was at its most vulnerable. New South Wales Rural Fire Service crews and water bombing aircraft were unable to contain the blaze as it quickly engulfed dozens of hectares along the Murray River.
The next day maximum temperatures in the 40s were expected with hot, gusting north-westerly winds around 30 to 50 kilometres per hour. Unsurprisingly, these conditions saw the blaze spread quickly to the south-east. The Green Valley fire, as it was titled, grew up to 27,500 hectares and travelled 40 kilometres in a 24-hour period. A member of the Morven rural fire brigade, a local mechanic and keen sportsman, Sam McPaul, was assigned to the neighbouring Culcairn north-west crew as they fought to save properties along a section of the river. The expanding blaze created what is known as a pyrocumulus cloud, a rising column of hot air. It stretched some eight kilometres in height on that Monday night. RFS crews had been pulled back from the danger zone and Mr McPaul's small team had entered a paddock on open and clear ground. They were 50 metres from the farm gate with little around them to burn. Without warning, seismic weather brought extreme winds, and what can only be described as a fire tornado, lifting the back of the eight tonne truck, fully inverting the vehicle and dropping it on its roof. Sam's location in the truck meant he had no chance of escape.
The Culcairn fire captain, Andrew Godde, and his cousin and fellow Culcairn brigade member Rodney O'Keeffe were also in the truck on the River Road when Sam McPaul lost his life at 5.50 pm Monday 30 December. Rodney O'Keeffe was badly burnt during the incident and was flown to the Alfred Hospital. Andrew Godde received burns to his hands and was treated at Holbrook hospital and released the same night. Mr Godde later described that the crew were on the flank of the fire, which is normally the safest spot to be, and what they all thought what was not a dangerous situation became extremely serious, not in minutes but seconds, with no time to defend or respond. Sam McPaul died on the fire ground at the age of just 28. He'd been married to wife, Megan, for just 18 months. She was pregnant with their first child, due this coming May.
As the local southern command Rural Fire Service chief Patrick Westwood noted, 'Sam was a beautiful young man who was doing everything right before something terribly wrong happened.' At his funeral, Rural Fire Service chief, Shane Fitzsimmons, described Sam as, 'a remarkable young man who lost his life as a hero' supporting his local community.
I want to mention at this point the fire in the Green Valley was still only just beginning its destructive path, flaring again not long after New Year's day, on 4 January, when two fires in the area merged to threaten the community of Jingellic, coming within metres of the town's hotel. The fires would burn for another month and were only officially declared as under control 23 days later. The Green Valley-Talmalmo fire burnt over 208,000 hectares. In my electorate alone it destroyed eight homes and 22 other buildings. But, importantly, the RFS was also directly involved in what they call 'saves', managing to protect and directly prevent the fire from destroying 110 other homes and outbuildings in the Greater Hume Council area.
We may be reflecting on the fires so far today but, of course, the threat is still with us—it has been since August of last year. From my part of New South Wales we have seen literally hundreds of local volunteers deployed to fight the fronts in south-west Queensland, on the New South Wales north coast, around the Sydney Basin and New South Wales Hunter fires, outside Queanbeyan, at the South Coast and Snowy Mountains. Volunteers have been taken away from their loved ones for days and weeks on end, willingly giving up their time to help their fellow Australians. For each firefighting volunteer on the ground elsewhere, we've seen others step in behind them to protect local terrain. We've also seen others step up to help feed resting crews, to look after their health and welfare or their families' needs while they are away. Or to give them a massage—even driving them home at the end of an exhausting time on the fire front.
During January, the fire threat also hit the nearby alpine areas south of the Murray River. We saw numerous sorties of C-130 water bombers leave Albury Airport, just like the international crew who would tragically lose their lives a week or so later, helping to thwart rapidly-expanding fires in the Victorian snowfields. So today I also want to remember Captain Ian McBeth, First Officer Paul Hudson and flight engineer Rick DeMorgan Jr, who died when their plane crashed while fighting the fire north-east of Cooma on January 23. These men were among the many personnel who have come to assist our nation from other countries, the United States, Canada and New Zealand amongst them. We will never forget the debt we owe them, travelling halfway around the world, so far from home, to help us in our time of need. The many and varied fundraisers set up for the families of those who have lost their lives can be found on the RFS website.
There were other firefighters from the Southern Border RFS team who were injured in other incidents: Stuart Anderson and Andrew Julian are out of hospital and recovering well. Deputy Group Captain Ian Avage has made an almost full recovery from his minor injuries from an accident where his vehicle was blown off the road.
The amazing efforts of our volunteers are being matched by the generosity of those who want to help. It was that spirit of helping out during the toughest of times which brought the City of Albury and so many of its number out to the Lavington bushfire brigade just a month ago. The message from the fireys in my area to their federal parliament is pretty simple: that in this fire season, the usual tactics, strategies and resources for fighting fires have tested emergency services to their absolute limits. Despite all this, they have been able to achieve enormous success in defending both life and property. This has been achieved by volunteers and professionals maintaining their determination and strength, their resolve and morale. From the ashes of this summer, if we actually learn the lessons there to be learnt, we'll be even better prepared and adapted to cope in the future, no matter what that holds.
As minister, I have been travelling the firegrounds and managing the first stages of the implementation of our bushfire response for native wildlife and habitat restoration. I have seen so much when it comes to the damage to the built environment, the rural environment and the natural environment against a background of drought and climate change. There are many things I could say about what I've seen and what I've learnt, and what our government is doing to support our communities, but today is not the day. Today is a day to find some silent space amongst all these words—to put aside the petty toing and froing and the transactional bickering of our everyday lives—to give thanks for the people we love and the people who love us. And, above all, it is to recognise the unbearable loss being felt by those for whom we dedicate this condolence motion—like Sam's mother, Cris, whose world ended one day during the scorched summer of 2019 and who now has to learn how to live with unrelenting sorrow in a life that will never be the same. This day is for them.
Ms SHARKIE (Mayo) (15:48): I rise today to speak about what has been a terrible tragedy in my community, and I know, sadly, that this has been a shared experience in so many communities in Australia this summer. I have much to say, and I think there is much we need to do, with respect to the recovery and future planning for similar disasters and in recognising how climate change exacerbated these fires. But today, in this place, I want to thank and acknowledge the work of so many in Mayo.
Christmas was a time of great fear in my electorate of Mayo as we faced bushfires in the Adelaide Hills and on Kangaroo Island. In South Australia, 20 December was a catastrophic fire day. The temperature was predicted to reach 46 degrees, and the heat was made worse by hot northerly winds and then a predicted wind change in the afternoon. For me, the morning was filled with a foreboding feeling of dread. Around mid-morning on Hollands Creek Road at Cudlee Creek, a tree brought down powerlines that started a blaze that travelled through Lobethal, Kenton Valley, Woodside, Mount Torrens, Charleston, Brukunga and Harrogate. With the heat and the wind, the fire appeared unstoppable.
On the same day, fires were started by lightning strikes on the western end of Kangaroo Island. Difficult to access, the fire continued to burn and then flared a couple of weeks later, travelling across the island and encircling the townships of Parndana and Vivonne Bay. The fire engulfed approximately two-thirds of the island, including the beloved Western Districts Memorial Community Sports Centre at Gosse. This fire is now contained but it is not yet extinguished. In total, 185 houses, hundreds upon hundreds of buildings, thousands of livestock, over 60 vineyards and orchards, and millions of wildlife have been lost across the two fire grounds as the fire scorched more than 300,000 hectares.
Most tragically though, we lost three people from our community, people who were loved and cherished, and I would like to pay respect to those three, who will forever be missed and deeply loved and longed for by their respective families and communities. Mr Ron Selth, aged 69, was a civil engineer. Mr Selth died at his property in Charleston. Mr Selth is remembered as a loving and generous man in our community. In a statement provided by his family, Mr Selth was described as a man with an 'incredible passion for life'. Mr Selth left behind his partner, Suzy, his children, Johanna, Luke and Jasmine, and their partners, Lachlan, Jo and Scott, and six grandchildren. He was a keen bike enthusiast who was a passionate farmer and a spiritual man devoted to his family. He built a highly successful engineering business that contributed to the design of thousands of buildings in South Australia, mainly in the Adelaide Hills, and is often described as an unforgettable character.
On Kangaroo Island we lost father and son, Dick and Clayton Lang. Dick, aged 78, and his youngest son Clayton, aged 43, were found on Saturday 4 January, a day after Kangaroo Island's fires were described as 'virtually unstoppable'. Dick Lang was an experienced adventurer, a tour operator and a bush pilot. He forged a successful adventure business in the rugged and remote Australian outback with his wife, Helen. Dick's son, Clayton Lang, known as 'Clarrie', was one of Adelaide's most respected plastic surgeons, with a specialty interest in hand surgery. One of four sons, born in 1975, Clayton was married to his wife, Christie, an anaesthetist, and has left behind two daughters, Sophia and Madeline. Clayton was senior staff specialist at the QEH Woodville and lead clinician at the hand surgery clinic, focusing on patients with melanoma. He fought for his life and he also spent his whole life saving others.
Lives were taken too soon under such horrific circumstances. We lost so many Australians this summer due to the fires. So many were fighting fires, running to danger to protect us. Like the blackened landscape, our hearts in Mayo are scarred. There is a deep sadness in our community. Slowly though we are beginning the process of healing. Through such enormous devastation, I have witnessed the best of humanity in our community. I would like to pay tribute to just a few people and organisations that have done and are continuing to do so much.
CFS volunteers did everything they could to save life and property, as did farm firefighting units whose intimate knowledge of the landscape assisted greatly. I saw CFS trucks from the south-east, from the Eyre Peninsula, from the Fleurieu. They came from everywhere. They came from the electorate of Boothby. They gave up their family time at Christmas to assist. I acknowledge Mark Jones, the chief officer of the CFS, and the good work of SAPOL.
The Army Reserve arrived in the Hills and on Kangaroo Island. They spent their time clearing roads and burying dead stock. On Kangaroo Island they were also out delivering fodder to inaccessible locations by helicopter. The Oakbank Racing Club held farm fodder in conjunction with Livestock SA. SAVEM, South Australian Veterinary Emergency Management, continue to assist injured animals, and Sam Mitchell and his team on Kangaroo Island are saving koalas and other wildlife. Wildlife organisations outside the fireground are also doing so much, including Mayo's own Minton Farm in Cherry Gardens.
In the aftermath of the fire in the Adelaide Hills, Lobethal defence veteran Adam Weinert mobilised a group of locals to create a makeshift recovery centre in the Valley of Praise Retirement Village. The work of this group was extraordinary. Within days they had devised a system that matched up needs with tradespeople, organised donated fodder where it needed to go and organised water, clothes and food. It was astonishing to see. For much of that time Lobethal, in the northern part of the Adelaide Hills, was essentially ringbarked. You couldn't get in or out.
I would like to mention other community responses, including Nairne Fire Support group, who evolved out of need and provided an enormous amount of support and resources to families who were impacted by the fire. The goods were sorted at Gary and Rachelle Barlow's business, Stroud Homes, in Mount Barker. The Muslim community came from Adelaide. They arrived with vans to transport the goods out to Nairne. I'd also like to mention Father Thomas from the Mount Barker Anglican Church. All the children in Mount Torrens received Christmas presents because of the good work of that church. The congregation's contribution to the relief effort was amazing and went for weeks. Father Thomas is now volunteering his time putting up fences for BlazeAid.
The state government mobilised relief centres at Mount Barker, Highbury and Kingscote. I thank the staff at those relief centres for the support they provided for evacuees in the immediate period after the fires. I must mention the volunteers, including the chaplains, the rapid relief team and Red Cross.
On one of my trips to Kangaroo Island I was approached by a Sealink staffer asking if I could drop off a bag of homemade treats to a CFS station: 'Any CFS station, anyone in need,' they said. The goodies were made by mums at the Victor Harbor R-7 primary school. Mum and Victor Harbor local Olivia Knott also organised food and over a thousand dollars' worth of Drakes Supermarkets vouchers on KI, which I collected from Drakes and dropped off to the Kingscote relief centre. They were enormously needed.
BlazeAid set up camps at Lobethal and at the Parndana Football Club. Team Rubicon, the veterans group that assists in disasters, is there on the ground right now. Similarly, the Parndana community within a matter of days were organising their own emergency centre, with food, clothes, nappies, water—borne out of necessity—while fires continued around them.
I thank every person who assisted others for their generosity—for their donations, the meals they made and delivered out to homes, the working bees, the running of water, the giving of time. Our whole community came together.
Wallis Cinemas at Mount Barker kept their doors open on the 20th for anyone who was evacuated. I heard that every creature great and small in cinema 4 was in there. There were no tragedies within the cinema, although there was a little bit of mess to pick up. Mount Barker shopping centre also stayed open. Adelaide Hills Pastured Eggs dropped off box after box of eggs to feed the CFS their breakfast.
I'd like to acknowledge my state parliamentary colleagues who are within the seat of Mayo: Dan Cregan, John Gardner, Josh Teague and Leon Bignell. I give a particular shout out to Dan Cregan, who was with me riding shotgun in my car or I in his every day, one of us on the phone and one of us at the wheel. We have all worked together to support our community, as it should be.
The diligence and leadership of Alex Zimmerman, the state government appointed disaster recovery coordinator based at Lobethal, and Mike Williams, the appointed recovery coordinator for Kangaroo Island, must be mentioned, as must our local mayors, in particular Mount Barker Mayor Ann Ferguson. Ann originally hails from Kangaroo Island and while supporting her own community, because the areas of Harrogate and Brukunga lie in the Mount Barker council area and have been badly devastated, she also took the time to drive over, onto the ferry and then onto Kangaroo Island, with her car loaded, including with boxes of her own homemade Anzac biscuits. It is these acts of kindness and love that will be our story.
We realise we cannot do this alone. We are a region that grows some of the best food in the world. We are a region of beauty that relies heavily on tourism. We will only rebuild with the continued support of the Australian and international community. I am so pleased to support the South Australian government campaign #BookThemOut. But we need a long-term and sustainable tourism campaign. I would urge everyone to book a holiday in South Australia, particularly on Kangaroo Island or in the Adelaide Hills. We still have so much for you to enjoy. And buy our produce. We desperately need this. We are an electorate comprised entirely of small businesses—wine, cheese, milk, honey, apples, pears, confectionery. If all else fails, our gin distilleries on Kangaroo Island and in the Adelaide Hills will be very pleased to take your business.
It has been an extraordinary effort by so many. I am so proud of our community of Mayo. We have gone through such sadness, such devastation and such loss. We all know the fire season is not over yet. But, as I drive through our community, I'm heartened to see green shoots—glimmers of hope, and a sign of renewal for all of us.
Mr TAYLOR (Hume—Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction) (16:01): By 19 December, fires had been working their way through my electorate for many days. They had got to Orangeville, near Camden. Whilst there hadn't been any major tragedies, there had been serious damage and we knew there was more that would happen.
By midday on 19 December I was in my electorate office, and I received a call from Camden. That call was to say that the fires around Bargo, Buxton and Balmoral had jumped, and that a major change in the wind was expected in the next couple of hours and the villages of Bargo, Buxton and Balmoral would be seriously threatened. I jumped in my car and quickly drove across the Razorback to Picton, to an evacuation centre to which people from those villages had been asked to move when the emergency warning went out. The area around the Picton Bowling Club was more like Noah's ark as people came in with their animals, and their favourite and most important things, to try to find refuge from fires that were absolutely raging. Emotions were high. Everyone there was going on an emotional rollercoaster as they tried to understand where their loved ones were, whether their houses had been burnt, whether their animals had been lost and whether the most cherished and important things in their lives had been destroyed.
On that afternoon of 19 December, I met Geoff and Jenny Webb, who live on Remembrance Drive, near Bargo, just across from the Wollondilly Anglican College and a few hundred metres up from the mine there. Geoff and Jenny were clearly in an area where the fires were at their absolute worst. I sat with them for a number of hours that afternoon as we tried to understand whether their house had been lost, whether their animals had been lost, where their loved ones were and, indeed, what was likely to transpire in the coming hours and night with the major change in the weather that had hit about midafternoon. Geoff and Jenny lost their house. They lost many, many years of memories. But their lives were saved and the lives of their loved ones were saved.
That emotional rollercoaster of the day we went through on 19 December was repeated in my electorate so many times after by so many people on so many days that followed, starting in mid-December. I want to pay tribute and offer my deepest condolences to all those affected by these terrible bushfires this 'black summer' across Australia, in particular those who have lost homes, lost property and, most tragically, lost loved ones.
I've seen firsthand the devastation that the bushfires have left behind—both the Green Wattle Creek fire south-west of Sydney, starting in the Nattai National Park on the north-western side of my electorate, which impacted the Bargo, Buxton and Balmoral area that I talked about a moment ago, and the Morton fire, which jumped out of the Shoalhaven River, on the south-eastern side of my electorate. Those two national parks form the corridor through which Hume runs. To date, those fires have burnt over 300,000 hectares—300,000 hectares—impacting not just the towns of Balmoral, Buxton and Bargo, but also Wingello, Bundanoon, Tahmoor, Thirlmere and Couridjah, and a number of other areas, destroying many hundreds of houses and other structures.
It is a very tough time for these small communities. I've visited the affected towns across my electorate, and I've heard many other tragic stories of loss. It's often the smallest things that mean the most: the family photos, often from decades back; the memorabilia; the much loved garden beds and trees; and, of course, the memories that are embedded in every house that we live in. But I've also heard people full of praise for the RFS volunteers and brigades around the region; people working together, giving up their time, donating what they can and all pitching in to help each other, which is what our communities do best. We saw this same pattern in my electorate and right across Australia.
I saw this firsthand at the evacuation centres in the Picton Bowling Club, which I mentioned a moment ago, and also at the Mittagong RSL. They truly were like Noah's ark, with families and pets taking shelter from the fires. And the managers of those two places, the Picton Bowling Club and the Mittagong RSL, couldn't have been more supportive. They were absolutely amazing, and we must acknowledge the work they did. The Aussie spirit, that great Aussie spirit, struck me again and again.
I'd like to acknowledge the incredible work of all the volunteers that have offered support at this real time of need. I saw this, with support from the Minister for Defence, when I got in touch with Major General Jake Ellwood. Just a few days after 19 December, when we saw the village of Balmoral devastated, I spoke to Major General Jake Ellwood and told him about the need for the community to actually deal with some very, very serious issues. This was right next door to where two people had tragically died, which I'll come back to in a moment, and we needed to take away the danger for the local community as they went in and tried to rebuild their buildings and their lives. Major General Jake Ellwood said to me, at about three o'clock in the afternoon, 'The ADF will be there at seven o'clock in the morning, Angus.' And they were. The presence of the ADF lifted the spirits of the entire community. Those reservists came in—the uniforms, the trucks—and the work they did helped to move dangerous trees, clear roads and assist more generally in the clean-up. I know this story is shared with so many communities, not just across my electorate but across the firegrounds across Australia.
We need to mourn what was lost, but we also need to celebrate what was saved. I spoke to many firefighters who felt the pain of the losses—often in their own communities. For many, the experience of failing to save a neighbour's house was incredibly painful, and will be impossible to erase from their memories. But those same people, those same volunteers in most cases, saved many houses and probably also lives. And so while some in the media had incorrectly declared that Balmoral was totally destroyed, the response of the community to that declaration was outrage. Indeed, the failure to acknowledge what was saved was the thing that upset the community most of all. Many houses were lost, but many more were saved, and the people of Balmoral wanted this to be acknowledged. Soon after the fires that went through nearby Bargo, I dropped in to see close friends Richard and Laurie Harrison, who had lost their sheds, which housed expensive equipment for their small business, which they provide to the local community. The shed and the supplies had been lost, but their house had been saved. They relayed the story that a young local firefighter had dropped in to see them to apologise that he couldn't save their sheds and their contents. The irony of this is that only a few metres away those same firefighters had saved their house. Richard and Laurie were so incredibly grateful for what had been saved, because that was the most important thing for them. We must celebrate every day the work of these wonderful people and the incredible community resilience and generosity in the face of adversity which has touched us all.
I'd like to take this chance to put on record my deepest sympathies to the families of the 33 Australians who've tragically lost their lives this bushfire season. My heart goes out to the family and friends of those killed, including the volunteers who so bravely served their communities. Of course, I'd like to in particular remember the two outstanding Rural Fire Service volunteers who tragically lost their lives battling the fires in my electorate, the Green Wattle Creek fire, near Buxton. Their stories have touched us all. My deepest sympathies go out to their families, friends and fellow firefighters. I thank the Prime Minister for his earlier tribute. Geoffrey Keaton and Andrew O'Dwyer were two young fathers and volunteer firefighters from the Horsley Park brigade. Geoffrey had joined the brigade in 2006 and was the deputy captain, and Andrew had been a member since 2003. These fine young men were battling the fire just days before Christmas. They were taken from their families after a tree fell into the path of their fire tanker, causing it to roll off the road. The loss is a tragedy. My heart goes out to them. I thank them for the extraordinary work that they did. We must pay tribute to them, for as long as we live, in this region and across my electorate. Their contribution was absolutely enormous and their sacrifice was the greatest of all.
The rest of the brigade, whilst dealing with their own grief and loss, were back on the trucks continuing to protect the community from the bushfire only two days later. Our volunteer firefighters truly are Aussie heroes. Their bravery, commitment and strength have touched us all. We can never thank them enough for what they have done. I've had the opportunity to visit so many local brigades. I want to take a moment to thank each and every member of our local brigades for their service. To the teams at Appin, Bargo, Bungonia, Buxton, Balmoral, Bundanoon, Canyonleigh, Colo Vale, Exeter, Hill Top, Picton, Tahmoor, Thirlmere, Wingecarribee, Wingello, Wollondilly, Yerrinbool and many, many others: thank you for your service to the community. They were just the fire brigades from within my electorate. But, wherever I went, I would see them coming from across Sydney and across the state to serve our community.
I want to pay special tribute to Brendan O'Connor, the captain of the Balmoral brigade, for his leadership and for his contributions to ongoing discussions about mental health. He spent time with the Minister for Health discussing how we could, as a government, best serve and support our volunteer firefighters at such a tough time. I know the Minister for Health took on board, in the policy announcements we made, many of the comments that Brendan made to him and the input he provided. To Dave Stimson, of the Picton fire control centre; to John Klepczarek, the local emergency operations controller at Mittagong; and to the Green Wattle Creek fire incident controller, Simon Davis: thank you. You guys went above and beyond 24/7 for weeks on end. Thank you for your work and the work of all your teams.
To my colleagues in this place: thank you for joining me in Hume to meet with locals and hear their stories. It was wonderful to have the Prime Minister and the New South Wales Premier support our community in Picton soon after the fire devastated much of our community. The minister for emergency services and AJ Colvin came to meet Dave Bruggeman, the owner of the Wingello general store, who very nearly lost his house and businesses. Many of the houses and businesses around him in Wingello were lost, but the lifeblood of the village, the Wingello general store—make sure you go there if you're ever passing through Wingello—was saved. For Wingello, that was an extraordinary achievement. Thank you to the minister and Andrew Colvin for coming to visit us at Wingello and helping to support the community as it gets back on its feet. The minister for the environment came to Thirlmere to thank the Sydney Metropolitan Wildlife Services volunteers for the work they've done. It's an extraordinary group there who double as members of the RFS and supporters of the local wildlife. We got to spend time with local wombats and possums, and even managed to release some back into the bush while we were there—injured wildlife that people were picking up and looking after, particularly coming out of the Nattai and Morton national parks. And thank you to the councils. This is a tough time for councils, as it is for all levels of government, to get the engagement right and work with local communities. Thank you for the hard work that you have done and continue to do. That work is much appreciated.
There is much more that needs to be done. Support needs to continue to get to the right place as fast as possible. Time is of the essence in providing support to communities in situations of adversity. Houses and other buildings need to be rebuilt—better and quickly. Fences, farms and businesses need to be re-established. We've learnt from past fires and floods—in my own electorate we had the Picton floods only a few years ago—that recovery doesn't take days, weeks or months; it takes years. We'll need to stand shoulder to shoulder, for years to come, with our communities that have been affected.
Before I finish, I want to make a few comments about the future. The climate is changing and we have to do our bit to reduce emissions. But we also need to do far more to prevent fires and damage of the sort we have seen this summer. Fuel reduction must be a priority. Making sure we don't have fuel loads that can cause the sorts of fires that we have seen this summer must be a priority. Containment lines are absolutely crucial. There is much talk about how the windows for fuel reduction are getting shorter and more difficult. Well, with good containment lines we can do far more hazard reduction. That is the reality. It is crucial that we get those containment lines right. Planning laws have to recognise the fire risks in these regions, particularly as we approach national parks and public lands. Of course, the role of the ADF should be celebrated because it was extraordinary. We need to think systematically and carefully about how in the future those national powers of intervention, including the application of those wonderful ADF resources, come to bear. And, of course, the overall management of our national parks and public lands is a crucial issue to discuss as the dust settles on a fire season which is not yet over, which still has some time to go.
I will end by once again paying tribute to our volunteer and paid firefighters, emergency services, ADF and so many others who have contributed to responding to these fires. We can never know how many houses, lives and properties have been saved, but we can know that the contribution of those people was absolutely enormous. Thank you for your service and your sacrifice.
Mr BOWEN (McMahon) (16:18): The village of Horsley Park is a small place with a big heart. That heart was broken on 19 December last year when we woke to the news that two of our own had given their lives in the fire to which the honourable member for Hume was just referring—two members of our community, two fathers, two sons, two brothers, two partners—Geoff Keaton, aged just 32, and Andrew O'Dwyer, aged just 36. Harvey Keaton and Charlotte O'Dwyer have lost their dads way before their time—and Geoff and Andrew have lost the chance to see them grow up. No-one who attended their funerals could fail to be moved to the core by the attendance of Harvey and Charlotte; they are far too young to even understand what was happening, but their very presence reminded us, and continues to remind us, of the scale of their loss.
Our community came together to support Jess and Melissa, as I knew they would. It was an honour to, with the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, welcome Jess and Melissa to Parliament House today and have them in the gallery—together with the parents of both Geoff and Andrew, and Geoff's brother and Harvey.
We have also come together to support the Horsley Park rural fire service. As has been mentioned, they were back at the fire front almost immediately. Just a few days later they were fighting a fire in our own patch. They are used to going around New South Wales but all of a sudden they had to fight a fire in Greystanes and Pemulwuy in our community, in my electorate, which very nearly took homes in Pemulwuy and which was started by some idiot lighting a firecracker in the middle of this horrendous fire season. It's a reminder to all of us to care for the mental health of our first responders. They will need ongoing care not only now but in the weeks and months ahead. But there will be other opportunities to talk about that.
The Horsley Park rural fire service is a very important part of Horsley Park, led by Darren Nation, with so many members of the Horsley Park community. The entire community has felt this loss very, very deeply. My community sends its condolences to all communities who have lost first responders and community members in fires. We know what it's like. We know what they're going through. We feel it very, very deeply.
Jess and Melissa, I hope, have received some comfort. I hope they receive some comfort today from being here. There are no words that any of us in this House can utter which will reduce their pain, let alone eliminate it. But we can do our best in our own modest and small ways to provide comfort to them. They know that their entire country honours the ones they have lost as heroes. The entire country is mourning with them. The entire country wishes it could take the pain away. Knowing we can't, we do what we can to support them and honour the people they love. We can simply remind them that although lovers may be lost, love is not. And death shall have no dominion.
Today, in this House, we extend our arms around Jess and Melissa, the parents of Geoff and Andrew, Harvey and Charlotte, and their brothers and sisters. We mourn with them. The entire McMahon community mourns Geoff and Andrew, who were two of us, who were members of our community—not just Horsley Park but right throughout. I called in at a physiotherapist a few days after Andrew's funeral—the physiotherapist I attend—in Wetherill Park and there was a picture of Andrew. He was a fellow patient. He was a manager at Woolworths at Stockland, Wetherill Park, a very important part of our community. The entire community has felt this very deeply. The entire community mourns with Jess and Melissa. The entire community says rest in peace, Geoff and Andrew. Rest in peace as the heroes you are.
Mrs WICKS (Robertson) (16:23): I too join with colleagues from all sides of the chamber to commend the incredible bravery, generosity, resilience and hope that we have seen in communities right around Australia following the devastating bushfires that razed thousands of homes, scorched millions of hectares of land and resulted in the tragic loss of 33 lives. The smoke that was hanging over this place just last night reminded me of the smoke that enveloped the Central Coast region in December. It was a stark reminder that the threat of these fires is still very much present and that hundreds of firefighters, defence personnel and volunteers are still on the frontline protecting lives, wildlife and property. In rising in support of this motion today, I also want to join with the Prime Minister in expressing the sorrow that I and many in my community have felt watching these bushfires over the course of this fire season, particularly when there were lives lost.
While today is both an opportunity to reflect and remember, it is also a time to look forward with hope while many undertake the process of rebuilding their lives. These fires have reminded all of us in this place and right around the country what it means to be Australian. We stand shoulder to shoulder in the face of enormous challenge and persevere. We stand by our neighbours, our communities, and we support one another. I'd like to thank the thousands of firefighters who have bravely been out on the firegrounds protecting lives and homes collectively for many months. Our firefighters have faced and continue to face unimaginable circumstances, putting their lives at risk to save people, animals and property. In particular to the nine brave firefighters who never returned home from the fire grounds: we thank you. We thank you for your courage, your selflessness and the sacrifice you made in order to keep communities safe. I join with members of this House in extending my deepest sympathies to your families and friends who have been left behind. The loss that you have suffered is immeasurable.
One of the enduring images of the bushfires that we have just seen, of the 'black summer' that we have just seen, is the visual footage of a fire truck being overrun by a wall of flames on the New South Wales South Coast. This footage shows the very real danger that firefighters face every day, and was actually filmed by a crew of firefighters from the Central Coast who captured the footage from within their truck while responding to an out-of-control bushfire at South Nowra on New Year's Eve. Daniel Field, Jasper Croft, Ervin Blancaflor and Grant Fitzgerald formed the crew of four who were based out of the Wyoming New South Wales fire and rescue station on the Central Coast. They captured the attention of the world, with their footage being viewed more than five million times. Remarkably, they made it out alive to tell their story, and their story is one of hundreds of other stories being told, with many, many more still to be told and retold as part of the healing and rebuilding process that we face.
My community on the Central Coast was also affected by the bushfires, with the fires tearing through the national parks which border the western length of the region. Five separate fire fronts combined to form a megafire, spanning more than 500,000 hectares of land. It came right to the doorsteps of many residents in Kulnura, Mangrove Mountain, Gunderman, Spencer and Wisemans Ferry. This included Robyn Downham from Spencer, who told me of her fear as the bushfires came within five metres of her back door, only to be saved by the heroic efforts of the Spencer Rural Fire Service crews. On New Year's Eve another fire emerged in Charmhaven on the northern end of the coast, with hundreds of properties under threat. Due to the efforts of so many firefighters, the Central Coast was incredibly lucky compared to many other communities. I want to commend our emergency services and volunteer firefighters for saving over 400 local properties, all of which came under threat from various fire fronts. Locally, the Central Coast rural fire service was led by Superintendent Vicki Campbell. Superintendent Campbell, who is the Central Coast's Australia Day Ambassador for 2020, is responsible for the overall coordination of the RFS firefighting capability and bushfire risk management across the Central Coast and Lake Macquarie local government areas. Superintendent Campbell oversees 57 brigades, 20 staff and over 2,300 volunteer members. On behalf of the Central Coast community, we thank you, Superintendent Campbell, for your leadership and the resilience that you have displayed over the past few months.
Our local brigades spent weeks assisting their fellow RFS crews on the Mid North Coast in November before returning to protect lives and property in their own community that were under threat by the bushfires that hit the Central Coast. Once the threat was reduced locally, these volunteers continued to give of their time and service, travelling to the South Coast as part of a Central Coast strike team to provide further support where it was most needed. As our Prime Minister said recently, our volunteers understand that the best lives stem from making a contribution rather than taking one. This rings true with all of the volunteers on the Central Coast, who continue to give so much over this fire season. We'll never be able to express how truly grateful we are for your efforts, and we thank you.
What always gives me hope, especially in times of difficulty like this, is the generosity of Australians and the demonstration of the human spirit. On the Central Coast, our residents gave generously. Our Rural Fire Service depots were overwhelmed with supplies and donations before Christmas, so much so that residents were told to redirect their donations to other areas that needed more support. Residents right across my community have wanted to share their gratitude for all of the firefighters, defence personnel, emergency service personnel, Reservists and volunteers who have assisted in some form. In the lead-up to Australia Day, I travelled around the electorate with an appreciation book, in which hundreds of people have written their personal message of thanks. This book will be presented to our local RFS superintendent in the coming weeks. A number of messages stood out, but one in particular was from Susan Boyd, who wrote:
Forever grateful. Living in a bushfire prone zone, it makes me feel a little more secure having each and every one of you making every effort to protect us. You put your own lives on the line to put us first. You're all selfless heroes.
Pam Howard added:
Thank you for your bravery and expertise. You saved our family farmhouse. We appreciate the long, exhausting hours you've spent fighting these horrendous fires.
And young Ebony's message was simple and poignant:
Thank you for taking care of my home.
The generosity and selflessness is also evident in the story of Peter, his wife and his family. Peter owns and runs The Book Forest. It's a small, gorgeous bookshop located in Niagara Park. It's far more than just a bookshop; it's a beautiful store, where children's imaginations can run wild and where books absolutely come to life. And it's a place where the locals come to have a chat with Peter before picking up a new book or something to read. Peter and his family are just one family out of thousands who lost their home in these devastating bushfires. They did move to the Central Coast to help look after a family member, but the house that they owned was destroyed on the New South Wales South Coast. They lost almost everything that they owned in that home and, despite the loss, Peter and his family set out to do everything they could do to support the neighbours who had also lost everything back home.
They started taking donations at their bookshop to deliver to the bushfire victims on the South Coast, including seeds, masks, batteries, water pumps, gas bottles and even a camper trailer. Peter and his family travelled down to their home just over a week ago to sift through the rubble of their own place, trying to salvage anything that may have survived the fire. Despite this being the first time that they had confronted their own personal loss, they still brought with them a trailer full of donations. It's people like Peter and his family who embody the great Australian spirit. They selflessly give their time and put others before themselves in the face of their own loss.
Sharing stories like Peter's is part of the rebuilding process. We must reflect on what has been lost by so many, to ensure that we continue to rebuild even stronger than before. I also want to pay tribute to some of the events and activities that are happening on the Central Coast even as we speak, with many organisations doing their bit to make sure that we continue to raise vital funds and support for where it is needed.
This bushfire season has been so far reaching it's difficult to find someone who hasn't been personally touched by the fires, either directly or indirectly. Some of my own family members, Paul and Glynis Gilligan included, were among the thousands to lose their home on the New South Wales South Coast. The fires tore through the small community of Mogo on New Year's Eve, destroying a number of buildings, including Paul and Glynis's home, which was on the same side of Tomakin Road near Mogo Zoo. Paul runs a local bus company, and he was busy defending the bus depot with garden hoses as his own property went up in flames. Luckily, the bus company wasn't significantly impacted and therefore he was able to continue operating normal services. But Paul and Glynis, like so many others, are now in the process of rebuilding their lives and coming to terms with the loss experienced within their community.
Stories such as these are important to share as part of the healing process, and are a demonstration of the great resilience and strength that endures across this country. It is my hope that we learn, as a nation, from this immensely difficult fire season, and I support the Prime Minister's call for a royal commission into national natural disaster arrangements, following these fires, to ensure that we are more resilient into the future. I also hope that all of the communities affected rebuild stronger than ever before, that the generosity and the goodwill of the Australian people continue for months and years to come, that we continue to share the stories and listen to all of those involved in fighting these fires, and that we listen to those who have lost so much.
Lastly, I would like to thank the Minister for Water Resources, Drought, Rural Finance, Natural Disaster and Emergency Management, David Littleproud, and his office, as well as Stuart Robert, for the diligence and care that they showed to every person impacted by these fires. Be it an inquiry on behalf of one individual or an entire community, they acted swiftly and demonstrated that no loss was too small to warrant every possible assistance.
I know that our country will emerge stronger than before, united in our gratitude, resilience and hope. I stand with all of my colleagues today to place on record my deepest of thanks to all of the volunteers, firefighters, defence personnel, reservists and every single Australian who has played a part and made their contribution in such trying times.
Mr HAYES (Fowler—Chief Opposition Whip) (16:34): Over the Christmas break, our nation was ravaged by a bushfire crisis the scale of which we haven't seen before. The loss of life, property, fauna and flora and the sheer devastation are almost inconceivable and, once again, demonstrate our vulnerability to the elements. The toll of loss and destruction could have been much higher had it not been for the incredible efforts of our emergency services workers, our RFS volunteers, our career firefighters, the SES, the police and many others who put their lives on the line for weeks on end.
Tragically, in these fires we saw the loss of life of two of our local heroes in Western Sydney while fighting the Green Wattle Creek fire at Buxton. I extend my deepest sympathy to the young families of Geoffrey Keaton and Andrew O'Dwyer of the Horsley Park Rural Fire Brigade. Both were very proud fathers of 19-month-old children. To Geoff's partner, Jess, and her son, Harvey, and to Andrew's wife, Melissa, and daughter, Charlotte: our community mourns with you. We honour their service and we deeply regret the situation that has occurred. When I spoke to the Rural Fire Brigade at Horsley Park, we acknowledged their service was incredible. They are our community heroes. My condolences also go to the families of the seven other brave firefighters who tragically lost their lives as a result of these fires, including the American crew of the C-130 that crashed in the Snowy Mountains. These men all lost their lives selflessly defending life and property in some of the most challenging of circumstances. Clearly it takes a special type of person with a special type of courage to be part of the Rural Fire Service. They have made the ultimate sacrifice defending our communities.
Unfortunately, this was only the beginning of what transpired to be one of the most tragic fire seasons in Australia's history. It was in Manyana that Bernadette and I, together with our children, our families and my elderly mother, experienced the devastation that has engulfed the South Coast of New South Wales. What was supposed to be an enjoyable Christmas and new year holiday took a turn for the worse when fires threatened the communities of Cunjurong Point, Manyana and Bendalong. I acknowledge the extraordinary efforts of Gary Barton and the local RFS crew working around the clock fighting these fires with little or no sleep. The speed of the devastation that the fire wreaked on our communities in the South Coast was incredible, requiring intense water bombing for hours on end.
Our local community response was led by Adam Richards and Andy McNamara. Both these men are senior officers of Fire and Rescue NSW and, like many, were simply holidaying on the South Coast over the Christmas period. On New Year's Eve, the bushfire raced on a north-westerly front from Narrawallee Creek towards Lake Conjola. It was clear that the fire was moving fast and would be a threat to the houses in Cunjurong Point, Manyana and Bendalong. In fact, it was that fire that devastated nearby Conjola with the loss of 89 houses and two deaths. Given that it was Christmas holidays, there were hundreds of people in the immediate vicinity as well as the permanent residents, and this significantly compounded the level of risk. It was not long before power poles were burnt like matchsticks, the electricity was cut and the only road in and out of our location was blocked. This effectively changed the situation from a major bushfire crisis to addressing the needs of an isolated community. In effect, it became a humanitarian response.
Given the heightened level of uncertainty within the community, a community meeting was arranged for the morning of New Year's Day, with over 500 people attending. At the meeting, Adam and Andy took charge. They effectively became the liaison between the RFS, various state authorities and the community. They provided clear and effective communication on the risks, enabling a considered and coordinated response within the community generally.
The Manyana community centre was established as a hub and evacuation point. A coordination committee was set up, largely through the efforts of Simone Carolle-Germech, assisted by Georgina MacSmith and Michael Germech. A call was made for community members with expertise in health, emergency management and community services to lend their skills for the various tasks that would be required over the coming days. A medical team was established, led by Dr Scott Fortey, Richard Van De Veerdork, Cameron Southley, Alana Howell, Annie Fanning and paramedic Peter Burden, who also coordinated for the Bendalong community. They set up a first-aid clinic, conducted medical assessments, organised prescriptions and, where necessary, arranged emergency evacuations. The team was assisted by trauma counsellors Lou and Therese. Speaking of great community initiatives over this period, a pop-up coffee shop was set up by Robyn Crawford, which provided a degree of normalisation for residents during what was a most anxious time.
The committee coordinated with police to arrange escorts for those able to leave the area during temporary road openings. I take this opportunity to thank Assistant Commissioner Mick Corboy for his assistance during this period and for sending police to our district. This included members of Strike Force Raptor, who volunteered their assistance, as well as officers from the highway patrol, who played an important role in regulating access and, probably more importantly for us, patrolling the area. The mere presence of the police had a significant impact in lifting community morale. Over this period I was also in regular contact with the member for Gilmore, Fiona Phillips, who was directly liaising with the authorities in Nowra on our behalf.
Trent Hunter, a local landscaper, requires special mention. Trent played a vital role for our community in ensuring that food, water, ice and medications were brought to Manyana by boat, making several trips to and from Ulladulla.
An industrial generator was acquired to power the community hall so it could run as a 24-hour community hub. This provided lighting and refrigeration and allowed people to charge their mobile phones, which were the only form of communication available. This proved crucial, with Facebook pages such as Manyana Matters and ABC South Coast relaying vital messages throughout our community. Special thanks go to Joel Ping-nam and Bailey Desreaux of Custom Electric for installing the generator at the Manyana community centre. They did so under extreme circumstances. I must thank Mark Scarce from Camden Hire for his generosity in allowing his generator, which was en route to Mollymook Golf Club, to be temporarily installed at the Manyana community hall. I likewise thank the golf club for their understanding over this very difficult period.
The committee also identified those residents with special needs, particularly the elderly and infirm, and arranged for volunteers to visit them and keep them informed as well as check on their welfare over this period. On that note, I'd like to acknowledge the efforts of a young fellow, Owen Chopping, who spent days on his motorcycle driving from house to house delivering ice to those elderly people because that was the only form of refrigeration available over that seven-day period.
Whilst this was one of the worst environmental disasters, it nevertheless displayed some of the best qualities in people and the community. What I saw was the embodiment of the Australian spirit. One of the most powerful stories that came out of this ordeal was relayed to me by Trent Hunter, who was tearful when he told me of the moment when his 11-year-old daughter, Ava, told him how proud she was of her father's efforts to help people. I think Ava spoke for all of us, not just about her father but about the efforts of many people who worked so tirelessly to help our local community. Likewise, in the wider Australian community we've seen various charities, businesses, religious groups and cultural groups unite to fundraise and organise food drives for bushfire affected communities. Out of this crisis we have seen so many positive stories of communities banding together to show their support for one another.
While this ideal shows our community at our best, it also reaffirms that a commitment is needed to address the issue of climate change. There is no doubt that climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events and natural disasters. The scientists have been telling us that for years. Strong action is needed to protect our prosperity for future generations of Australians. If we are to learn from environmental disasters such as this year's bushfire crisis, we must be willing to work in a bipartisan manner to tackle the threat of climate change. If our local communities can work together in the face of adversity, shouldn't we as their elected representatives be able to work together to address the most existential threat facing our nation and indeed our world?
Mr LEESER (Berowra) (16:46): This summer has been incredibly difficult for so many Australians. We've never seen a fire season like it—in its longevity, its scale and its intensity—and it's not over yet. I want to acknowledge the people in Berowra who serviced the bushfire-fighting and recovery effort; they have been extraordinary. The heroes of the fire season have been our amazing volunteers. They encapsulate the best of the Australian spirit. They are men and women from all walks of life who put their lives on the line to save our lives, our animals and our property every single summer. Volunteers and emergency services personnel have worked tirelessly, sacrificing work, family time and long-term plans to protect our communities. And their generosity and sacrifice has not been reserved for our own community; they have spent substantial time fighting fires further afield in other communities.
I also want to acknowledge the families of the volunteers and the emergency services personnel who have lived a summer with empty spaces at tables and days spent worrying about their loved ones' safety. My gratitude and the gratitude of the entire Berowra community—and indeed the gratitude of the whole country—is with emergency services personnel, volunteers and their families.
As Chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Canada, I would also like to acknowledge the work of the Canadian firefighters who came here to Australia to help fight our fires. Australians have previously gone to Canada to help fight their fires. I am thinking in particular of Rolf Poole and Peter Marshall, from my electorate, who went to Canada during its last major fires.
As Chair of the Parliamentary Friends of India, I acknowledge the wonderful work of the Indian community in Australia—travelling, feeding and supporting so many Australians who are doing it tough, and in areas where there are not large Indian communities. I was in India in early January. One of the reasons I was there was to get a sense of our relationship and to find out if Indians think much about Australia. Everyone from the chai wallah who served me my tea to the senior officials in the ministry of external affairs knew about the fires and asked me about them. This has been an event of global importance; and more and more people from around the world, including those in India, are standing strong with Australia.
Let me acknowledge the Prime Minister's leadership in relation to the bushfire effort. The Prime Minister came with me to the Gospers Mountain fire in early December and got a briefing from RFS, SES and other officials. I also acknowledge the wonderful work of Minister Littleproud. Every time there is a catastrophic fire day in Sydney, he is on hand to provide support and comfort for people in my community. Indeed, when one RFS brigade captain approached me about issues to do with mobile telecommunications in the rural parts of my electorate in advance of the fire season, Minister Littleproud convened a meeting of telco heads and we were able to get some good results there on a matter I had been trying for some years to get action on. So I particularly want to acknowledge him.
I'm very proud to have as one of my constituents the New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons. Knowing Shane, he would say he's just another public servant doing his job. But his leadership and his professionalism have been exceptional. He has given the people of New South Wales confidence in the handling of the bushfires at a time when people have been panicky and scared. He has never lost his head, being a calming voice in a difficult and painful time. In times of tragedy, he has shown great compassion. I want to join the many Australians who have been applauding his service. I think he is a very great Australian.
Locally, there are 26 Rural Fire Service brigades in my electorate. They were instrumental in fighting, and ultimately containing, the Gospers Mountain megafire which licked the north-west edge of the Berowra electorate for three months. The Gospers Mountain fire was started by a single lightning strike on 26 October. Unfavourable weather conditions, including the fire generating its own thunderstorms, and the difficulty in accessing key fire grounds multiplied the difficulty in fighting and containing the fire, which soon became a megablaze. By the time it was contained almost three months later, it had burnt through parts of Lithgow, the Hawkesbury and the Central Coast. More than 512,000 hectares had been burnt. To put that into perspective, it is seven times the size of Singapore. RFS brigades from across the Berowra electorate were working around the clock for months, together with local brigades in the Hawkesbury, to get the Gospers Mountain fire under control. The contribution of the brigades from my electorate was essential in containing that fire and preventing it jumping the Hawkesbury River or working its way through the hills and on to the city. Berowra crews were also deployed across the state and the country. In all, over 2,000 people across my electorate chose to sacrifice their rest and family time to defend the lives and properties of their fellow Australians.
I want to acknowledge Mark Sugden, the fire control officer of the Hornsby/Ku-ring-gai RFS, and Mat Smith and John Hojel, fire control officers from The Hills Fire Control Centre, for their leadership during this time. I also want to thank all the brigades in the electorate led by their captains: Dave Byrne from Arcadia; Craig Woon from Berowra; Jason Plumridge from Berowra Waters; Tim O'Mahony from Brooklyn; Gavin Pringle from Cherrybrook; Grahame Horne from Cowan; Rochman Reese from Dangar Island; Jarrod Barton from Dural; David Simpson from Galston; Stewart English from Hornsby Heights; Theo Klich from Hornsby; David Williams from Milsons Passage; Scott Jones from Mt Ku-ring-gai; Gordon Morgan from Muogamarra; David Sokolnikoff from Westleigh; John Tibbitts, the Hornsby Catering Brigade captain; Stuart Clark from the Communications Brigade; and Ben De Leon from the Support Brigade.
In The Hills, I acknowledge Tony Williams from Annangrove; Chris Chivers from Glenhaven; Glynn Lloyd from Glenorie; Andrew Baildon from Hillside; Andrew Callaghan from Kenthurst; John Turnbull from Sackville North; Peter Kazzi from Maroota/Canoelands; Garry Chapman from Maroota South; Len Best from Middle Dural; Alan Clark from Round Corner; Stan Montgomery from Wisemans Ferry; The Hills Catering Brigade, led by Bev Marshall; and The Hills Communications Brigade, led by Ellen Coker.
The RFS has been well supported by the State Emergency Service. The Hornsby SES unit has provided logistics and communication support including clearing roads, property and fire-damaged trees in Glen Innes, Kempsey, Batemans Bay and other areas of the state. Assistance has also been provided to the bushfire information line and police information lines. From the Hornsby unit, I want to acknowledge their head, Reinoud Beijerinck, as well as James Logan, Adam Smithers, Michelle Whye, Nick McLean, Alex Griffith, Maddie Croft, Adrian Leung, Adam Smithers, Murray Oakley and Claire Burrows, many of whom did multiple deployments or served in multiple capacities over the fire season to assist these regions.
The Hills SES unit has had volunteers supporting the RFS in various parts of the state since November. More than 60 volunteers have been involved in supporting roles in the Gospers Mountain fires. They have been doorknocking, doing welfare checks, delivering firefighting equipment and food supplies. Over 30 Hills unit members have worked 12-hour shifts on the New South Wales RFS bushfire information line, answering calls from concerned members of the public and helping to answer their questions. Collectively, members of The Hills SES have contributed more than 1,500 hours in response to the bushfires. A special mention goes to William Agiomantis, Varon Mathew, Sally Butler and Colin Fitton, who have been on deployment to areas such as Glen Innes, Mudgee and Ulladulla, providing logistic support and incident management support to those teams fighting fires.
One of the things that has marked out this season has been the unprecedented ADF deployment, both the full-time and reserve personnel. RAAF Base Richmond has been providing air base access and support for firefighting aircraft as well as offering logistical and transport support to our emergency services. Many of the reserves and regulars who work from Richmond live in my electorate, and their efforts have not gone unnoticed. The response to the fires has involved more than just those responsible for containing the fires. I am always humbled by the phenomenal generosity of people in Berowra towards Australians in need. Local Facebook community groups have become hubs of support during the fire season, sharing important information updates and facilitating fundraising. Local businesses have established their own fundraising efforts, with local events serving as an opportunity to raise funds and bring the community together. The Dural Pony Club and Castle Hill Showground made their grounds available to anyone who needed to evacuate horses during bushfire warnings. Hearing that schools on the other side of the Hawkesbury River had been closed due to the Gospers Mountain fire, the Wisemans Ferry Public School, and its principal, Deirdre Dorbis, opened its doors to the students of Macdonald Valley Public School, who had to temporarily relocate. In what was a hugely distressing time, this act of generosity and kindness allowed the students to finish up their 2019 school year. These aren't isolated instances. Local RFS brigades have shared reports of children across the electorate, as they have done in so many places, raising and donating their own money or even just writing notes to the local brigades to lift their spirits.
One of the major events I have seen, in terms of quality contributions from the community, has been the work of Mobilising for Mogo, developed by Sallianne McClelland from Women's Community Shelters. She began this initiative with a vision of providing specially prepared care packages to the people of Mogo, working directly with Mogo Public School. This ensured no donations were wasted and that families received the goods they specifically needed. This was particularly important for families with unique needs, such as very young children or family members with disability. The first stage of Mobilising for Mogo had an overwhelming response from our community, with six tonnes of donations collected from hundreds of individuals and business donors across four days. Jo and Bryan Moffat and the team at SOS Removals and Storage in Thornleigh, and a number of local volunteers, played an essential role in coordinating, storing and transporting the donations to Mogo. Mobilising for Mogo has maintained its focused effort since that first wave of support and is now undertaking a schools-and-tools stage to ensure Mogo has the resources it needs to start the rebuilding process. The Mogo situation is one example that indicates the fires have brought communities in different parts of Australia together.
I acknowledge the comments today of my very good friend the member for Eden-Monaro and welcome him back to this House from his illness; it is wonderful to see him here. One of the communities in his electorate that he and I have talked about over the course of the summer is Cobargo. As a young father I was greatly moved, as many people were, by the death of Patrick Salway and his father, Robert, just outside Cobargo. Cobargo has always been a special place in my family's story. My great-grandfather, Louie Goldman, owned the general store there in the early years of the 20th century, and my grandfather Sam was born in the town along with two of his brothers. A family friend found several photos of my ancestors in Cobargo and gave them to me as a wedding present. Those photos have become prized possessions, connecting me to my past and constantly reminding me that Australia is as much about the small towns as it is about the big cities.
In May 2017 I travelled to Cobargo to visit the building which had housed the general store. Unfortunately, that building burnt down in the fires. While my loss is sentimental, the loss is very real for the business which the building housed—Bangles Gallery Pottery. The business had been owned and run continuously by Derwood Loth, a potter, and his late wife, Lois, since 1985, but it had been in that building since 1976—an incredible 43 years. Derwood, like so many of the business owners, is shell-shocked by what the town looks like today, with its burnt-out ruins, and wonders what the future will hold. The romance of Cobargo was the collection of beautiful buildings dating back to the last quarter of the 19th century that made up the village main street. Derwood and others wonder whether it is possible to recreate those and what sort of economic future the town will have.
Being near the fire front, the people of Cobargo and surrounding farms continue to wait and see if there will be more. The clean-up is massive, and the need to maintain support and build a sense of hope and confidence in the future for people there is so important to the psyche of the town. That's why I think the efforts that members and others have made to encourage people to buy from communities that have been fire-affected are so important. It is a reminder of the after-effects of the fires, which last long after the tumult and the shouting die. I am conscious that the losses endured in Cobargo could easily have been in one of the bushfire-prone communities in my own electorate.
Of course, the fire season isn't over. There will be more long days before the country gets a true respite. Even then, next year's fire season will come all too soon. The damage of these past months will be felt for years to come. With everyone else in this parliament, I stand with the Australian people as we heal from this fire season and rise stronger from its ashes.
Mr BURKE (Watson—Manager of Opposition Business) (16:59): My part of Sydney got the smoke. We didn't get the flames; we were a long way from the flames. But the response from my part of Sydney is something which I'm tremendously proud of and I want to say a few words about, because parts of my part of Sydney—some of the suburbs in particular—are often lightning rods for some people to use when building arguments of division in Australia. At different points people turn up with TV cameras to try to argue that in some way some parts of my part of Sydney aren't truly Australian. I think that after I explain a little bit of the effort and the response from my local area, anyone who previously had those views will be affected.
There are a series of community groups throughout the electorate of Watson that have played an extraordinary role. I'm going to go through some of them, but if anyone wants to have a look, we've launched a web page called Side By Side—Our Community Standing With Yours. On that we have been listing all the different projects that different community groups have been involved with. The total value so far is $380,000 worth of donations to various bushfire appeals from my part of Sydney, with a long way to go.
In the main street of the suburb of Lakemba, a separate office from the organisation Human Appeal was taken over and became a donation site. There were pallets and donations coming in, and as a result of work between Human Appeal, Lighthouse Community Support and Bankstown PCYC, which had already been involved in this following the fires in Taree, the level of generosity was beyond belief. Supplies were delivered to Cobargo, Braidwood, Taree, to the Indigenous community of Purfleet on Biripi land. When I say 'donations', we're talking five trucks, all donated by individual members of the community: two trucks to Taree and three trucks to Cobargo and Braidwood. In coordination with the Muslim Women's Association and BlazeAid they delivered supplies to Adelong. The amount of donations, including goods, money, transportation and time, totalled more than $100,000. We had an elderly lady come in wearing a hijab with canned food, saying, 'I have no cash to donate but they need this more than I do.' She handed over effectively the contents of her pantry.
When the trucks were going to the different fire affected communities people were saying that we had got there well ahead of the charities and in some cases well ahead of the government. When some of the volunteers said, 'What did you think of us before?' people were pretty blunt, pretty honest. One said, 'Oh, you are the people we normally don't like.' Another used a description that explains a lot, but is not parliamentary, so I can't go there. Then, when asked, 'What do you think of us now?' those community members were greeted, as they should always be greeted, as proud fellow Australians. I acknowledge Bilal El Hayek, Gandhi Sindyahn, Bashar Al Jamal and the local state member there, Jihad Dib, all of whom were involved in those trucks at different points, as well as a series of volunteers. The trucks as well were donated by local trucking firms.
This sort of effort has spread across the whole community. The Canterbury City Community Centre knitting group, based in Lakemba, has been knitting blankets for animals and trauma teddies for children in bushfire affected communities. My local rugby league club, the Bulldogs football club and Canterbury League Club pledged $50,000 towards natural disaster relief. Melkite Catholic Welfare and iMelkite, based in Greenacre, donated a further $10,000 to the Rural Fire Service. CASS Care, the Chinese Australia Services Society, set up a donations site on their own site. Canterbury Bankstown council cancelled its fireworks for Australia Day and donated $10,000. Maronites on a Mission donated $10,000. Strathfield Men's Shed has been building possum boxes and bee hotels that will be delivered where they're needed in the Blue Mountains. The Belmore Greek Orthodox parish, All Saints, has been delivering and donating kitchen goods to Central Mangrove.
The United Australia Lebanese Movement donated $5,000 to the Rural Fire Service Cumberland Zone. Sydney Muslim Cyclists donated medical supplies for on-duty firefighters at Tumut Rural Fire Brigade and donated $10,000 to the station on behalf of the Tumut Cycle Classic. Campsie RSL has raised $220,000 for bushfire relief and $50,000 for drought relief, with a further $15,000 donated to the Lake Conjola Bowling Club. Campsie RSL also donated $50,000 to Litres for the Land, a drought project.
But the challenges came as the donations kept coming in locally. There was a new problem when some of the communities started to send back the message: 'Nothing more at the moment, please,' because they were running out of the capacity to manage the level of donations that were arriving. At that point the community groups, together with Jihad Dib, Sophie Cotsis—the state members—gathered in my office and came up with the next stage of the project. It was based on discussions with the member for Macquarie, Susan Templeman, who was explaining, having been through it herself, that you get to a point after about a few months, a year or two, when you realise you were insured and the insurance is being paid, but the insurance does not cover everything. It is at that point that the kids come back with different things that were special to them. You want to give them those things and you just don't have the money.
So we decided that our local project would be for the kids in fire-affected areas who had lost their bikes. We would fundraise to make sure they can get bikes. And for kids who had musical instruments that had been lost, we would fundraise to purchase musical instruments. That is the next stage that we're going through. We're working now to try to identify local businesses in fire-affected areas that would otherwise sell bikes and musical instruments so that we can purchase from them, do the assembly back in our area, and then provide them down there as gifts. Because we don't want, as can so easily be the case, to turn up with donations and gifts which in fact do a local business harm at a time when it is desperately trying to find customers. That's the local effort, which has been extraordinary. As I say, Side By Side: Our Community Standing With Yours is a webpage where we've put all of that together. I couldn't be more proud of the community. There are more people in the other place than in this place who, from time to time, have tried to vilify my local area. Have a look at the webpage first, is my suggestion.
I also want to acknowledge, just in my shadow portfolio areas, the work of the union movement and the work of the arts community. Union members, both in their professional capacity and in a voluntary capacity, have been making an extraordinary effort. I refer to the Maritime Union of Australia and kiwi seafarers on the Far Saracen who were first on the scene at Mallacoota with much needed supplies of food, water and diesel. The civilian crews of the training vessel MV Sycamore and the supply vessel Far Senator worked to back up the firefighters to bring relief to those stranded and cut off by fires. Australian seafarers made up of MUA, AMOU and AIMPE members on board these ships worked tirelessly over a period of weeks to assist the 4,000-plus people trapped by fires at Mallacoota Beach.
When things were tough in the Blue Mountains fires, the Electrical Trades Union and the Rail Emergency Response Unit worked side by side with the Rural Fire Service to protect Sydney's train infrastructure in the Blue Mountains line and the Southern Highlands line. Their efforts were simply heroic. ETU members have been working long hours to restore power after the fires, including replacing power poles and other assets. The CEPU, the communications union, in an initiative which started amongst the posties at Wagga distribution centre—all 43 employees across the delivery centre in the Riverina Mail Sorting Centre—decided to forgo their work Christmas celebrations. Instead, they used the cash to donate items being specifically requested by a local bushfire appeal centre. They threw in over 100 bottles of Gatorade and 20 bags of Allen's snakes—a special request from the fireys on the front line.
The newly amalgamated United Workers Union established a half-million-dollar climate disaster relief fund to provide immediate assistance to members impacted by the unprecedented fires that continue to devastate communities in this country. The Transport Workers Union truck drivers have been providing relief to bushfire affected families in their spare time with their own resources. The ACTU and state based labour councils, along with many, if not all, unions have raised substantial funds for bushfire relief or encouraged their members to donate.
And here is one short anecdote from the union movement of a combined effort, because I don't think anything speaks more powerfully than this simple story about a family from Cobargo. Toby, Nicole and Layla lost their home in Cobargo from the bushfires and were made homeless. They're a young couple with a young child who have been forced to live in a campervan. The local union members from a range of different unions got together and volunteered to help rebuild their home, and they built a house for the family in 10 days. The concepts that we talk about at times like this—about people looking out for each other, people sticking up for each other—are summarised in one word, which is 'solidarity'. In many of the discussions that happen about the union movement in this place, I think it's important that stories like this are kept in mind as well.
With respect to the arts community, I came across this beautifully summarised article by someone—I have no idea who she is other than the Instagram title 'The Emma Files'—who gave a lovely summary of how many artists had come forward. I'll go to it in a bit more detail than she did. In Ulladulla, one of the generators that was keeping the evacuation centres running was supplied by a circus. Online, there have been endless auctions from 500 authors and illustrators on the Authors For Fireys campaign, raising money through auctions. An online auction for visual arts called Art Fights Fire raised a further $160,000 for bushfire relief. Opera Australia and a series of different performing arts companies had collections after all their performances. Even The Wiggles hosted a reunion show for bushfire relief on 18 January. Classical musicians in Sydney held a fundraising concert on 30 January called Music for Our Country, with all of the proceeds going to bushfires. Support actors set up a bushfire relief fund.
And those in Victoria would know that after it had started and they got the first day out of the way, the Falls Festival in Lorne then had to be cancelled because the site wasn't safe; fire was on the way. A whole lot of musicians who were about to have one of their biggest gigs of the year suddenly found they were among the 9,000 campers who had to be evacuated from the site. What happened? Spontaneously in Melbourne there were bushfire relief concerts: Halsey, Yungblud, Peking Duk, Holy Holy, Baker Boy, Bad Dreams, Totally Unicorn, Eaglemont and Lime Cordiale, all holding off their immense disappointment, making sure that they were holding fundraisers to help the people who were being most harmed. This is a wonderful time in terms of the response and a horrific time in terms of what we are responding to.
What needs to be understood is it is hard for anyone so directly affected to know the extent to which the whole nation wants to stand with them. So I speak simply, as someone from an area where we breathed in the smoke but we never saw a flame, to say that our community now is making the biggest effort I've seen in my lifetime from our part of Sydney, and for the people who are harmed we intend to be there for the long haul.
Mrs McINTOSH (Lindsay) (17:13): Please stay safe. These are the words Cumberland's own coordinator, Inspector Paul McGrath, said to his team earlier this year in a pre-departure briefing that I proudly also attended in Regentville. The Cumberland Zone RFS strike teams had already been out 24/7, fighting fires across the whole of summer, battling through intense exhaustion and fatigue. Two of their crew, Geoffrey Keaton and Andrew O'Dwyer from Horsley Park RFS, sadly, lost their lives. These selfless volunteers, including from my electorate of Lindsay, were again asked to defend the homes and lives of their neighbours and were departing for Cooma. I will never forget the inspector's parting words and the feeling in the room that day—all in together, like family.
I often say that Lindsay is full to the brim and overflowing with community spirit, and it has not been truer than in our local RFS response to this terrible fire season. In Lindsay there are seven RFS brigades, and I would like to commend Paul McGrath for his tireless work and tremendous commitment to his crews. I spoke with Paul the morning after the tragic events of Horsley Park, and the only thing on his mind was the welfare of his crews. Despite losing two of his team, as tightly knit as a family, the crews and Paul did not leave their posts; they were out again within two days, ensuring the safety of fire-affected communities across the state, and ensuring these communities were in the most capable hands. Paul was also consoling his grief-stricken team.
Many of us will have a personal connection with someone who has been affected by a fire. People have lost their homes, properties, livestock, pets, belongings. Some have made the ultimate sacrifice. Many of us will have a family member or friend who is part of their local Rural Fire Service, like the captain of the Orchard Hills Rural Fire Brigade, Greg Speed, who has spent 26 years with the brigade and has been captain for 17. He has been up and down the New South Wales coast and inland, where the fires have been at their fiercest. Greg has been rightly recognised with an Order of Australia medal for his extraordinary service, and I'm so proud that he is a person that is a resident of the community of Lindsay.
Our communities are coming together to support our neighbours in the worst of times. In towns like Clarence and Dargan, which were once thriving, families are now trying to rebuild from complete devastation. Over Christmas, I met with Monica, who lost everything in the fires. Despite this, she came out to help others by unloading home kits that I delivered to Dargan and Clarence with the RFS. Monica, her husband and four other members of their RFS crew lost their homes in the fire while they were out trying to protect their community. Monica took me to see what remained of her home. I have stood in the remains of too many fire-devastated homes. It is surreal, it is emotional, and it is so very hard.
Just over two years ago, my parents lost our family home of 40 years to fire, as well as every single material belonging they owned, including many of the personal items I grew up with. But we didn't lose my parents, because our families and friends and their love for each other got them through. I worry for older people in our communities who have lost their homes in these fires. It is so hard to rebuild when the home you raised your family in is completely gone. It takes part of your spirit. In 2013, my brother and sister-in-law and their family lost their home to the bushfires that went through the Blue Mountains. The fire came so fast that my sister-in-law barely had time to put shoes on her feet and get out of the house with my niece, who was a toddler at the time. Once again, my family had to rebuild and find the strength and resilience to get through this painful and traumatic time, just as many families are doing across our country now.
With my own experience of having lost family homes to fires, I understand how incredibly painful this is. I also know that part of the rebuilding process starts with a community wrapping their arms around you, and this is exactly what my community of Lindsay has done. Donations are coming into my office at fast speed for community care kits. These are home kits filled with new items that people I know and people I've spoken to who have lost homes know are needed in the first few weeks after a fire—new items of linen, towels and things that will help people get through those days, including stationery for kids. We're building back-to-school packs for children, to get them ready to go back to school, with stationery, pens, pencils and all those things that kids need to start their school year. Members from across our community have gone out of their way to collect these items. I thank everyone in the community of Lindsay and beyond who has taken part.
After we delivered the first kits to Clarence and Dargan I received this message from a Clarence resident:
Dear Melissa, On Saturday I attended the meeting at Clarence fire shed and was given a box of wonderful items which will help me on my journey back to normal. My house was burnt to the ground on 21st December, not a thing remained. To now have a kettle, toaster, pegs and many more essential items is just wonderful. Knowing that people care about my community has been such an incredible boost to me and at times it is totally overwhelming.
The incredible effect of regaining items as simple as a toaster and a kettle demonstrates just how devastating it is to lose everything you own in a fire. I thank everyone who has contributed to these kits.
In conclusion I'd like to talk about volunteerism in Australia and my community of Lindsay, where it is so strong. In January I visited the crew of Llandilo RFS, who told me about their time on the fireground this season, describing the ferocity of the fires and the extent of the toll on the crews. The captain of the Llandilo RFS, Rick Burns, described the feeling of realising on the way to fight the blaze that both his wife and daughter were on the same truck as him. He made the decision to split the family onto different trucks. They feared the worse. They were going out into difficult conditions. They knew they were doing this. It was unprecedented. But they still went.
Our local volunteers from Llandilo, Regentville, Mulgoa, Londonderry, Castlereagh, Berkshire Park and Orchard Hills have been answering the call to help our fellow Australians in need. I've asked the RFS brigades what they need. The response is loud and consistent, 'We need more rain and we need more young volunteers.' I'm very proud that there is a school in the community of Lindsay that is helping with just that. Led by teacher Peter Horan, St Paul's Grammar School has a cadetship program that is linked to the RFS. Students train in basic firefighting techniques and the use of equipment, trucks and portable pumps. They are building the future volunteers in this school. I encourage more schools across our nation to have a program like this.
Australia pulls together in tough times and, despite the recent devastation and tragedy, I'm extremely proud to represent our community in this time of overwhelming selflessness and generosity. As the Prime Minister reiterated this morning, what unites us is greater than what divides us. I'd like to finally conclude with a verse from a hymn that was sung this morning at our church service prior to parliament resuming. It was a memorial hymn after the fires in Victoria. The first verse is:
Now thank we all our God for lives beloved and cherished,
the brave who faced the flames, the young and old who perished,
for those who fight the fires that sear our country's soul,
for all who give relief to comfort and make whole.
Mr CLARE (Blaxland) (17:23): Words can't really explain what has happened over the last few months, not like those images of the blood red sky over Mallacoota, of kids wearing smoke masks to help them breathe or of people huddled on beaches with their dogs, cats and horses just to escape the fire; the anger in the voices of firefighters being interviewed by the media; or the photo of the little boy having his dad's service medal pinned to his little chest do. This is a nightmare that's going to take us all a long time to recover from. We've had bushfires before—and we give them names like Black Saturday—but we've never had anything like this. This is 'black September', 'black October', 'black November', 'black December', 'black January' and now 'black February', and it's still not over. Just to put this in perspective—about as many square kilometres of Australia have been on fire over the last few months as have burned across the whole world in the last year. People have been forced to run to beaches and to jump on boats just to stay alive. People have died hundreds of kilometres away from the fires—in places like Canberra and Melbourne—just from the smoke. The time will come to look at what we did and what we failed to do. Today is not that day, but that day will come.
A couple of weeks ago I went to Buxton, just south of Picton in south-west Sydney, and on the side of the road there there's a makeshift memorial—a few helmets, bunches of flowers and some messages. It's where Andrew O'Dwyer and Geoff Keaton died when their truck rolled over, back in December. It's an eerie place. And it makes you wonder, when you visit there, what happened, and what must have gone through their heads in those final moments—what those final moments must have been like. It made me wonder why RFS trucks don't have roll bars on them and, if they'd had them, whether the outcome might have been any different. I don't know. Up and down the street, out the front of people's houses, there are signs saying things like 'Thank you, RFS' and 'Thank you, superheroes.' In our own way I think that's what we're trying to do today—to say thank you to those heroes: the men and women that wear those yellow uniforms that stood between us and those awful fires.
Heroes come in all shapes and sizes. Down the road from Buxton there's a little town called Balmoral. Balmoral's got about a hundred homes. Twenty of them were destroyed by the fires. In the local hall, which has become a recovery centre, I met a woman named Kim. Kim runs her own business, but for the last few months she's been running the recovery centre there—handing out everything from food to nappies and power tools: anything and everything that the community needs. She's also in the RFS; she wears the same yellow uniform. I asked her whether she was getting the compensation payments that the government had announced. She told me, to my surprise, 'No.' She said that because she's not considered frontline, she doesn't get those payments, even though she's there and has been there for more than a month helping the people in that community to rebuild their homes and rebuild their lives. It strikes me that it's just wrong; it's stupid, and it's something that could be easily fixed.
Today is also an opportunity for me to thank my local community for everything that they've done over the last few months, big and small. We weren't touched directly by the fires, but all of us in the local community have been affected. We've seen it in the sky. We've breathed it in and we've felt it. Almost every church, mosque, temple and community club has done their bit—run a raffle, raised money, held a fundraising dinner, done something to help their fellow Australians. I want to give a special shout-out to Dr Vinh Binh Lu, who organised a dinner three days before Christmas for Andrew and Geoff's family, and raised an incredible $84,000. I also want to thank the guys behind Maronites on Mission. They donated $10,000 to the people that live in Buxton and Balmoral.
I want to give Jihad Dib and Bilal El Hayek and the team at Bankstown PCYC and Lighthouse Community Support a plug. Back in November, these guys put out a call to our local community asking for donations. They got inundated with food, water, toys and toiletries, and they ended up delivering five trucks' worth of goods to different parts of New South Wales. And then in January, they did it all again and took three trucks and two vans to Cobargo and to Braidwood. A week later they took a van full of donated things to Adelong, and they've just taken another truck up to Taree.
They're just a couple of people; they're just a couple of organisations. This country is full of good people and great organisations like that. They don't do it for a medal; they don't do it to get their name mentioned here in this place. They do it because they care about this country and the people who live in it.
About two weeks ago I drove from Batlow to Cooma, and it's hard to describe what I saw. Everything is black. The trees are black, from top to bottom. The dirt's black—everything. It was pouring with rain, and the smell of ash and charcoal was thick in the air. It felt like a scene out of TheLord of the Rings, like the end of the world. Driving along that road for a couple of hours had a big impact on me. I can only imagine what it's like to drive that road every day, to live in that community, seeing that destruction and smelling it every day.
This disaster's affected all of us in different ways. I've had mates who had to be evacuated. I've had members of my family who almost had their house burnt down. But what I keep thinking about—what I can't stop thinking about—are those two men, Andrew and Geoff, and their two little kids. They were dads. Their kids weren't much younger than my little boy. And I keep thinking about that image of Geoff's little boy, Harvey, getting that service medal pinned to his little chest at his dad's funeral, and Charlotte, Andrew's little girl, wearing her dad's helmet at his funeral. I keep thinking about the questions they must be asking their mums: 'Where's Dad?' 'When's Dad coming home?' How the hell do you answer those sorts of questions? I keep thinking about all the other boys and girls whose mums or dads wear the same yellow uniform as Andrew and Geoff did and what they must be thinking, and maybe not even telling their mums and dads, and the fear that must run through them every time Mum or Dad gets called away.
There is so much that we need to do differently. There's so much we need to learn from the last few months. We owe it to them, to those little boys and girls, to make sure that next time we're better prepared, that their mums and dads are better prepared and that we here do everything we possibly can to keep their mums and dads safe. If we do anything, if we learn anything out of this nightmare, then please, please let it be that.
Mr GEE (Calare—Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) (17:32): On behalf of the electorate of Calare I'd like to extend our sincere sympathies and condolences to the families and friends of all those who've lost their lives during these tragic bushfires. This has been an extraordinarily difficult time for our electorate and our region. About 65 homes have been destroyed, many have been damaged, including the loss of quite a few homes of RFS members. About 600 rural landholders have been impacted. Almost 200 outbuildings have been destroyed or damaged. Countless kilometres of fencing are down. There is stock still wandering the roads of our region. Many of our farmers, tragically, have had to shoot stock, many of which they were handfeeding to get through this drought.
It's taken a huge physical toll, an emotional toll and a financial toll. Pastures have been burnt out. For a region already reeling under the devastating effects of this drought, these bushfires have seemed like a hammer blow. They have swept a huge trail of destruction from Oberon to Clarence and Dargan to Lithgow, up through the communities of the Castlereagh Highway, Capertee, Running Stream, Cullen Bullen, Clandulla, Olinda, Coxs Creek, Rylstone, Bogee, the Capertee Valley—the list is enormous. Despite the huge trail of destruction and the misery left in the wake of these fires, it is truly miraculous that no lives were lost in our area and that countless homes were, in fact, saved. Before these fires hit, our residents also had to deal with the excruciating tension of this looming threat that hung over them for weeks and, in some cases, months. It was a tension that seemed to increase and get ratcheted up every time a new fire event happened. So, to all of our fireys, our SES and emergency services personnel, the farm crews and the private firefighters, the heavy plant and equipment operators, the council workers and all the community volunteers who've supported them, I would like to extend the gratitude of our region to you all. I can't name you all in this House today, but the simple truth is you are the ones who got our communities through this, and we'll forever be grateful for all that you've done for us.
On the day that the fires hit Clarence, Dargan and Lithgow, I was in Lithgow itself. I was at the Lithgow fire control centre in the morning. I was with community members after that. But, when the hills around Lithgow absolutely exploded, and they did, I was standing outside the Lithgow Workies Club, and I will never forget what I saw that day. The hills and mountains in front of me just, as I said, exploded; they lit up. As I looked to the south and to the east, the same was happening there. There were people coming into the Workies Club who were visibly upset and shaken. There were trailers of farm animals and pets pulling up. People were scared. There was smoke everywhere. There was a hot wind blowing. The air was filled with the noise of sirens, and then the emergency services vehicles started racing around. Not far from the Lithgow Workies Club, just a matter of blocks away, houses started to go up in flames. You could see it. The fires were inside the perimeter of Lithgow city itself. Police, who were attending the surrounding streets, were grabbing fire hoses and trying to hose down the roofs of residences. And then evacuees started coming into the Workies Club, and the full scale of this devastation started to become apparent. It went on all through the afternoon and into the night.
I was there when a little girl called Milly, a lovely young lady from Lithgow, found out that her home had been all but destroyed by these fires, and I was there when she ran into the arms of her dad and he told her that they weren't going to go back to their house that night because of the fire damage. Her first reaction, through the tears, was: 'How's Santa going to find us? How will Santa know where we are?' Someone said: 'There's a Christmas tree here at the Workies Club. Santa will know that you're here.' But Milly was very upset. We were trying to comfort her, and I said to her, 'Milly, what would you like for Christmas?' Through the tears she just said, 'I'd like a new house.' Those were her words. What do you say to that? As it turns out, Milly's dad—and Santa—had a bushfire survival plan. Santa did find Milly, and the family is doing well, although it's going to be a difficult road. The impact of these fires on children can't be underestimated.
There are also other stories of miraculous deliverance, and I take the township of Cullen Bullen as an example of that. It's a wonderful community on the Castlereagh Highway. I was in the RFS shed at Cullen Bullen on the day that a gathering of residents and RFS crews was called. The captain of Cullen Bullen, Darcy McCann, was there, as was the captain of Capertee, Steve Dalli. They were told there was an inferno coming their way and that, while everyone would do their best, they couldn't rely on outside help coming in and they may just have to deal with it on their own. When that news was delivered I think everyone was shocked by it, but I was mightily impressed by the calm and professional way that Darcy and his team took that news and went about preparing themselves for what was to come.
It's hard to believe that these are volunteers. I came back to the brigade on the night the fires hit and I called Darcy very early the following morning. I said, 'Darcy, how did you go last night?', because we all knew it was going to be a rough night. Darcy said to me: 'They came right through, mate'—the fires came right through. There was a long pause on the phone, and I didn't want to ask the next questions, so I said, 'Darcy, how many homes have been lost?' He said: 'We didn't lose any; we saved every one of them. We didn't lose one.' That mighty Cullen Bullen brigade did get some help. They had a little bit of luck from Mother Nature in terms of the winds, but what that one brigade did for their community was extraordinary.
A couple of weeks ago I dropped in at Darcy's place. We had a beer together and we discussed the experiences of the brigade at that time. He was telling me about what they had done to prepare, how it wasn't just the RFS crews out that night, it was the community members as well. They'd organised the community members in the defence of their town. I still can't believe that Cullen Bullen has been saved. I was reflecting on this with Darcy and I asked him how he felt about it. He said to me, in a very modest way: 'It's just what we do as Australians, isn't it?' That is what we do. That is what fireys like Darcy do day in, day out. And they did it for weeks. It wasn't just around Cullen Bullen: most of the crews had been fighting fires all around the region and some further afield as well. The Glen Alice captain, Bruce Richardson, and his team had been in the field for about 80 days when the fires finally started to wind down. They are out in the Capertee Valley. The communities of the Capertee Valley were surrounded on three sides by fire, and they lived with that fear for about 80 days.
I was at a community meeting at Glen Alice just before the area took the brunt of the fires. There is a palpable apprehension, and I would say fear, in these situations and it's at times like that when the community looks to its leaders like its RFS personnel and other emergency services personnel. I was extraordinarily impressed, again, with the way these volunteers handled that situation, such a calm and professional way that they went about defending their communities. This is something that's been repeated all over our region. The Oberon brigade, led by Lance Sulley, have been engaged in firefighting all over the state. They had members up on the North Coast. I caught up, for example, with Ross McDonald from the nearby Burraga brigade just before Australia Day. He was rattling off so many fires that they had been to it was like a verse out of the song 'I've Been Everywhere'. These are volunteers. How many of us could give up our occupations for 80 days to go and protect the lives and homes of others?
I saw senior brigade members—RFS members who would have to have been in their 80s—coming off an all-night shift early in the morning. A couple of them could hardly walk to their cars, they were so tired. The physical toll of fighting fires in this mountainous country was enormous. I saw our young fireys at work—firefighters like Kieron Pritchard from Mudgee, Beth Slender, Max Beechey and Jess Honeysett, all who served with such distinction.
I was in the forward command vehicle at Rylestone showground one day when I saw a young firefighter called Charlie Rafferty at work. Charlie is the son of a farming family from the region. Although he works as a paramedic in another part of the state, he'd come back to help the brigade and his community. When I was with him that day there was a house under direct attack from the fires. I'm not sure precisely where, but I believe it was in the Coxs Creek area. I could hear it happening over the radio. I could hear the air support being called in. I heard an American voice come over the radio. They were in one of the water bombers. There was a homeowner on the ground being supported by a chopper doing water bombing, and then RFS crews came in as well. One of that person's family members came into the showground at that time and was asking about their family. They mentioned that there was another family member, with a young child, on the road. Charlie, who's only in his 20s, knew exactly where the fires were and made it very clear to that family member that the car with the child and the other person—I think it was the child's mother—needed to get off the road fast. Charlie is a young man in his mid-20s. We'll never know, but I believe that, in doing that, he saved two lives that day. I then heard the air support being called in with amazing precision, and they saved that home and the homeowner.
Not long after that I was standing near the community kitchen at Rylestone and I saw a guy come out of a chopper. He was wearing what looked to be US military fatigues. I heard him speaking and I assumed he was the person whose voice I'd heard in the chopper, which had done such remarkable work that day. So I went and thanked him for everything he'd done. To him, I think, it was just his job, but I'd like to extend the gratitude of our region to all of those who came in from overseas. In our area we had Americans, Canadians—even Tasmanians; they're from overseas as well! We're very grateful to them all.
Seeing these young fireys in action was extraordinary. I think our future's in pretty good hands if we've got volunteers like these young people saving lives and taking on such huge responsibilities in times of emergency and crisis. It wasn't just the senior fireys and it wasn't just the younger ones; people of all ages were there. I have to mention local legend Group Captain Alan Selman, also known as Yowie to his many friends out there. There are so many people to acknowledge, and unfortunately I can't do it all here.
I was at a bushfire recovery meeting at Hartley a few days ago. I was there when Lydia Kolar thanked Greg Noble and Hartley RFS brigade member Rod Gurney for the homes they'd saved in the Lawsons Long Alley area of Hartley Vale.
As fire swept through that area, four RFS members and Greg were at Lydia and her husband Vick's place. Vick and Lydia had prepared well and were ready, but it sounded truly terrifying. The blaze was so intense that there was no going in or out for anyone. Greg isn't a current RFS member but he has his own mobile firefighting unit and used it to help save Vick and Lydia's home, as well as others. A couple of hundred metres away, Rod got his brigade members to shelter behind a house they were defending as fire swept over it but somehow didn't burn it down. When they came around the front again, it was so hot and the blaze was so intense that the wheels on their RFS truck were on fire. Rod, Lydia and Greg will tell you they were just doing what they had to. But, make no mistake, these were indeed life-or-death moments.
There were crews and brigades doing extraordinary things from one end of our region to the other in some of the most inhospitable country you could ever fight a fire in. Take Nullo Mountain for example. It's rough and rugged country and the defence of Nullo fell to a small brigade at Olinda, led by Michael Suttor. I've been up there twice to have a look. Once, when the fires were still raging in the area. It looks like an absolute wasteland up there in terms of the devastation. It is remarkable and a testament to the skill and the hard work of those brigade members and all of those who support them that so many homes were saved in such rugged country. And it was not just the brigade members. You had the dozer drivers and the heavy plant operators, like George Bucan and Roger McNally. These people put their lives on the line just as much as the RFS brigade members. I've seen video footage of it. It was truly terrifying what they did.
Whenever these fires come into an area it's all about getting containment lines down and trying to stop it. The people who are also on the front line of that, and who perhaps don't get the recognition that they should, are the dozer drivers and the heavy plant operators, plus the private firefighters and farm crews, like the Webb family of Tarana and Olinda.
The Ilford/Running Stream brigade ran like a military operation and it was led by Captain Matt Maude who, amongst other brigade members, met the Prime Minister when he came to Ilford. It ran like a military operation but in some respects it resembled the pit straight on Mount Panorama, because the fire trucks would come in and the crews would get out and usually head to the kitchens, where they would rest and get something to eat. Then the community volunteers would move in, clean the trucks, get them refuelled, get water in, and then, just like at Mount Panorama, a new crew would come in and they would be ready to take off again. This went on for weeks. I'd watch Matt Maude and his team at work and, again, I kept having to remind myself that these were volunteers. It was gruelling, tiring and sometimes back-breaking work. But they were at it, day in, day out. We had asked so much of these people, and at times I wondered if they could continue to carry the burden, but they did.
I look at the Clarence/Dargan brigade. Several members of that brigade lost their own homes on that terrifying day when the fires came through there and Lithgow. I was at Clarence last week for a bushfire recovery meeting. I was speaking to the brigade members. They were telling me about how the blazes were coming at them from all sides up on the Bells Line near Dargan. The New South Wales fire and rescue teams and the RFS crews formed a huddle, which is a modern-day version of circling the wagons. They circled their vehicles, put the civilians in the middle along with the civilian vehicles, turned on all of their sprinklers and hoped for the best. They did a bit of back-burning there as well. Remarkably, again, there were no lives lost up there. But it has been truly devastating. They were showing me a video—which I've now put on my Facebook page—of the brigade driving through 'hell on earth' on the Wolgan Road in the Wolgan Valley. You can see them going through the fire and you can hear the audio. There are rocks and boulders coming down at them. There are trees falling in the area. The truck in front has blown a tyre. Yet they kept pushing through. That was just one small part of a long campaign for that brigade.
Of course, it is now about supporting the community members and brigade members who have lost their homes. It's going to take a long time to rebuild and get everyone back on their feet. In Capertee, Steve Dalli and his brigade did an extraordinary job in helping to save their local community from destruction as well. I would love to name all of the brigades and their members but I can't because time does not permit that. But, through it all, behind them was an army of community volunteers—including those manning the kitchens and the food preparation centres at places like Lithgow Fire Control, where Doreen Peters, from Hartley RFS, and her team worked for many weeks making sure everyone was looked after and well fed and had the energy to carry on. Felicity Creswell and Glennys Lilley, out at Ilford/Running Stream, made an amazing effort over many weeks. The Rotary Club of Rylstone Kandos served 2,900 meals over 22 days. These are community organisations and community volunteers—individuals like Rhonda Collins, whom I met at Lithgow Fire Control. On that awful day in Lithgow, volunteers like Rhonda just turned up and started helping in the kitchen; and Rhonda was there again the next day as well. Kianey Crothers, from Kandos, organised provisions for many brigades in our area around Kandos and beyond. And then there was the Kandos Community Shop, the Rapid Relief Team out of Lithgow, local health services, service clubs and church groups. The list goes on and on.
And now we are into the recovery phase of this emergency, and the work continues. It's not going to be easy. Our communities came together in response to this emergency and they have come together in the recovery. There is a wonderful community example—Rick and Bev Anderson, at Cherry Tree Hill, which is near Running Stream on the Castlereagh Highway. Rick has been an RFS member for many years. Tragically, when the fires came through, Rick and Bev lost their home. They lost everything. Since that time, they been living in a borrowed caravan, which is in a shed not far from where they lost their home. Despite losing everything, that wonderful community, which came together and united to meet the threat of these fires, is now uniting again to build Rick and Bev a new home. It's been extraordinary to watch this home rising just over the hill from where Rick and Bev's old place was. It's being built by community members. The walls are just about complete, and this weekend they are expecting to get the roof trusses on. Business and community members from all over our region have been uniting and assisting with items for Rick and Bev's place. Petrie's Mitre 10 are supplying the roof blanket. Amos Water Tanks, at Cowra, are providing a water tank. There are other organisations and businesses providing other items such as septic tanks. There is an electrician from Sydney who is coming up to do the wiring. Our communities are rebuilding and they are moving on, but this recovery will take years.
Through this whole emergency and recovery I've seen many things. I've seen great bravery, courage and valour. I've seen extraordinary despair and heartbreak, but I've also seen great love and generosity. What I've also seen is the strength of our country—I've seen it—and the strength of our country comes from our communities and those in it. I think that while we have such people, such volunteers, who are willing to serve a cause greater than themselves, then our country will continue to endure as the wonderful place that we love and call home and is the best place on the planet to live.
I will conclude by, again, thanking all of those fireys and brigades from our region, and all over our nation, who came in to assist; all of the emergency services personnel and our volunteers; and also our fellow Australians who have come from all walks of life and all places from around our country to help us get through it. I would like to say that our communities will never forget what all of those people have done for us and we will be eternally grateful.
Though this rebuilding task may take many years, our communities, as I've outlined in this presentation to the House today, are strong and remain strong and it is that strength which will carry us through the rebuilding process. All of these communities and citizens who have been affected by these fires will see a brighter day. I would like to thank everyone who came in to assist us and who has continued to assist us since that day. Thank you.
Ms CATHERINE KING (Ballarat) (18:02): As we know, for months our nation has been facing an unprecedented fire crisis. Instead of the summer being a time for relaxation, a time for family, a time for those long, lazy days on the beach, communities across the nation have faced a summer of stress, persistent and ongoing anxiety with heat, smoke and the need for never-ending vigilance.
Those of us who live in regional Australia know the impact of fire well. This summer it was the season where the fires came to our cities too. Choking smoke in our capitals, thousands of holiday-makers from Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra evacuated and facing frightening scenes as they fled. Fires in Mill Park on the outskirts of suburban Melbourne. And it still isn't over, as fires still threaten communities across our nation.
In recent days, we've seen new threats, including not far from this place, to the south of Canberra. In my own community we've had fires near Clunes, Daylesford and Myrniong just last week. We are still in the middle—the middle!—of the worst fire season in this country for a very long period of time. Our climate is changing. We are facing drier, hotter and prolonged fire seasons. These fires started in September. Our season, if we are lucky, will end in March. We have seen terrible fires before but never over such an extended period of time and in so many parts of our country at once.
As things currently stand, more than 3,000 homes have been lost, with that number sure to rise as many of the communities, particularly in the hilly areas, are yet to even be accessed by assessors. More than 11 million hectares of land are burnt, with significant impacts on our livestock, our farming infrastructure, our roads and our natural environment.
Tragically, today we grieve for 33 people who have lost their lives in these fires, including nine of our firefighting personnel. Our hearts break for every one of them, their friends, their families and all who knew them. They died defending their homes and their communities. Some have died defending communities very far from their own, sacrificing their lives to keep others safe. In particular I mention the three American firefighters who died tragically in New South Wales only weeks ago. The Australian people are so grateful for the service of firefighters from overseas.
At Ballarat Airport in my electorate, every fire season we're home to US and Canadian pilots and crew. They are there for over three months, generally. They are stationed in my community and communities like mine across the state of Victoria and every other state in this country. They're stationed there to protect our communities. I joined them on Australia Day for a barbecue. I know how much they and their colleagues give up to carry out their incredibly dangerous work each year. We cannot thank them enough. They are an incredibly tight-knit community of firefighters—they all know each other and their families know each other well—and I know they feel the loss of their colleagues and their friends very deeply.
Much has been said about the efforts of our firefighters, whether they are permanent firefighting staff or volunteers, whether they are from our local forest and parks services or, indeed, from the ADF. In fact, we had firefighters from Airservices Australia out fighting fires. You have done an incredible job; I think it is very important for us to say that. My experience of firefighters is: despite your incredible efforts, you often go home and, while you may not talk about it, you often focus on what was lost, not what was saved—the house that didn't manage to be saved. Every firefighter I speak to will tell you about that. But so much has been saved. I say to them: with every single hour that you've worked, every meal at home that you have missed, every family occasion that you have not been present for over this fire season, you have made a difference. We thank you. I know just how exhausted so many of you are. Please, please stay safe as this unprecedented fire season continues. We want you all to come home to your families.
We also extend an enormous thankyou to the public servants, relief workers and volunteers from local councils across the community and from charitable organisations, who have mobilised and spent long hours coordinating support for those who have lost so much. I've seen this dedication firsthand visiting fire-affected communities: a smaller fire at Lexton, near my home in Ballarat; and in Bairnsdale and, in particular, Sarsfield, in East Gippsland, just last week, where 60 homes were lost. I've met community leaders, incident controllers, local business owners, relief workers and volunteers. As is the nature of these events, I met people from Mildura, from my home town of Ballarat and from Geelong, all in Bairnsdale carrying out important relief and recovery work. Strike teams from my region have been across the state, fighting fires, as well as across New South Wales and some in Queensland.
It's hard enough to manage a recovery effort after fires have gone through, but a challenge at another level is that recovery is underway while fires are still burning, while incident control centres are still fully operational and while recovery is needed in communities. It will be a long, slow process of recovery and rebuilding. Throughout this process, our regional communities will need all levels of government to come together and provide clear, unambiguous support. This help will have to continue long after this summer has faded from the headlines and long after it has been talked about even in this place. This help will need to support businesses to rebuild infrastructure, rebuild roads, support individuals and strengthen communities.
I met with the mayor and staff of East Gippsland Shire last week. They told me that the council is still working through the full cost of rebuilding across the shire, with fires still burning. But they know at this stage that more than half of the council's 2,500 kilometres of road will need repair. Sixteen timber bridges are destroyed, and many kilometres of boardwalk in the tourist areas of Mallacoota will need to be rebuilt. The council stressed that, while conversations regarding the national disaster recovery arrangements are progressing very well, there are restrictions on the type of infrastructure that it covers. It generally only covers essential infrastructure, and there are questions around what 'betterment' means and what the betterment provisions are. For example, they don't know whether they are able to replace the tourism boardwalks that have been burnt out throughout Mallacoota because it is not necessarily essential infrastructure; although it is to the Mallacoota community. But whether here in Canberra it is considered as such is still unclear.
It is also important that the federal government releases funds to local councils much more quickly than has been done in the past. Experience shows that it can be, for the national disaster relief arrangements to kick in, six to nine months before councils actually see the cash. I also heard loud and clear from a number of locals in East Gippsland just how hard this bushfire emergency has been on businesses and on workers, not just those physically impacted by the fire but beyond, and many of my colleagues have spoken about that. If there are to be any businesses left standing in these communities around this time next year, we are going to need to do much better than concessional loans and encouraging people to spend time in these communities. That will help some, but it will not be enough to save many of these businesses in these communities.
Finally, in my contribution, I want to say we have to learn from these fires. There will be a royal commission and parliamentary inquiries; they're necessary. But with bushfires likely to still burn across the country for months, the window we have to prepare for the next fire season is getting shorter and it's almost upon us. We cannot go into another fire season without having a national plan, without having better resourcing for our aviation firefighting efforts across the country and in our regions, without a clear role for the ADF and when to mobilise them, without having agreed and done much more in the area of hazard reduction, without having talked to former fire chiefs and learnt from their experiences and without, as a parliament, having finally, after 20 years of argument, taken meaningful and sustained action on climate change. If we are to learn anything from these fires, those are the things we must do as a parliament before the next fire season is upon us.
Mr CONAGHAN (Cowper) (18:13): Like many in this chamber here today, our community of the Mid North Coast has been through the most harrowing and challenging of times. Coming off the back of one of the driest years on record, we had our bushfires in late October, November, and December, and the pain for our community remains very raw and palpable. The residents I've spoken to described the bushfires as firestorms—fires covering over 140,000 hectares, with intensity from trees so dry they literally exploded. I start by offering my sincere condolences and sympathies to the families and friends of Barry Parsons. Barry was a resident of Willawarrin who lost his life when the Carrai East firestorm swept through Willawarrin. Barry was described as a gentle guy and, sadly, the last contact from him was on Facebook, describing the approaching blaze as 'apocalyptic'.
I also offer my condolences to the men, women and children who lost their homes in these devastating fires. A total of 156 homes were destroyed in my electorate of Cowper: 26 near Port Macquarie, 66 homes west of Kempsey and a further 64 homes near Macksville and Nambucca. But many hundreds, perhaps even thousands, were saved. In my travels throughout the electorate, I saw home after home where the landscape was burnt up to the back door, only to be saved by the brave men and women of the RFS. It must have been terrifying, yet they stayed there and saved all of those homes.
I offer my condolences to our region's farmers—our community backbone. They've had the loss of stock, pets and machinery; the scorching of the land which they love; and the loss of homes and sheds, containing not only their livelihoods but memories, often handed down from generation to generation. These fires have had a major impact on people—their lives, their possessions and their livelihoods. All have been severely impacted and upturned: good people, like Terry and Gigi Welsh—a husband and wife who served our country in the armed services, only to return to their five-generational family home. They lost everything. I met with Terry and Gigi at the RSL club in Macksville. Just like so many others, they considered themselves fortunate and others less fortunate. The hardest thing for Terry and Gigi was, in fact, returning to see what was left and being reminded every day of what had happened. They were looking forward to cleaning up and removing that scar on their property which they once called home.
There are people like Carolyn and David Duff, who single-handedly saved their home but lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in sheds, plants, machinery and livestock. When I walked on their property it resembled the face of the moon, not the once-fertile grazing and crop-growing property of former years. Perhaps hardest of all was that David lost his working dogs that he'd had for many years. We all know they are not things you can replace overnight.
Residents in some of the worst-hit areas, like South Arm in the Nambucca Valley and Willawarrin and Bellbrook in the Macleay Valley, have justifiably described their areas as war zones. Their landscape has been burnt and blackened. Telecommunications and vital services, like electricity and water, were completely destroyed and, in some instances, are still to be fully restored. I must thank Chris Simon, a local Kempsey man who happens to work for Optus. He not only arranged for a generator for one of the RFS brigades but he also organised a satellite dish and free prepaid mobile phones for the communities of Willawarrin and Bellbrook so that not only could they communicate between themselves but with loved ones outside Kempsey and Willawarrin. And they were able to communicate through the further fires that ultimately came.
Councils and community groups have also been greatly burdened as a result of these bushfires. Councils have lost infrastructure and facilities. Kempsey Shire Council had four community facilities destroyed and nine damaged; Nambucca Valley council had two facilities destroyed and six damaged; and Port Macquarie had four community facilities burnt and two damaged. These councils have had their resources massively stretched as they have put their shoulders to the wheel to help impacted communities. Now they face the dilemma of where to put the remains of properties, as waste stations can't cope under the enormity of the clean-up.
But, as with all natural disasters, the worst of times can often bring out the best in people. This is certainly what I've seen in the electorate of Cowper over the past three months: local men and women taking leave from their jobs to fight fires with the Rural Fire Service and non-profit groups, councils and churches banding together to provide evacuation centres and help. I went to the evacuation centres in showgrounds, clubs and community halls, and I saw the anguish and uncertainty on all the faces of those who had fled the fires. But they were looked after, as we look after our community. Local businesses donated food, goods and transportation. Other volunteers and businesses from far away offered support in so many ways—businesses like 2 Smokin Arabs, who travelled five hours from Sydney to provide free food at the Lake Cathie thank you to fireys.
I'd especially like to thank the Lewis Land Group CEO, Chris Calvert. The Lewis Land Group recently developed Sovereign Hills, just near Port Macquarie. On the opening of their new shopping centre, the Lewis Land Group gave $100,000 to the Sancrox/Thrumster and Lake Innis rural fire brigades. That's $50,000 each. This would equate to hundreds, if not thousands, of hours at Bunnings selling sausages or standing at what we call 'the doughnut' at the McDonald's near the highway rattling the tin. It is a huge investment into our community, and I cannot thank them enough.
Overseas countries like New Zealand, Canada and the United States of America have sent personnel—men and women—to help protect life and property alongside our own rural firefighters. My thoughts and prayers are with the families of the brave firefighters who made the ultimate sacrifice with their lives trying to save our communities. I'm blessed to have witnessed the camaraderie of all those volunteer firefighters in the dorms, like the one set up at Charles Sturt University in Port Macquarie. Charles Sturt University provided over 3½ thousand individual nights to the RFS. With this, the Tacking Point Lions Club cooked breakfast and lunch every day for three months. I cannot thank Charles Sturt University, the Tacking Point Lions Club and all the other volunteer organisations and individuals enough for what they did.
I'm blessed to have witnessed the kindness of strangers who travelled from unaffected parts of Australia to be at BlazeAid camp to help rebuild our farmers' fences or to volunteer with charities and the numerous Sydneysiders who travelled 500 kilometres up the highway to Willawarrin to provide meals for locals as they were rebuilding. I cannot thank enough all the emergency services personnel on the ground and in the control centres.
But now is the time to recover. My community will be three months on from the worst of the bushfires this Saturday 8 February. I will be reflecting on our recovery journey at a thank you event for all our rural fire services at Port City Bowling Club on Saturday night. We have come a small way, but there is a lot more that needs to be done. Each area, as it is ready, is transitioning to the longer-term recovery plans that are locally led. We're looking at how we can build back better, how to make our communities more resilient to bushfire and how to spend the various financial assistance packages on offer.
I thank the government for those packages, but I strongly urge those who are making the decisions in handing out that money to do so with compassion and empathy, not clinically or coldly. Most people find it difficult to ask for help without being scrutinised or belittled. It is pleasing to see some of our government's disaster relief assistance flowing to people in my area already. So far, over 10,000 claims for disaster relief payments have been made to people across Cowper. And, in relation to the recovery grants for bushfire affected primary producers, our government has established that 52 applications have already been made across Cowper. I was also pleased to see that the amount allocated to primary producers has now increased from $15,000 to $75,000, which will see a lot more money flow to our farmers in need.
As for our wildlife, Minister for the Environment Susan Ley's commitment of $50 million nationally in January was well received, and I'll be advocating strongly for further assistance as the next phases of our environmental response roll out. The impact on all wildlife, but particularly in my area on the koalas, has been deeply felt in the electorate of Cowper. Volunteers at the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital have been working tirelessly to assist koalas injured in the blaze and to provide drinking stations in the bushland. So worthy has their cause been that the Koala Hospital's GoFundMe page raised $7.7 million in an extraordinary feat which once again shows the extent of the kindness shown by people from around Australia and the world.
My area of the Mid North Coast is heavily reliant on tourism. Coffs Coast suffered the cancellation of the World Rally Championship in November due to the bushfires, and this impact alone is estimated to be worth $14 million to Coffs Harbour. Tourism operators and business groups keenly await further detail of the $76 million tourism support package announced by our government last month. They hope it will provide avenues to encourage more visitors to the region. I have met with many businesses reliant on tourism individually and in group sessions. Many of these businesses have lost up to 80 per cent of their income. Most of these earn that income over a three-month period between November and January. I acknowledge that they are on their knees.
My staff and I have been active in the community and have undertaken a range of activities to help people in their recovery. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of my staff. The unseen nights, working weekends and acting more like counsellors to victims rather than electoral officers—your service is invaluable. Individually, we have helped constituents access various human services assistance measures, emergency accommodation and food. We have helped deliver telecommunications assistance to rural fire brigade sheds and community facilities. Collectively, we have helped to deliver a roundtable with the Minister for Women, Marise Payne, to support women's networks during this time of recovery. I thank Ministers Payne, Ley, McCormack and Littleproud for coming to my electorate to offer real and tangible support. I also thank state ministers Leslie Williams, Melinda Pavey and Gurmesh Singh, as well as Mayors Peta Pinson, Liz Campbell, Rhonda Hogan and Denise Knight for their commitment to our community.
I will continue to make myself available. I will be holding 10 mobile offices between now and June to try to alleviate some of the disruption and ease some of the pain to my constituents as we move forward. We will recover, we will rebuild better, we will learn lessons and make changes. Memories will fade but we will not forget the heroic actions of thousands of Rural Fire Service volunteers as well as ordinary Australian men and women who did extraordinary things for their fellow Australians.
Mr FITZGIBBON (Hunter) (18:28): I begin my contribution by associating myself with the remarks of all earlier speakers, who have expressed their sympathy and condolences to the families of those who lost their lives as a result of the terrible bushfires. There were far too many. Thirty-three valuable lives were lost, including nine firefighters and, of course, three American veterans, who were here helping us fight this very, very terrible challenge.
For brevity, because I know many speakers want to make a contribution, I associate myself absolutely with everything the Prime Minister and everything the opposition leader said about our amazing first responders; firefighters, both paid and unpaid; volunteers more generally; emergency services; and the broader community. As so many have said, climatic challenges like this, natural disasters like this, bring out the best in all Australians. I'm not suggesting we are unique—I'm sure that's true of people in all countries—but there does appear to be a certain resilience and toughness about Australians, a certain commitment to our fellow man and woman, when we are in trouble like this. Some of these volunteers and service organisations—people who have given so much so unselfishly to others without any expectation of reward—have been just amazing.
In 2009 I attended the aftermath of the Black Saturday bushfires as defence minister and I saw some terrible things there. I thought and hoped I would never see them again, but, over the course of this summer, I've seen a repeat. I do trust, in part off the back of the royal commission that the Prime Minister has established, that we will learn many lessons from this. I might return to that if I feel I've got time to do so.
The fires have been impacting on communities since winter last year. When I first started to attend the fireground, in November last year, I could not have imagined what was to come next. I would suggest that, if the only fires over the summer had been in the Hunter Valley, we would have been hearing and reading about them for many, many weeks, if not months, to come. In the Cessnock LGA, for example, we lost 21 homes alone and many more other buildings. We had a huge firefront which stretched from the upper reaches of the Hunter Valley pretty much all the way to the Central Coast—much more than 100 kilometres in length—and it was very ferocious.
My first visits occurred in North Rothbury and Greta in November. By December I was in the Laguna-Wollombi area, where there was a very real threat to human life. The work done by the Rural Fire Service and others there was amazing. The local community was amazing in its response. The thing that sticks in my mind most about that visit is the plea from so many for aerial assets; we didn't have any available then. It made me think of the poor person somewhere—in Sydney, I suspect—who had to make decisions about which fires to prioritise in those situations. There is no doubt that these areas in Wollombi and Laguna were worthy of aerial support, but it appeared that someone was having to decide that those assets needed to be somewhere else even more. I can't imagine being the person having to make that decision.
We could not have ever imagined that the situation would get so bad so widely. We could not have imagined the ferocity, the scale or the geographical reach. I think we were all thinking of Dunkirk when we heard that the Navy and merchant seamen were being dispatched to rescue people off beaches on the South Coast. If you'd told me a year ago that that might happen here in Australia, I'd have shaken my head in disbelief. But it has happened here in Australia, and, again, there is a lot to learn.
People have spoken generally about the national situation, so I won't take too much time doing so. I acknowledge the pain and suffering of people in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia, in particular on Kangaroo Island. That has certainly been very widespread.
I want to say something more about our Rural Fire Service volunteers. It is true that they do their task—their training and their work—very willingly and expect no reward, but many of us fear that the climate is going to remain challenging and, God forbid, we may have similar incidents like this in the future. No matter how well we plan, no matter how well we are resourced and no matter how well we respond, it is possible. It's unsustainable to expect volunteers to leave their families and their workplace and to be out there on the fire ground for weeks on end—with one uniform, I'm told, by the way. I've been meaning to fact check that one, but someone did complain to me that it's an amazing thing that firefighters, ones doing their training voluntarily and out there risking their lives, are issued with one uniform, yet they're out there for days on end and weeks at a time. It may be a relatively small issue, but it highlights the inadequate way we are resourcing them and the extent to which we are expecting things of people—well beyond what I believe we should be expecting. If you're threatened by fire in Sydney you get paid firefighters coming to your place. If you're threatened by fire in regional Australia you're likely to have volunteer firefighters coming to your aid. Something doesn't add up there. Like so many of our other voluntary emergency organisations we expect them not only to leave their workplaces or their small business to risk their lives but to run the raffles in the pub to raise money for the resources that they need to do their work. That just seems wrong to me. Yes, another system would be expensive, but what is the cost of not acting and how can we expect people in future years to volunteer for these organisations if we go on expecting people to do the sort of work, gratis, that we've expected of our volunteers this time around, risking their lives under such strange circumstances? It is hard to tell your crew that you've taken a decision to spend tomorrow with your family rather than come to the fight. It is very, very difficult. Once you're in you are in for the long haul. We can't expect people to be signing up to these tasks in the future if we don't better resource them, better reward them and give them more assistance in fulfilling their task. It makes no sense to me, and I don't believe it to be sustainable.
These bushfires, coming on the back of the still existing drought—of course, the bushfire season is not over yet—are going to have a huge economic cost. We've seen the human cost in loss of life and in injury, including the psychological effects; the cost of the loss of property, of course; and the cost to our natural environment with the loss of flora and fauna and the damage that's done to our ecology. All of these have economic cost attached to them. Then there is the cost to those who have left their small business to volunteer and the cost to employers who generously let their employees go to fight fires rather than be at work. And there is an enormous cost to the economy more generally. We'll be counting that cost for many years to come. It's certainly a very significant cost in my region. My fires stretch from places like Morisset and Cooranbong, on the western side of Lake Macquarie, right through the Wollombi-Laguna region to Greta and North Rothbury in what you might call central Hunter, then right up to Bulga and Milbrodale and those parts of the world in the upper Hunter.
The fires were broad, geographically, but we are a region which relies in large part on the visitor economy, and on wine tourism in particular. The Hunter wine country association has estimated that $42 million has been lost in three months as a result of a fall off in visitation. Of course, our wine industry has been dramatically affected by smoke taint. For those who aren't familiar with that, the fact is that the smoke makes its way into the grapes, making them somewhat unattractive for the making of wine. Many vignerons have taken the difficult decision not to get the grapes off the vine this year. Bruce Tyrell, one of the larger, if not the largest, growers in that part of the world, has decided not to get any grapes off this year other than for a small amount of grapes further north on a different vineyard which is sufficiently distant from the source of the fires.
I want to thank Minister Littleproud, who has been very cooperative whenever I had to make contact with him on issues in my electorate. One ongoing conversation I'm having with him is around the inability of vignerons to get assistance for smoke taint. The way the guidelines stand at the moment, if you lose your vineyards to the fire, you're capable of securing assistance or at least applying for assistance. But, if you lose your crop because of the smoke coming from the same flames, you're not eligible to make that application. He has lent a sympathetic ear to that, and I hope that at some point he might be able to change those guidelines so that those people can get the assistance.
The assistance measures from governments generally have been welcome, but they're not enough. I don't say that to make a political point. They're just not enough, and there is no way in the world we can get through this recovery phase and beyond without significantly more money from the Commonwealth government. The Commonwealth government is the holder of the purse strings. It has the resources, and we have to be asking ourselves: what is the cost of not spending more? We need investment in the regions and we'll need a lot of it. We use the word 'recovery' as if recovery means getting us back to where we were before the bushfires broke out. But the fact is that we weren't in a very good place anyway because of the protracted and intense nature of the drought. I do believe that we'll need a lot more money for marketing, we'll need a lot more assistance for those directly affected and we'll need a lot more in terms of infrastructure.
Regional Australia is under enormous pressure. The industries are struggling to maintain their social licence. We have drought, we have bushfires, we have floods, and we need to do a lot more work to further diversify our economies so that we're not so exposed to these natural disaster events. I don't say that to make a political point. We'll need to spend a lot more money, and sometime soon, affecting those who are directly affected by both drought and bushfire.
I want to single out a friend of mine, Glenn Byrne. He is the commissioner of the Rural Fire Service in my region. I've known him for decades, going right back to the time when I was on Cessnock City Council. He and his people did an amazing job in my region over the course of the summer, and I want to thank them for their excellent work. It's appreciated in the community, and I add my thanks to all those other organisations, including the Red Cross, St Vincent de Paul and others who have made amazing contributions assisting those who need it.
In closing, I want to say something about climate change. The Prime Minister, in his contribution today, talked about climate change. He acknowledged that it is real, that changes in our weather patterns are making the bushfire threat much worse. He fell short of extending that conversation to the extent to which the activities of humans are making a contribution; and while he touched on adaptation and mitigation, he chose not to further that conversation today. I have no problem with that because today wasn't the time and he had lots to get through. But we have to stop having this fight about climate change. Climate change is real. Human activity is making a substantial contribution. We need to do something about it. I think 195 countries in Paris agreed that is the case, so they have acknowledged it. They've acknowledged they need to do something, they have acknowledged the need to take collective action, yet we're still having a political argument about it. It's killing all of us; that's the truth of it.
We don't necessarily have to dispense with or forgo Australian jobs or industry to do something. A Labor government did it the last time we were in office, and I would argue very strongly and confidently that if legislative architecture were still in place today no-one would even know it. The costs would be minimal—certainly carbon would be trading at substantially less than $23 a tonne—and we would have the credibility in global forums to argue that those who are not doing enough should be doing more. But we don't have that capacity now because we're not doing it ourselves. While the Prime Minister does his best to argue that we are, the fact is that his own departments tell us we are not.
I don't say this to spark the political argument again—of course not. I say this for exactly the opposite reason: we have to get a political settlement on this issue. We shouldn't be spending so much time and energy arguing about causes and links and responses. People don't want us arguing about those things. People know the weather is changing. The overwhelming majority of people accept that it makes sense that greenhouse gas emissions are making a contribution. That's what all the scientists tell us. So let's just get on with it. Let's find some common ground. Let's strike some common sense.
There's a thing called the precautionary principle. I say to members opposite: even if you don't believe there's a link, why take the risk? I'm hoping my house doesn't burn down, but I still take out an insurance policy. I do that because the consequences of being wrong about the chances of my house burning down are very, very substantial. So I take out the policy. Ask yourselves the question: if there's any chance that our activities are making climate change worse, shouldn't we take out that insurance policy? We should do something about it because it might be too late to do something about it in 10 years time. We should be doing it now. We shouldn't be arguing about it. We should be focusing absolutely on our capacity to respond to the here and now and how people are affected by our changing climate, whether it be drought, bushfires or, indeed, floods and cyclones—whatever it might be—because we all know that the economic cost to industry of being hit by those natural events is very substantial.
It is not that hard to put in place the policies required to meet the commitments we made in Paris. There will be debate about what that commitment is, because the science behind getting warming below two degrees is not an exact one. Does it mean reducing carbon emissions by 30 per cent or 40 per cent or 50 per cent? The truth is that no-one can put an exact figure on it. But the overwhelming balance of scientific evidence is that we need to do more than we're doing now. We cannot expect to preach to others on the international stage who might not be doing enough when we're not doing enough ourselves. I'm certainly up for it. I hope others sitting opposite are up for it too.
This debate has been going on for all the time I've been here. That will be 24 years, Mr Deputy Speaker, in March this year. It's gone on far, far too long. It's not doing any of us any good politically and it's certainly not doing our standing in the community any good. They are sick of it too. We've got to get the red herrings and mythologies out of the debate. We're all saying the same thing; we're all saying we believe in it and we have to act. The only thing missing is the 'act' bit. It's time to act.
It's a great tragedy that Tony Abbott, when he was elected in 2013, chose to repeal the architecture we had in place. If he hadn't, those laws would still be in place and we'd have enormous credibility in international forums. We'd be doing more than our bit, and I think we'd all be benefiting as a result. So this is a plea from me to all members of this place and, indeed, in the other place to find a settlement on this issue.
Like most people, I found the events of summer pretty scary. I've watched the New South Wales minister Andrew Constance with great interest. He's obviously been dramatically psychologically affected by what he saw over the course of the summer and what he experienced—not only himself but his community. I'm not suggesting that if we did something different on climate change tomorrow it's going to stop a bushfire next year. I accept that, but we have to start somewhere and we should have started a long, long time ago and now we have to make up for that time.
In closing, I want to quickly say something about hazard reduction and associated issues. There is something wrong there and that's why I hope the royal commission does look at these aspects as well as the climatic and other issues. My own view is that we've had a risk averseness creep into the equation. Decision-makers are obviously less inclined to approve a burnoff, whether that be the state authority with respect to national parks or whether that be local Rural Fire Service authorities with respect to private land. I too would be reluctant. The opportunities for the cool days you need to burn are shrinking and declining. There's more fuel out there. When a fire starts it's likely to be more intense than we've ever seen before because of the hot temperatures and the amount of fuel available. I can absolutely understand why someone doesn't want to be the person that approved a burnoff that went wrong. As we know, there was one burnoff in this summer which led to the loss of four homes—thankfully no lives. I thought that day about the person who approved that burn. It's a great leap of faith to provide that approval and maybe that's one thing we need to address—whether it's a group of people I don't know. I don't have the expertise about issues that are largely the domain of state governments. I think there are a whole range of issues there. There's no doubt that if there's a greater capacity to do more in prevention in that sense then we should look at it. I hope the royal commission looks at it very, very closely and finds the answers. Let's hope that we do learn these lessons and we collectively come up with the responses required to ensure that—I am not saying we didn't respond to this fire well—we can respond to another fire, God forbid, if it comes along much better than we were able to this time around.
It's probably the third time I've said it, but in closing I want to say one other thing. People keep telling me they've seen these bushfires before. It's part of the denial. 'This is nothing new. This happened 100 years ago somewhere.' Well, in those days we were putting them out with garden hoses and wheat bags. We didn't have aerial assets. We had none of the technology we have now and we were struggling this time around. I think that's the difference that people have to factor in when they're trying to compare the fires we saw this summer with fires of the past. This one was different and I heard so many experts say that. So many experts said they have never seen fire behave like this before. We have a lot of work to do. I thank, again, all those who in any way have given their time and their energy in the assistance of others over the summer break.
Ms LANDRY (Capricornia—Assistant Minister for Children and Families) (18:53): I wish to join my federal colleagues and acknowledge and honour all those who have so bravely and selflessly served through the ongoing bushfire crisis, in particular those who have lost their lives. Their courage has been extraordinary and it is a spirit which we must honour. We have lost too many Australians to this disaster and it is fitting parliament will rightly acknowledge all those who have lost loved ones, those who have suffered injuries or lost their homes.
These fires have been devastating, but through these horrific times we have also witnessed the Australian spirit on display. We have seen untold devastation throughout Australia due to these horrific bushfires, from Kangaroo Island off the coast of South Australia to Peregian Beach on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. One of the many areas affected during this bushfire season was Livingstone shire in my electorate of Capricornia. At approximately 12 pm on Saturday 9 November, a fire broke out on Old Byfield Road in Cobraball. Over the next two hours the fire spread rapidly, threatening lives and properties. At 2 pm on Saturday, a watch-and-act message was distributed to residents, and doorknocking commenced. An hour later, the local disaster coordination centre was activated and an evacuation centre was established at the Cordingley Street basketball stadium. By 5 pm a state of fire emergency was declared.
Saturday, and overnight into Sunday, were trying days for our community, with the fire continuing to spread due to adverse weather conditions, including changing wind patterns and very high temperatures. Over 800 properties were without power and mobile phone coverage was lost. On Monday 11 November a community return plan commenced, with multiple agencies conducting assessment and approvals. At 5 pm on Wednesday 13 November the evacuation centre was closed, as all persons in the evacuation centre could go home, and on Thursday 14 November, at 12 pm, all the roads were reopened, and by Friday, all affected roads were reopened.
There have been 429 assessments collected, with a total of 56 structures totally destroyed, including 15 houses, one mobile property, 38 sheds and two unclassified structures. Four sheds were severely damaged, along with 15 structures suffering only moderate to minimal damage. Over 12,000 hectares were affected, with a frontage of 17 kilometres by 13 kilometres wide. Five hundred hectares of grazing land and 275 hectares of horticultural production land, including tropical fruit production, were all lost.
They have just started to get back on their feet, thanks to the category C level of assistance outlined under the National Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements. Two hundred and forty-three businesses were identified as impacted or identified within the immediate fire damaged area, with Department of Agriculture and Fisheries assessments being conducted. In total, 747 properties rated against productivity land use were identified within the impacted area. There was also considerable loss of income for periurban producers and other small and medium enterprises in the fire impacted area. When we acknowledge that this is the ninth disaster event this community has seen in 11 years, the earning capacities of periurban producers have been severely hindered. Evacuated residents and businesses were also unable to feed and water their stock for extended periods during evacuations and road closures.
Myself, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister for Water Resources, Drought, Rural Finance, Natural Disaster and Emergency Management visited bushfire affected farms and properties. I thank them for accepting my invitation to witness the devastation and to offer what little comfort we could. Jack and Rae Cowie lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in destroyed lychee crops. Robert and Jocelyn Sikes in Bungundarra also lost a significant portion of their earning capacity after nearly all of their mango trees were destroyed. Anthony Sylvester, who is the Bungundarra Rural Fire Brigade's first officer and who owns Dynamic Eggs poultry farm, lost over 400 chickens in the blaze. Richard Benson, on Newby Road, also lost thousands of banana trees.
Faith and Darren Gordon lost their home to the bushfire. Even after experiencing this trauma, they told ABC Capricornia:
We love Yeppoon, we love our property—even though it burned, we love this place and we'll never leave.
We are no strangers to bushfires or disaster events in Capricornia, and the courage that volunteers and emergency personnel have shown over the past year is truly astounding. In November 2018 we experienced devastating bushfires further north in my electorate, near Sarina, and just outside my electorate in Gracemere, near Rockhampton. Finch Hatton, Dalrymple Heights, Eungella, Campwin Beach, Sarina Beach, Carmila, Blue Mountain and Sarina Range were all affected, and thousands of residents were evacuated. Even a beloved landmark near Rockhampton, the Capricorn Caves, weren't immune to these bushfires in 2018. Thankfully, due to their preparedness, staff were able to evacuate the entire site, including staff members, guests and animals, in under five minutes. And on the edge of my electorate, and of that of the member for Flynn, lie the townships of Kabra and Gracemere. The residents of these towns were saved by mere inches nearly two years ago. I am enormously proud to be the federal member for these communities who, in times of considerable hardship, will rally together and fight against almost insurmountable odds.
The response to the recent bushfires has been unprecedented, with thousands of volunteers and paid responders working around the clock, day and night, to protect property and save lives. The federal government has turned out the biggest-ever response to a national bushfire crisis, with $2 billion in funding committed. Over half a billion of that has already been committed to programs. In Livingstone shire, the Liberal-National government has paid over $162,000 in Australian government disaster relief payments to 140 total claims as of yesterday.
In summary, Australia is coming together to respond to what has been an unprecedented series of natural disasters, with bushfires affecting so many different states. We will continue to do whatever it takes to support fire affected communities right across Australia, to help them rebuild, recover and become even stronger in the future. Thank you.
Dr CHALMERS (Rankin) (19:00): Thanks very much for the opportunity to comment on the fires, to speak on behalf of my community and to convey our admiration and appreciation for all of the Australians who have been impacted during this horrific fire season, and also our admiration and appreciation for all of the fireys and first responders and other service providers who have done so much to try and make sure that people and property and livelihoods are protected.
There have been so many outstanding contributions to this debate today, and I think in particular of the member for Macquarie. The member for Macquarie talked about having lost a home herself in an earlier fire season. The member for Macquarie talked about the relentlessness of this fire season, and I think that does perfectly capture what so many communities in our country have been dealing with. How else to explain a fire season which came much earlier than what we have been accustomed to or that, months after those first fires, all the way back in September or August last year, there are fires still raging?
Fires have consumed huge swathes of Australia, whether it be in the Adelaide Hills, where my mother-in-law lives, whether it be East Gippsland, whether it be the South Coast of New South Wales or, as the member for Capricornia just reminded us, whether it be the fires that affected Central Queensland at the very beginning of this fire season. Indeed, they came close to my place around the Scenic Rim in the south-east corner of Queensland as well. Having spent time with some of the fireys who are operating out of the Boonah control centre servicing South-East Queensland around those Mount Barney fires and some of the other ones, it really is a remarkable thing to consider just how many communities have been impacted by this fire season. I think the member for Macquarie's words about the relentless nature of this fire season have captured it just so well. How else to describe the horrifying waves of wind and heat and embers and choking smoke?
Now this motion today, as I said at the outset, is an opportunity to convey that admiration and appreciation that I know everybody in this parliament wants to convey to communities and to first responders and fireys. And I do want to acknowledge the Prime Minister picking up the suggestion made by the opposition leader that we do dedicate the first day of parliament to recognising those contributions, paying tribute to them, but also, of course, acknowledging that we have lost 33 human souls, thousands of properties and more than a billion animals—and that's before we get to some of the other impacts on mental health and the like. This motion is also an opportunity to hear so many of the stories from around Australia, and I think members on both sides have done a terrific job conveying those stories, telling those stories of real people impacted by this horrific fire season.
The motion itself talks about learning the lessons of this devastating summer of fire—and there are many lessons. Yes, there are lessons about hazard reduction. Yes, there are lessons about what we can learn from tens of thousands of years of Aboriginal management of the land. Yes, we can learn about the resilience of our telecommunications network, about the proper resourcing of our national broadcaster being literally a matter, in some cases, of life and death, and about how even in the hyperpartisan nature of our politics in this environment here in Canberra there is the capacity to work across party lines from time to time. We have heard from the member for Eden-Monaro and other members about that, and I wanted to acknowledge that.
We've also learnt about how, in times like these, real leaders step forward, not back. I want to acknowledge the leadership of the member for Grayndler, of course, but also—looking up earlier in the gallery and seeing Shane Fitzsimmons—the extraordinary capacity for leadership that so many of our people in our fire services and elsewhere in our community have exhibited at times like these. And, yes, of course, there are lessons to be learnt about the impacts of climate change as well.
I think when big disasters hit, big events like this, whether it be wars, depressions, financial crises or natural disasters like the big fires we're seeing now, you learn something more profound about this country. You learn something deeper. When this country is tested, as it has been this summer, you learn something more fundamental. This summer I think we've learnt something about the most important part, I'd argue, about our national character—that is what I think of as a kind of a reflexive Australian instinct for selflessness. In Australia, we have an instinct for selflessness which explains, in many ways, the success of our country. We see it in the stories that we've heard of the fireys, in particular, who put a higher premium on the safety and security of others than they put on their own safety and security, doing shift after shift after shift under the most extraordinary pressure that most of us could not even imagine.
I want to say, as difficult as it is—and the member for Blaxland did this earlier; the Prime Minister did this earlier—whose heart doesn't hurt at the thought of those kids, those little kids in particular, growing up without their dads? Who doesn't wonder what that phone call to wives and partners was like? Who doesn't wonder how much those little kids in particular understand about what happened to their dad? And if they don't understand it now, at what point will they understand? And who will tell them of their dad and what he was doing when they lost him? These are things that make all of our hearts hurt.
We learnt in this disaster that Australians are capable of the most remarkable compassion and empathy. What makes that even more incredible, I think, is that we've shown, with the waves of donations and all of the things that people are prepared to do, that people are capable of this empathy and compassion even for people that they have never met and probably never will meet, in places they've probably never gone to and may never go to in their lives. That's an amazing thing. Empathy and compassion is amazing in all of its forms. It is easier to be compassionate towards somebody you know, somebody you come across or somebody you have an experience with, but Australians have reached into their pockets for people they'll never meet in places they may never go to, and that is an amazing thing. Many of us will never know what it's like to stand in the backyard and see the pace of a fire coming up a ridge towards your property, but I think most people can imagine what it's like to need a hand or to feel helpless or to not know where to begin. That empathy and that capacity to walk a mile in somebody else's shoes has defined and described what has happened since the fires first hit.
I want to acknowledge my own community. My community doesn't have a lot of spare cash rolling around in it—that's the truth of it. We've got our own share of challenges. We haven't had any of the fires within the boundaries of my electorate, but it's been extraordinary—a bit like the member for Watson said about his community, as they're very similar communities in Sydney, and in my case in Logan City in the southern suburbs of Brisbane—to watch people who don't have a lot reach into their pockets for somebody else. That's amazing. We had a fundraiser at our craft beer brewery and everybody came and bought a beer for a firey. Our local gyms got together and did Logan's Biggest Bootcamp. People made donations and sent them to the RFSs. Our Buddhist temples in Rochedale South, Marsden and Waterford held fundraisers. They raised thousands and thousands of dollars. One temple raised $35,000 and sent it to the RFS. So many of our community groups have been helping out. Another community group paid for all the water out of the command centre at Boonah that I mentioned before. People were emailing me about holding movie nights. They were asking where they could send the money they raised at barbecues in their backyards. Kids were out the front of our shopping centres selling lemonade and cakes they had made, and donating that money to the Red Cross and the Salvos. It really was an incredible thing.
My community is remarkable but this was common in lots of communities around Australia. There were other things too. One of the things that stuck in my mind was the thoughtful people who worked out that, even if people's houses had burned to the ground, they would like to return to their property. So they started arranging caravans for those people so that they could park on their property and have some kind of connection. I thought that was really amazing as well.
The member for Gippsland said something that stuck with me when he was making his characteristically kind contribution a bit earlier today. He said, 'Don't forget about our community when the cameras are gone.' I think that's a really important thing that we need to remember. The fires are still raging now but, because they've been going for so long, it is tempting to think that they are under control. They are not. The member for Macquarie, in her contribution, said she hopes the spirit of cooperation will continue. If you think about that sentiment, it is really important that we take this instinct for selflessness and try and apply it to the other areas in our national life—our other big challenges that we need to meet together. There is nothing more Australian than looking out for each other and looking after each other. It is true in wars. It is true in depressions, financial crises and natural disasters. If there is only one good thing to come out of what the Prime Minister described as 'the black summer', it is that it has been a summer of selflessness as well.
Mr PASIN (Barker) (19:12): It has been an unprecedented beginning to the season. My deepest sympathies go to all those who, devastatingly, have lost homes, property, stock and, tragically, loved ones. In particular, I join with the Prime Minister in offering my sincere condolences to the families of the nine firefighters who have lost their lives fighting these fires. In Barker, there have been a number of fires across the electorate. The Adelaide Hills fires, whilst predominantly in Mayo, also impacted on residents in Barker. We also saw fires at Carcuma, Coonalpyn, Bunbury and Nangwarry. Local firefighting units did an amazing job in containing these fires before they did too much damage. To these local heroes I say thank you.
While these local fires may not have achieved the national attention of the devastation we have seen in the eastern states or in the Adelaide Hills or on Kangaroo Island, the communities I have visited in the last few weeks and the people who have lost so much have certainly not been forgotten. One of the worst hit communities in Barker was Keilira. Started by dry lightning on the morning of 30 December, the fire there burned more than 25,000 hectares, with a perimeter of 76 kilometres. It destroyed three houses, more than 2,000 bales of hay, sheds, vehicles, hundreds of kilometres of rural fencing, crops and more than 3,500 head of livestock.
Following an initial tour of the fire ground in early January and a community meeting, I returned to Keilira last week. But this time it was as a volunteer with BlazeAid. I have volunteered with BlazeAid a few times over the years and I'm always blown away by the organisation and its volunteers. This summer they have been outstanding, with camps set up in bushfire locations all over Australia helping to rebuild critical infrastructure like rural fences. While this infrastructure is a vital part of the recovery process, the volunteers also help to lift the spirits of bushfire victims.
BlazeAid volunteers work in communities for many months, not only helping individuals and families on their properties but also helping to rebuild local communities. The lift in morale in Keilira with the arrival of BlazeAid was obvious to me last week, and I can't thank the organisation enough for what they are doing. Like many regions across the country, Keilira is in a mobile blackspot. One of the biggest issues on the day of the fire was the inability to communicate, particularly when the landlines went down. I've heard sobering stories of 000 calls failing at critical moments. Thankfully, no lives were lost.
And, while those in this place may think I'm starting to sound like a broken record on this issue, I've got to say it again: we must continue to invest in fixing mobile blackspots in this nation. Mobile phone service is no longer a luxury; it's a necessity in many situations. And, while better regional communications can have a positive impact on our regional economic activity, it's also a critical safety issue. While we must always be vigilant and never rely on one form of communication, having limited options to begin with is unsettling to say the least. I'll continue to lobby for increased funding at every level of government and with the network operators to address this issue.
I just want to call out in particular the Mayor of the Kingston District Council, Ms Kay Rasheed. Kay is a hardworking and diligent mayor. She's done an amazing job in relation to this fire, all of which would be enough, but, if I was to tell this place that hers was one of the most affected properties during this fire, to see her rise up as she has in a leadership capacity, despite her own personal circumstances—I really do need to draw that effort to the attention of the House.
The heroes of this summer are undoubtedly our fireys. I join with the Prime Minister and my colleagues in this place and, indeed, all Australians in my admiration and gratitude for the brave efforts of the thousands of firefighters who selflessly attended bushfires this summer. The vast majority of our firefighters are volunteers living and working in rural and regional Australia. These are the men and women that help make up our regional and rural communities—the practical quiet achievers with the can-do attitude that never ask for thanks or praise for what they achieve, whether it's helping to feed the world or whether they're contributing to our national economic prosperity or leaving their own homes and properties to help defend that of their neighbour. To you we say thank you. Words could never express our nation's gratitude well enough.
Our regional communities are resilient, and we roll up our sleeves, rebuild, recover and get back to business. It will take time, and our government will be there to support our communities and the vital industries that contribute so much to our economy and our nation's prosperity. The bushfires, like the drought, have taken a toll on agricultural industries. The loss of stock and crops and the damage to land and infrastructure will reverberate along the supply chain.
We're also counting the terrible cost from the loss of forestry plantations. It's still to be determined just how extensive these losses are, but the rebuild and renewal process will be long and it will be expensive. Our forestry industries must not be forgotten, and we must thank them for the role they play in fighting and preventing fires. Both plantation and native forestry play a critical but perhaps sometimes unappreciated role in risk reduction as they maintain firebreaks, manage vegetation and deploy their firefighting units in times of need.
I've thought a lot this summer about the fact that when we see fire we run in the other direction. When the brave, selfless firefighters see fire they run towards that risk to protect us. And it's not just members of the Country Fire Service. It's also volunteers on farm appliances, it's members of the SES, it's members working for government departments and agencies and it's also forest workers. I particularly want to call out our heroes in high-vis, who jump on their forestry equipment and run straight towards that harm to protect us from it. I'm incredibly grateful that they're members of my community. They stand shoulder to shoulder with CFS and SES agency staff to defend us from this harm.
Finally, I want to pay tribute to the individuals and communities within Barker who are volunteering or donating their time, money and goods and services to those who need them. From local bake sales to hay runs, community fundraising events, and the tip jars in local cafes and restaurants, Barker is stepping up to help not only those in need in our own community but our fellow Australians. It makes me incredibly proud to be part of this great country and incredibly proud to represent such a giving and resilient community.
Ms PLIBERSEK (Sydney) (19:20): One of the first things that visitors to our country notice is the quality of the light—so distinctive to this country. When British novelist DH Lawrence travelled here in the 1920s, he wrote of a land where:
The sky was pure, crystal pure and blue, of a lovely pale blue colour: the air was wonderful, new and unbreathed …
Certainly that has not been our experience this summer. This terrible season of fire, burning at a scale that we've never seen before, has replaced that familiar blue with a hellish orange haze which has lasted for months.
Few of us have been untouched by the crisis. Whole communities have been driven from their homes. Businesses and properties have been destroyed. Worst of all, 33 people have lost their lives tragically and before their time. Each left behind a grieving family. Children have lost parents. Parents have lost children. Partners have had their worst fears realised. Many communities are grieving and our nation is mourning. Many of those lives lost belonged to people who could have avoided danger but instead felt it was their duty to help where help was needed. We are eternally grateful to them and their families. That's what today is about, and I hope that those who have lost so much take some comfort from today and, most importantly, from the tenderness and the love that we continue to show them as a community.
I'm also thinking about the thousands of anxious hours for people who were caught in the fires, not knowing whether they would make it out, or who lost touch with a loved one who was caught in the fires. That fear doesn't heal overnight. We have to make sure that we support people until it does. Over 3,000 homes across Australia have now been destroyed. That's 3,000 families who have been thrown into chaos. This week we had kids starting school—some for the first time—and going home at the end of the day without a home to go to. Losing a home is devastating; again, that loss doesn't heal overnight.
I still remember when bushfires ripped through Como, Jannali and Bonnet Bay, where I grew up, in 1994. One woman died tragically while trying to take shelter in her swimming pool. Years later I ran into one of my friends from school, whose family home had burned down. She said to me that it would still strike her, just out of the blue, years later. She'd be thinking, 'Oh, that pair of socks would go with that outfit,' and suddenly realise that that pair of socks had disappeared years before; they were gone. She'd just forget for a second, and then she would remember all over again that she'd lost everything from her teens and from her childhood.
We have to stay with people during this long process of rebuilding after losing their homes. We have to make sure the insurers do their bit—I think the history has been a little mixed when it comes to the response of insurers after natural disasters. And we have to make sure that every level of government does its bit. We have to make sure that we are addressing issues—for example, the tradie shortage that is likely to emerge and the shortage of supplies that we see during some large rebuilding tasks. Many, of course, have lost their livelihoods: businesses are closing and going bankrupt as tourism dries up even in the height of the tourist season. Orchards have burnt down. Vineyards are experiencing smoke taint. Livestock has been lost on farms. Many of the members on both sides who have spoken today will tell you firsthand what their communities need. It is up to us as a parliament to make sure that those communities are listened to, and that things that can make a practical difference are done immediately. Beyond the parliament, we can all help in this economic rebuilding task: take a weekend away and take an esky with you, as many have suggested, do a bit of shopping in a local community that has been affected.
Estimates vary, but at least 11 million hectares of land have been burned so far—an area larger than the whole of Portugal. Thousands of firefighters, including full-time professionals, volunteers and international firefighters, have been at it for months. They have been supported by countless people, paid and unpaid: volunteers offering logistical support, community organisations, charities and ordinary citizens. Without pause or hesitation, people have accepted their duty to each other as neighbours, as Australians and as fellow human beings. It has been genuinely inspiring to watch; our thanks go to all of them. And we should not imagine that when the fires pass, the trauma for these people is done with. We shouldn't let this be a passing moment. It can't be something that we worry about in summer and forget by winter. When the ash settles and the news reporters—as a few have said—have moved on, bushfire communities will still be rebuilding for years. As the member for Macquarie has pointed out, she has only just moved into her house six years after she lost her home in the bushfires.
As a federal parliament, we have a very important role. Over the coming weeks, months and years, we need to ensure that no-one is left behind and no-one is forgotten. We also have to accept that the world is looking to Australia now—they're looking with devastation and sympathy at the terrible losses we've experienced. We've had extraordinarily generous support from around the world and we are so grateful for that solidarity. As we see the real cost of climate change, economically and environmentally, we have to renew our own commitment to real action on climate change. Instead of being an embarrassing laggard in this area, we have to take a leadership role in ensuring that, globally, all of our efforts are focusing on making sure that global temperature increases stay well below two degrees. We can't afford continued inaction—our people can't, our animals can't and our landscape can't.
I join the parliament in extending my deepest condolences to everybody who has been caught up with these terrible bushfires and to all who are still worried about their homes or their family members. This crisis is not over yet—there are still fires burning 30 kilometres south of where we are right now. To those still facing these dangers, listen to your emergency services, plan ahead, look after each other and stay safe. To those who have already lost so much, we'll be with you.
Mr TED O'BRIEN (Fairfax) (19:29): The Sunshine Coast area of Peregian, which straddles my electorate of Fairfax as well as the electorate of my colleague Llew O'Brien of Wide Bay, was the site of one of the first fires in this extraordinarily traumatic fire season that has just kept getting worse and that possibly still has, forebodingly, weeks or, who knows, maybe months to run. The first of several fires in the Peregian Springs and Peregian Beach area was in September, well ahead of summer and just ahead of the formal start of the fire season—insofar as we can still talk about the fire season in defined parameter ways. Very thankfully, no-one lost their life in any of the Sunshine Coast incidents. While only one home was lost—the home of 89-year-old Pamela Murphy—we can now recognise that we got off relatively lightly, at least relative to many other parts of the country even though at the time the fires threatened much more drastic outcomes.
I visited the burnt home of Mrs Murphy, together with the Governor-General, in September and have subsequently met with a number of locals who have been impacted by these fire events. It is evident from our conversations that some are still suffering from shock and ongoing trauma, even several months later, as they get back on their feet and they try to rebuild their lives. For anyone who needs help to move on, I would encourage them to access the free mental health support that is available. The Morrison government has provided access to 10 free counselling sessions either via peoples' GP, without need for a diagnosis or a mental health plan, or by contacting any registered psychiatrist or psychologist.
As is the case for scores, if not hundreds, of communities right across the country ever since, we are and we will forever be thankful on the Sunshine Coast for the extraordinary commitment, skill and bravery of the volunteers as well as the professional firefighters and all the other emergency responders, police and medical personnel included, for averting the vastly more negative outcomes that were so closely possible. I'd like to make special mention to groups like the Salvation Army, who provided meals and support to those on the front line, and the wonderful volunteers at Coolum Beach Surf Life Saving Club, who promptly set up an emergency response centre for those who were unable to return to their homes or who were forced to flee the advancing fire.
Since the fires really shifted gear, with the massive fires that developed in New South Wales from late October, in South Australia from November, in Victoria's Gippsland from December and now virtually to Canberra's doorstep via Namadgi, the loss of life, property, flora and fauna and livestock has been truly devastating. The numbers continue to change rapidly, but we are currently talking 33 lives lost, including six brave firefighters, almost 3,000 homes destroyed and around 19 million hectares burnt. To give one measure of the sheer scale of the event that we are enduring, that is an area greater than the land mass of Greece. Injuries and damage to homes continue to multiply, and they are certainly in multiples greater than the numbers I've just provided. Livestock losses are currently estimated at close to 100,000, and the loss of wildlife is unimaginable. Just to fathom what some of the experts have predicted, well over one billion creatures have died in these fires.
To say that this has been and still is a traumatic experience for the nation is obviously an understatement. The impacts are obviously vast and varied and, sadly, will be enduring. As I mentioned before, the impact on the mental health of the families of victims, of those who lost property and of those who fought and still fight these fires; the cost to the mental health of those whose livelihoods have been threatened or much diminished by fire; and the mental health of people simply traumatised by threats, sometimes lasting for days, weeks and even months, often repetitively, is inestimable. You cannot estimate this impact. At this point the ultimate dollar cost in replacement, lost income, lost opportunity, lost momentum will be measured in many billions, and there will be a long tail to the economic cost for individuals and businesses. Years will pass before we can properly measure it. As we move forward from this extraordinary season, which still has weeks—and God help us if it's months—to run, we will need a collective will to handle the recovery and to determine and take the practical, sensible measures to mitigate a repeat of this catastrophe, because there will of course still be more fires in Australia. History alone tells us that.
I commend the Prime Minister's leadership not just in relation to the scale, nature and timing of the response he led on behalf of the Commonwealth but also in terms of the fact that he is already suggesting some ways in which we can be better prepared next time, including a more proactive role to be carved out by the Commonwealth. A key to that is the discussion he has already started around cooperatively establishing new parameters for relationships with the states and of the need to focus on sensible, practical measures to mitigate the fires next time. A great deal of information will be coming forward in the next few months from many sources that will no doubt help on those issues that, properly assessed and acted on, could help us come through the next fire disaster with, subject to luck as well, lower mortality and less damage overall. The Prime Minister has made it clear that there will be a multidisciplinary forensic examination of what has happened, in order for ongoing development of the response and towards development of sensible, practical policy for the future.
As a government, we will also be able to draw on various recent as well as already established inquiries and test all the conclusions against what we now learn from the current season and the wider body of work that will be undertaken on it. A House committee that I chair, the Standing Committee of the Environment and Energy, is already examining one important aspect of this preparation: the efficacy of past and current vegetation and land management policy, practice and legislation and their effect on the intensity and frequency of bushfires and subsequent risk to property, life and the environment. The issue was referred to the committee in those terms on 5 December by the Minister for Water Resources, Drought, Rural Finance, Natural Disaster and Emergency Management, the Hon. David Littleproud. At that time our hope was that we had already been through the worst of the bushfire season, but, in light of the voracity of these fires and in recognition of the fact that it is ongoing, the committee resolved last month, only a few weeks ago, to extend the deadline of submissions for that inquiry to 31 March. This is so we will not be calling on individuals or agencies still working on the frontline nor diverting resources from more urgent activity.
This is one of the more important sets of issues that need to be properly examined by the nation. We need to understand there's no doubt that as the climate gets hotter, longer and drier the environment for bushfires worsens. But we need to understand that improving the way we manage our landscape is key, public and private. We need to come up with commonsense, practical actions to reduce the hazards. We need to take safe, controlled action.
I recently met with an Indigenous leader on the Sunshine Coast. His name was Tais Muckan. He is part of the Kabi Kabi tribe. He spoke to me about how our Indigenous peoples have done cycle burns. There is so much more we can learn, not just from our fireys, from those who have been on frontline this season, but also from our first peoples. I can remember learning as a child about the fire triangle and the idea that you need to have fuel, you need to have ignition and you need to have the right weather in order to divert a fire, or for a fire to be created. Indeed, as we look at this bushfire season we need to look at all those factors. We need to look at factors relating to the weather. We need to look at factors in that relating to the climate. We need to look at fuel. We need to look at the issues of ignition, including the issues of arson.
I will lastly say that, as chair of the House committee, we would welcome submissions, especially from those people who have hands-on experience. It is important that we hear from them and from those who have been impacted. I close by, again, thanking everybody who has done their bit, as we come together as a nation to work collectively to try to mitigate this catastrophe from happening again.
Mr SHORTEN (Maribyrnong) (19:41): Australians are living through an unprecedented fire season. It has been an unprecedented summer. A summer of anxiety, a summer of loss. It has been a summer of sadness, a summer of uncertainty, a summer of sleeping with one eye open and one ear on the ABC radio news, a summer of constantly refreshing internet browsers for the latest fire alerts, a summer of nervous calls to friends and relatives, a summer of exceptional courage and remarkable saves by our fireys and other emergency volunteers. Fires have burned right across our country and our state forests and on our islands. Even in this place we can faintly smell the smoke of fires still burning to Canberra's south. Our country is as dry as a bone. Many parts still remain vulnerable to further outbreaks. This is the challenge of climate change.
This summer brave Australians and friends from overseas have perished defending the lives and homes of others against nature's fury. Fires have destroyed almost 3,000 houses so far and taken dozens of precious lives. Fires have burnt more than 186,000 square kilometres. This is an area 2,900 times the size of my electorate of Maribyrnong entirely burnt out. It is unimaginable to think that that scale of burning has occurred.
Thanks to our professional and volunteer firefighters and emergency workers many, many have survived the fires, escaped with their lives with their families intact, but now they face the long daily struggle to get back what they lost. In my contribution I want to focus on recovery. After fires like this many people will live eternities of regret. They will sift memories from the ashes and recall places and faces that are now gone. Things that are immensely personal and intimate are put at risk of oblivion unless we jointly remember and jointly restore what we can. A long recovery will follow after these fires that for some took everything. A house is more than a building. The loss of family photos, books passed down from parents to children, animals perching in trees, family pets, war medals. I saw firsthand working on the recovery after Black Saturday that the long return from such a day can be hard beyond bearing for those who have lost property. In fact, when you lose property in a fire you realise how closely and deeply it is linked to the memories that make us who we are. There are those who returned to family homes, only to find there was nothing left. Many of these people carry burdens of their own, and they will be dealing with their own losses. Many will cope with the aftermath of the fires by turning their loss into a desire to rebuild and to help others heal. But for others it will simply be impossible: too hard to start again and too difficult the memories to keep living where one did.
Our fire impacted communities will have hard choices thrust upon them. They will cope with this admirably. Leadership is a word that is often used here, but I predict that real leadership will emerge in these communities. Some of the leadership which we are already witnessing in these communities is not flashy, nor the barking of orders; it's just the quiet gesture of carrying on and putting one foot in front of the other—that unconsciously modest motto of Australians in trouble, where they say that there are others who are doing it harder.
The rebuilding will be a slow process. We of course wish it were happening more quickly. I saw, when I was the Parliamentary Secretary for Bushfire Reconstruction, just how long and arduous this process will be. It will require resilience, it will require strength, it will require community support and it will require government support. In recent weeks, as the shadow minister for government services, I have had the privilege to see firsthand the resilience, the altruism, the community spirit and that helping hand which is such a part of the Australian character and of the Australian nation. It exists in vast quantities in the fire impacted communities.
As I travelled around the fire affected areas I could see the good things that are happening. There are too many to detail now but I acknowledge the relief centre being operated by the Aboriginal land council in Mogo, feeding needy people and animals alike. I've been to Bawley Point on the New South Wales South Coast where, in happier summers, my family have splashed in the sea. Bawley Point is now a little oasis of green surrounded by scorched trunks and black sticks of burnt forest. At the entrance to that small coastal hamlet there are hand-painted signs paying tribute to the Rural Fire Service for saving their town.
I've been to Batemans Bay and to Malua Bay and Mogo with Fiona Phillips, and to Tathra, Bega and Merimbula, where Mike Kelly is the most active local member. I've seen just how in the worst of times the fire has brought out the best in people. We've seen strength and we've seen solidarity. But in the phase of recovery it is incumbent on all of us in this place to do everything that we can. I recognise just how tremendously grateful our multicultural communities, amongst others, have been. But this is not a moment just here and now but a moment for weeks, months and years where we will need to extend that same memory. We must do everything we can to prevent and to better fight future fires, to address climate change and all the other matters, but also ensure that small business and tourism are supported and not neglected. No idea should be off the table, from national aerial firefighting fleets to government issued vouchers for Australians to spend in hard-hit areas needing tourism. I've heard many good ideas on my travels.
Hundreds of small businesses, the economic backbone of small towns, have lost business at the peak time of year for their cashflow. It's when they usually trade most. I saw this on the New South Wales South Coast where, from the humble Batemans Bay furniture restorer to the impressive Bega Cheese company, businesses are all feeling the pinch. In the Bega Valley shire, the mayor informed me that $400 million should have come from tourism this summer, but instead, 90,000 people were evacuated. With the Princes Highway closed from Victoria, Bega Cheese could not get the milk up directly from Orbost or the woodchips to run their power plant from the chip mill in Eden. Detours are costing them between $700 to $1,000 per freight trip.
As I have travelled around, people have suggested various common sense solutions and policy proposals. We owe it to those doing it tough to consider them all in good faith. Some of the good ideas I've heard include that the government could waive the requirement for affected businesses to submit a quarterly BAS payment for the last quarter of 2019. Emergency payments tied up in Centrelink could be more immediately processed from the tax office directly into peoples' accounts. Instead of relying on interest-free loans, small grants could be issued to businesses to help restore their cashflow. Perhaps we could extend the $50,000 grant to all businesses with less than a $1 million turnover, and we must accelerate the reopening of important roads—national roads like the Princes Highway.
A common theme was that relief and support must be directed not just at the flame impacted but at those who, whilst their physical property may not have been burned, are bushfire affected. I echo the member for Gippsland's wise comments about the importance of not forgetting about the small-business victims of the fires. Merely because a business or an enterprise has not sustained physical or property damage in the fires, they are victims of the fires nonetheless. Tourism and small business must be given a coordinated approach.
Today, we cannot replace the people who are not here, but we can support the people who were there and their efforts to rebuild. Sadly, we cannot bring back a lot of things lost, but we can embrace with feeling that which remains and we can build with hope on those burnt foundations. The rescue, the restoration and the recovery commences, but we must ensure that no fire impacted Australian is forgotten and slips through the cracks because the national attention has moved. Recovery is a long process; they must know that the parliament will walk hand in hand with them on this journey to recovery.
The SPEAKER: As a mark of respect, I ask all present in the chamber to rise in their places.
Honourable members having stood in their places—
The SPEAKER: I thank the House.
Debate adjourned.
Reference to Federation Chamber
Mr EVANS (Brisbane—Assistant Minister for Waste Reduction and Environmental Management) (19:51): by leave—I move:
That the resumption of debate on the Prime Minister's motion of condolence in connection with the Australian bushfires be referred to the Federation Chamber.
Question agreed to.
BUSINESS
Rearrangement
Mr EVANS (Brisbane—Assistant Minister for Waste Reduction and Environmental Management) (19:52): by leave—I move:
That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent:
(1) the Federation Chamber meeting for the following times tomorrow, 5 February: from 9.45 am until 1.30 pm and from 3.45 pm until 7.45 pm; and
(2) the Prime Minister's motion of condolence on the Australian Bushfires to be the only item of business.
Question agreed to.
ADJOURNMENT
Mr EVANS (Brisbane—Assistant Minister for Waste Reduction and Environmental Management) (19:52): As a mark of respect to the victims of the Australian bushfires, I move:
That the House do now adjourn.
Question agreed to.
House adjourned at 19:53
NOTICES
The following notices were given:
Mr Porter: to move that—
(1) the House invite His Excellency Mr Joko Widodo, President of the Republic of Indonesia, to attend and address the House on Monday, 10 February 2020, at 11.30am;
(2) unless otherwise ordered, at the sitting of the House on 10 February:
(a) the House shall meet at 11.30am and the Federation Chamber at 4pm;
(b) private Members' business shall take place in the Federation Chamber only, from 4.45pm;
(c) the proceedings at 11.30am shall be welcoming remarks by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition and an address by the President of the Republic of Indonesia;
(d) at the conclusion of His Excellency's address the House shall suspend until the ringing of the bells, with the first item of business to be questions without notice; and
(e) the provisions of standing order 257(c) shall apply to the area of Members' seats as well as the galleries;
(3) a message be sent to the Senate inviting Senators to attend the House as guests for the welcoming remarks by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition and address by the President of the Republic of Indonesia; and
(4) any variation to this arrangement be made only by an action by the Speaker or by a motion moved by a Minister.
Mr Wilkie: to present a Bill for an Act to amend the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007, and for related purposes.
Mr Bandt: to present a Bill for an Act to provide that major emitters of greenhouse gases are liable for climate change damage that occurs in Australia, and for related purposes.
Ms Wells: to move:
That this House:
(1) recognises that:
(a) February is Ovarian Cancer Awareness month in Australia; and
(b) 26 February 2020 is Teal Ribbon Day; and
(2) acknowledges that:
(a) ovarian cancer has the lowest survival rate of any women's cancer;
(b) every year, almost 1600 Australian women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer;
(c) every year, approximately 1000 Australian women die from ovarian cancer;
(d) in Australia, the overall five-year survival rate for women diagnosed with ovarian cancer is 46 per cent; and
(e) there is currently no reliable screening test to aid detection and prevention.
Ms Claydon: to move:
That this House:
(1) notes that:
(a) Aged Care Assessment Teams (ACAT) are teams of medical professionals which run clinical and psychological checks on older Australians who have applied for home or residential aged care;
(b) based in hospitals across the country, ACAT are ultimately responsible for assessing which older Australians should receive government-funded care;
(c) teams usually include a nurse, plus another healthcare worker such as a physiotherapist, occupational therapist or social worker;
(d) the Government has announced that it will privatise the ACAT workforce from April 2021, when a tender will be put out for organisations to deliver this vital assessment; and
(e) on 14 January 2020 the Chair of the Royal Commission into Aged Care, Mr Gaetano Pagone QC, issued a statement saying the Royal Commission's interim report 'did not endorse the Government's stated position' on privatising the aged care assessment teams;
(2) supports the retention of ACAT as a publicly provided service;
(3) commends the Health Services Union, United Workers Unions and Australian Nurses and Midwifery Federation for their continued advocacy on behalf of working people in healthcare across Australia, and particularly in the aged care sector; and
(4) condemns the Government for its continued failings across aged care policy.
Agriculture
(Question No. 257)
Ms Sharkie asked the Minister representing the Minister for Agriculture, in writing, on 25 November 2019:
1. Over the forward estimates, and broken down by financial year: (a) how much agricultural research funding has the Government allocated to regenerative agriculture practices; and (b) what proportion does this comprise of the total Government funding for agricultural research.
2. Has the Government provided financial support to regenerative agriculture trials; if so:
(a) where; and (b) how much per trial.
Mr Littleproud: The Minister for Agriculture has provided the following answer to the honourable member's question:
1. (a) (b)
The Australian Government invests approximately $1.1 billion a year in rural research and development (R&D) through the Research and Development Corporations, Cooperative Research Centres, the CSIRO, universities, R&D Tax incentive and other programs. Funding is invested in research activities in accordance with each recipients identified research priorities and objectives.
Within the Department of Agriculture, funding for regenerative agriculture research, development and extension projects has been provided through competitive grants under the Smart Farms component of the National Landcare Program (made up of Smart Farming Partnerships, Smart Farms Small Grants and Building Landcare Community and Capacity) (Table 1). The National Landcare Program is a key part of the Australian Government's commitment to protect and conserve Australia's water, soil, plants, animals and ecosystems. The program includes a range of measures to support natural resource management, sustainable agriculture and to protect Australia's biodiversity.
Table 1. Funding for regenerative agriculture research, development and extension projects via the Smart Farms program
Financial year |
Allocated Government funding (GST excl.)* |
Proportion of funding for Smart Farms program# |
2019-20 |
$7,858,866 |
23.7 |
2020-21 |
$5,396,722 |
18.6 |
2021-22 |
$538,843 |
3.0 |
2022-23 |
$602,843 |
2.6 |
*Figures have been rounded to nearest whole dollar. Note some programs for 2021-22 and 2022-23 have not allocated funding at this point in time.
#Figures have been rounded to the nearest one decimal place. Proportion calculated based on total funding per financial year available under the National Landcare Program – Smart Farms component.
2. (a) (b)
Government funding to regenerative agricultural research projects has been provided through the Smart Farms component of the National Landcare Program. Over the period of 2018-19 to 2022‑23, 62 projects, which include regenerative agriculture practices and demonstration components, have been allocated funding across Australia. The Government contribution to these projects totals $21.2 million (GST excl.).
Nutrition
(Question No. 267)
Ms Sharkie asked the Minister for Health, in writing, on 02 December 2019:
(1) When was the last time the Government published a National Nutrition Policy.(2) Is the Government developing a National Nutrition Policy; if so, when will it be published; if not, why not.(3) When was the last time the Government revised and published the Australian Dietary Guidelines.(4) Is the Government developing new guidelines; if so, when will they be published; if not, why not.(5) When was the last time the Government revised and published the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating.(6) Is the Government developing a new guide; if so, when will it be published; if not, why not.
Mr Hunt: The answers to the honourable member's questions are as follows:
(1) The last National Food and Nutrition Policy was published in 1992.
(2) The National Preventive Health Strategy is currently under development and nutrition and physical activity is a key focus.
Additionally, supporting Australians to eat a healthy diet to prevent obesity is a proposed key focus of the National Obesity Strategy, currently under development.
(3) The Australian Dietary Guidelines are developed by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and were last reviewed and updated in 2013. The Australian Dietary Guidelines were published under the Department of Health's Eat for Health program on 18 February 2013.
(4) The Australian Government is currently considering a review of the Australian Dietary Guidelines within the context of the development of the National Preventive Health Strategy.
(5) The Australian Guide to Healthy Eating is a resource under the Eat for Health banner and was last updated and released in 2013 with the 2013 Australian Dietary Guidelines.
(6) The Australian Guide to Healthy Eating is a pictorial resource based on the Australian Dietary Guidelines to assist Australians in consuming a healthy diet. As the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating is informed by the Australian Dietary Guidelines, it will be reviewed following any revisions to the Australian Dietary Guidelines.
National Security
(Question No. 241)
Ms Sharkie asked the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs, in writing, on 25 November 2019:
(1) Will the Government's Safer Communities Fund Round 5 provide community based organisations the opportunity to secure funding for Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) programs.
(2) Can a breakdown be provided, in tabular form, of the total Government expenditure on community based CVE programs for the years: (a) 2016-17; (b) 2017-18; and (c) 2018-19.
(3) Of the funds referred to in (2), what was the breakdown of total funds by category of violent extremism, such as far right and left extremism, or religious extremism.
Mr Tudge: The answer to the honourable member's question is:
(1) The Safer Communities Fund does not provide funding specifically for Countering Violent Extremism Programs. The purpose of the Safer Communities Fund is to deliver safer communities, by boosting the efforts of identified local councils and community organisations to address crime and anti-social behaviour by funding crime prevention initiatives (such as fixed and mobile CCTV, lighting and youth early intervention projects), and protecting community organisations that may be facing security risks associated with racial or religious intolerance.
(2) Since 2013-14, the Government has invested over $53 million in CVE initiatives, including over $13.4 million in funding to CVE intervention programs. The Government funds a range of CVE programs in each state and territory, which include combatting terrorist propaganda online, promoting messages of social cohesion in the community and supporting projects that enhance cooperation and best practice CVE policy across all levels of government. These Government-funded CVE programs are not specifically community based programs.
(3) The Government's approach to violent extremism addresses all drivers of radicalisation to violence. CVE intervention programs include participants from a range of ideological backgrounds, and funding is not allocated based on 'categories' of violent extremism. People who are referred to these programs are assessed for their individual needs and appropriate support services provided to them.
Cancer
(Question No. 250)
Mrs Elliot asked the Minister for Health, in writing, on 25 November 2019:
In respect of the Government's $63.4 million election commitment for expanded cancer treatment and services and the promise to fund a new radiation therapy centre in Tweed Heads:(1) Has a provider been contracted to provide these services in Tweed Heads; if so, was there a tender process and what were the details of the tender process; if not, will there be a tender process and what are the details of the tender process.(2) Does the Radiation Therapy Advisory Group (RTAG) have any role in rolling out these services.(3) Does the Government have a financial or other arrangement with the RTAG.
Mr Hunt: The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:
Through the 2019-20 Budget, the Australian Government is providing funding to expand cancer treatment capacity through new radiation therapy services in 13 regional areas. The Tweed Heads region is one of the areas identified for a new centre. The specific locations and support to deliver services are not yet finalised, with funding to commence in 2020-21.
The Government plans to undertake a competitive tender process that allows potential providers to apply for funding under the initiative.
There is no financial or commercial agreement with the Radiation Therapy Advisory Group to deliver services in Tweed Heads, or any of the other regions.
National Archives of Australia
(Question No. 258)
Mr Hill asked the Attorney-General, in writing, on 28 November 2019:
(1) In respect of the Government's response to questions by Senator Rex Patrick that between the 2015-2016 financial year and May 2018 the National Archives of Australia (NAA) had spent $926,474.89 on legal costs to defend access requests, how much has the NAA spent on legal costs between May 2018 and the date of answering this question in defending such requests.(2) How much has the NAA spent on legal costs since 1 June 2016 and the date of answering this question in relation to the release request made by historian, Professor Jenny Hocking, for: (a) access to archival record AA1984/609; (b) access to all original correspondence received by, and all contemporaneously made copies of, correspondence sent between former Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, or his Official Secretary to and from the Queen by means of her Private Secretary; and (c) the release of records and information in relation to the 'Palace letters' case (High Court Case Number: Case No. S262/2019) currently before the High Court.(3) How much does the Attorney-General estimate the NAA will spend on legal costs in relation to the release requests detailed in questions (2) (a), (b) and (c).(4) In relation to questions (2) (a), (b) and (c), what is the itemised breakdown of the expenditure.(5) Have costs been incurred by any other Commonwealth agencies or departments in relation to the release requests detailed in questions (2) (a), (b) and (c); if so: (a) which agencies or departments; (b) what are the total and itemised costs to date; and (c) what are the estimated total and itemised costs.
Mr Porter: The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:
1. The National Archives of Australia (NAA) has spent $484,628.14 on legal costs arising from appeals against access decisions in the period May 2018 to 10 January 2020.
2. From 1 June 2016 to 10 January 2020 the NAA has spent $682,692.05 on this matter.
3. As the matters mentioned in the answer to Question 2 are still before the Court, the NAA is unable to estimate remaining legal costs in relation to AA1984/609.
4. All expenditure for these matters relate to professional services from the Australian Government Solicitor (AGS). Expenditure covers services such as drafting and reviewing correspondence, research and court attendance.
5. From October 2019, the NAA and the Attorney-General's Department (AGD) agreed to split the legal costs 75/25 relating to the matters raised in question 2. To date, the AGD has incurred costs amounting to $23,105.41 for AGS services. The NAA is unaware of any other legal costs that may have been incurred by any other Commonwealth entity in relation to the Hocking matter.
Australian Prudential Regulation Authority
(Question No. 270)
Ms Sharkie asked the Treasurer, in writing, on 04 December 2019 ‑ (1) Is it a fact that in March 2019 the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority announced that it will be reviewing and updating its guidance on the sole purpose test as per Superannuation Circular No. III.A.4.(2) Is Superannuation Circular No. III.A.4 still in force as guidance.(3) When will the updated guidance become available.
Mr Frydenberg: The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:
1 Yes.
2 Yes.
3 APRA intends to release updated guidance for consultation in the first quarter of 2020.
Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority
(Question No. 274)
Mr Zappia asked the Minister representing the Minister for Youth and Sport, in writing, on 05 December 2019:
(1) For each of the years 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018: (a) how many drug tests were carried out by the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) on Australian sports participants; (b) how many returned a positive result; (c) what banned substances were identified; (d) what was the cost of the tests; and (e) what penalties were applied to each person who returned a positive test result. (2) Who pays for the drug tests carried out by ASADA. (3) Are there any national sporting organisations that are not subject to ASADA oversight; if so which ones.
Mr Hunt: The Minister for Youth and Sport has provided the following answer to the honourable member's question
Explanatory Note
The Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) reporting is based on financial years as opposed to calendar years. All responses provided are in financial years.
Question 1 (a)
The number of anti-doping tests carried out by ASADA on Australian sports participants is reflected in the table below.
|
2014-15 |
2015-16 |
2016-17 |
2017-18 |
2018-19 |
Number of anti-doping tests |
5,141 |
6,022 |
5,658 |
5,205 |
5,523 |
Question 1 (b)
The number of anti-doping tests carried out by ASADA on Australian sports participants that returned a positive result is reflected in the table below.
|
2014-15 |
2015-16 |
2016-17 |
2017-18 |
2018-19 |
Number of positive results* |
29 |
20 |
37 |
19 |
25 |
*Number of positive results does not include positive results where the athlete had obtained a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) for the banned substance.
Question 1 (c)
Banned substances identified in anti-doping tests conducted are reflected in the table below.
Explanatory Notes
The number of banned substances will not fully correlate with the number of positive results as some athletes samples tested positive for more than one substance or a number of athletes tested positive to the same substance,
Parent compound1 names are provided only (metabolites2 are excluded), and
The listed banned substances do not differentiate between whether a TUE was applicable in the situation.
WADA Category |
Substance |
2014/15 |
2015/16 |
2016/17 |
2017/18 |
2018/19 |
Total |
S1 |
Boldenone |
1 |
2 |
1 |
- |
1 |
5 |
Clenbuterol |
5 |
2 |
5 |
- |
- |
12 |
|
Clostebol |
- |
- |
- |
1 |
- |
1 |
|
Dehydrochloromethyltestosterone |
1 |
- |
2 |
- |
- |
3 |
|
Desoxymethyltestosterone |
1 |
- |
- |
- |
- |
1 |
|
DHEA |
- |
- |
1 |
1 |
- |
2 |
|
Drostanolone |
1 |
3 |
1 |
- |
2 |
7 |
|
LGD-4033 |
- |
- |
- |
2 |
3 |
5 |
|
Methandienone |
- |
1 |
1 |
1 |
- |
3 |
|
Nandrolone |
2 |
2 |
- |
3 |
1 |
8 |
|
Norethandrolone |
- |
- |
- |
1 |
- |
1 |
|
Ostarine |
- |
3 |
2 |
1 |
- |
6 |
|
Oxandrolone |
2 |
- |
- |
2 |
- |
4 |
|
Oxymetholone |
- |
- |
- |
1 |
- |
1 |
|
Stanozolol |
5 |
- |
- |
1 |
- |
6 |
|
Testosterone |
1 |
1 |
1 |
4 |
- |
7 |
|
Tibolone |
- |
1 |
2 |
1 |
- |
4 |
|
Trenbolone |
1 |
2 |
- |
1 |
- |
4 |
|
S2 |
EPO |
- |
- |
1 |
- |
- |
1 |
hCG |
2 |
1 |
5 |
2 |
- |
10 |
|
S3 |
Higenamine |
- |
- |
12 |
3 |
6 |
21 |
Salbutamol |
- |
2 |
- |
- |
- |
2 |
|
Terbutaline |
- |
1 |
1 |
- |
- |
2 |
|
S4 |
Anastrazole |
1 |
- |
- |
- |
- |
1 |
Arimistane |
2 |
- |
- |
- |
- |
2 |
|
GW1516 |
- |
- |
- |
1 |
1 |
2 |
|
Letrozole |
1 |
1 |
- |
- |
- |
2 |
|
Tamoxifen |
- |
2 |
- |
- |
- |
2 |
|
S5 |
Amiloride |
1 |
1 |
- |
- |
- |
2 |
Furosemide |
1 |
- |
3 |
- |
- |
4 |
|
Hydrochlorotiazide |
1 |
2 |
- |
- |
- |
3 |
|
Probenecid |
1 |
2 |
- |
2 |
- |
5 |
|
S6 |
Cocaine |
2 |
- |
- |
1 |
7 |
10 |
D-amphetamine |
3 |
6 |
3 |
3 |
5 |
20 |
|
DMBA |
- |
- |
5 |
- |
- |
5 |
|
Ephedrine |
- |
- |
1 |
- |
- |
1 |
|
L-amphetamine |
- |
- |
- |
- |
2 |
2 |
|
Methamphetamine |
- |
- |
2 |
- |
- |
2 |
|
Methylenedioxyamphetamine |
2 |
- |
- |
- |
- |
2 |
|
Methylhexaneamine |
- |
3 |
4 |
2 |
1 |
10 |
|
Methylphenidate |
- |
3 |
5 |
1 |
2 |
11 |
|
Modafinil |
- |
- |
1 |
- |
- |
1 |
|
N-methyl-1-phenyl-1-propanamine |
- |
1 |
- |
- |
- |
1 |
|
Octodrine |
- |
- |
1 |
1 |
- |
2 |
|
Oxilofrine |
1 |
1 |
- |
- |
1 |
3 |
|
Phenethylamine |
1 |
1 |
- |
- |
- |
2 |
|
Phentermine |
1 |
1 |
- |
1 |
- |
3 |
|
S7 |
OxyContin |
- |
- |
1 |
2 |
2 |
5 |
S8 |
Cannabis |
- |
1 |
1 |
1 |
- |
3 |
S9 |
Betamethasone |
- |
- |
3 |
2 |
2 |
7 |
Flunisolide |
- |
- |
- |
- |
1 |
1 |
|
Fluticasone |
- |
- |
1 |
- |
1 |
2 |
|
Prednisolone |
1 |
- |
- |
- |
3 |
4 |
|
Triamcinolone acetonide |
- |
- |
1 |
1 |
2 |
4 |
|
|
Total |
41 |
46 |
67 |
43 |
43 |
|
Question 1 (d)
The cost to ASADA for conducting anti-doping tests is reflected below.
Explanatory Notes
For financial year 2018-19, ASADA is not required to pay for laboratory costs due to the Government directly funding the Australian Sports Drug Testing Laboratory, as a result the percentage of ASADA expenditure on testing has reduced.
Expenditure by Financial Year
$5.900m in 2014-15
$5.351m in 2015-16
$5.262m in 2016-17
$6.705m in 2017-18
$4.215m in 2018-19
Question 1 (e)
The penalties applied were as follows.
Explanatory Notes
The following tables reflect the publicly announced anti-doping rule violations in each financial year. The year of announcement may not reflect the number of positive tests during the financial year due to timeframes required in the process.
Rule Violation - Use' means use of a banned substance or method. 'Presence' means that a banned substance (or its metabolites or markers) was found in a sample. 'Possession' means possession of a banned substance. 'Trafficking' means supplying a banned substance. 'Complicity' means knowing about or helping to carry out an anti-doping violation.
ASADA's publicly announced anti-doping rule violations list also includes Australian athletes that have been found to have committed anti-doping rule violations by their International Federation or a National Anti-Doping Organisation other than ASADA.
Publicly announced anti-doping rule violations in 2014–15
Sport |
Rule violation |
Sanction |
Weightlifting |
Presence and use |
Two-year sanction |
Bodybuilding |
Presence |
Two-year sanction |
Surf lifesaving |
Presence and use |
Two-year sanction |
Athletics |
Tampering or attempted tampering with any part of doping control |
Two-year sanction |
Powerlifting |
Presence and use |
Two-year sanction |
Baseball |
Presence and use |
Two-year sanction |
Bodybuilding |
Presence and use |
Two-year sanction |
Powerlifting Australia |
Presence and Use |
20-month sanction |
Cycling |
Use, administration or attempted administration and trafficking of a prohibited substance |
Two-year sanction |
Rugby league |
Presence and use |
Two-year sanction |
Athletics |
Presence and use |
Two-year sanction |
Bodybuilding |
Presence and use |
Two-year sanction |
Athletics |
Athlete whereabouts violation |
18-month sanction |
Bodybuilding |
Presence and use |
Two-year sanction |
Tennis |
Presence and use |
One-year sanction |
Powerlifting |
Presence and use |
18-month sanction |
Bodybuilding |
Presence and use |
Two-year sanction |
Bodybuilding |
Presence and use |
Two-year sanction |
Surf lifesaving |
Presence and use |
Two-year sanction |
Wrestling |
Presence and use |
Two-year sanction |
Wrestling |
Presence and use |
Two-year sanction |
Weightlifting |
Presence and use |
Two-year sanction |
Bodybuilding |
Presence and use |
Eight-year sanction |
Rugby league |
Presence and use |
Two-year sanction |
Rugby league |
Presence and use |
Two-year sanction |
Weightlifting |
Use, attempted use, possession and trafficking |
Seven-year sanction |
Bodybuilding |
Failure to Comply |
Two-year sanction |
Surf lifesaving |
Presence and use |
Two-year sanction |
Surf lifesaving |
Presence and use |
Two-year sanction |
Baseball |
Presence and use |
Two-year sanction |
Publicly announced anti-doping rule violations in 2015–16
Sport |
Rule violation |
Sanction |
Bodybuilding |
Presence and Use |
Two-year sanction |
Bodybuilding |
Presence and Use |
Two-year sanction |
Rugby League (CRL) |
Attempted Use |
Two-year sanction |
Rugby League (NSWRL) |
Attempted Use |
Two-year sanction |
Australian Football League |
Presence |
One-year sanction |
WAFL |
Presence |
Four-year sanction |
Rugby Union |
Use or Attempted Use; Trafficking or Attempted Trafficking |
Four-year sanction (18 months suspended) |
Rugby League (NSWRL) |
Presence and Use |
Two-year sanction |
Rugby League (NSWRL) |
Presence |
Two-year sanction |
Bodybuilding |
Presence and Use |
Two-year sanction |
Rugby League |
Attempted Use |
Two-year sanction |
Rugby League |
Presence, Use and Trafficking |
Four-year sanction (18 months suspended) |
Rugby League |
Presence and Use |
Four-year sanction (24 months suspended) |
Bodybuilding |
Presence and Use |
Two-year sanction |
Baseball |
Presence |
15-month sanction |
Rugby League |
Attempted trafficking, Possession, Trafficking and Use |
Four-year sanction |
Australian Canoe |
Presence and Use |
Two-year sanction |
Surf Life Saving Australia |
Presence and Use |
Two-year sanction |
Australian Rules Football |
Presence and Use |
Two-year sanction |
Australian Rules Football |
Presence and Use |
Two-year sanction |
Table Tennis |
Presence |
15-month sanction |
Rugby league (NRL) |
Attempted Use |
Two years and nine months sanction |
Baseball |
Presence |
12-month sanction |
Rugby League (QRL) |
Presence and Use |
Two-year sanction |
Bodybuilding |
Presence |
Four-year sanction |
Bodybuilding |
Presence |
Four-year sanction |
Powerlifting |
Presence and Use |
Four-year sanction |
Bodybuilding |
Presence and Use |
Three-years and seven months sanction |
Triathlon |
Refusal to submit to Doping Control |
Three years and six months sanction |
Athletics |
Presence and Use |
Two-year sanction |
Cycling |
Attempted use (prohibited method) |
Two-year sanction |
Swimming |
Presence and Use |
Four-year sanction |
Bodybuilding |
Presence and Use |
Four-year sanction |
Anti-doping rule violations publicly announced in 2016–17
Sport |
Rule violation |
Sanction |
Rugby League3 |
Use |
One year |
Weightlifting |
Presence and Use |
Two years |
Australian rules football4 |
Use |
Two years |
Hockey |
Presence and Use |
Four months |
Bodybuilding |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Weightlifting |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Weightlifting |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Wrestling |
Presence |
Four years |
Triathlon |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Baseball |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Basketball |
Presence |
Three months |
Powerlifting |
Refusal to submit to sample collection |
Four years |
Powerlifting |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Motorcycling (MX) |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Bodybuilding |
Presence |
Two years |
Bodybuilding |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Bodybuilding |
Presence |
Three years and three months |
Rugby League |
Possession |
Four years |
Bodybuilding |
Presence and Use |
Two years |
Rugby League |
Presence and Use |
Two years |
Weightlifting |
Presence and Use |
Six months |
Weightlifting |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Rugby Union |
Presence and Use |
Three months |
Bodybuilding |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Football (soccer) |
Use and Administration |
Four years |
Bodybuilding |
Presence and Use |
Two years |
Australian rules football |
Presence and Use |
Six months |
Rugby League |
Presence and Use |
15 months |
Basketball |
Presence |
Three months |
Rugby League |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Bodybuilding |
Presence and Use |
Six months |
Bodybuilding |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Bodybuilding |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Australian rules football |
Trafficking, Attempted Trafficking, Complicity |
Lifetime ineligibility |
Anti-Doping Rule Violations Publicly Announced In 2017–18
Sport |
Rule violation |
Sanction |
Bodybuilding |
Presence and Use |
Two years |
Swimming |
Whereabouts failures |
12 months |
Bodybuilding |
Presence and Use |
Two years |
Athletics |
Refusal or Failure to Submit to Sample Collection |
Two years |
Bodybuilding |
Presence and Use |
Six months |
Bodybuilding |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Ironman |
Presence, Use, Attempted Use and Possession |
Four years |
Surfing |
Presence |
Two years |
Athletics |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Powerlifting |
Presence |
Two years |
Baseball |
Presence and Use |
Two years |
Cycling |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Baseball |
Presence and Use |
Six months |
Volleyball |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Baseball |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Surf lifesaving |
Presence |
Three years and six months |
Athletics |
Presence and Use |
Nine months |
Motorcycling |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Powerlifting |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Powerlifting |
Presence and Use |
Two years |
Roller sports (In-line speed skating distance greater than 1,000 metres) |
Presence |
12 months |
Boxing |
Presence |
Two years |
Floorball |
Use |
Reprimand |
Wheelchair basketball |
Presence and Use |
Three months |
Rugby league |
Presence and Use |
12 months |
Para-cycling |
Presence, Use and Attempted Use |
Four years |
Rugby league (QRL) |
Presence and Use |
12 months |
Rugby league (NSWRL) |
Presence |
Two years |
Cycling and BMX |
Whereabouts failures |
15 months |
Weightlifting |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Rugby league |
Presence and Use |
Two years |
Anti-Doping Rule Violations Publicly Announced In 2018–19
Sport |
Rule Violation |
Sanction |
Football (soccer) |
Attempted use, Possession, and Use |
Four years |
Baseball |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Rugby league |
Possession and Use |
Two years |
Rugby league |
Presence |
Two years |
Cycling |
Attempted use, Attempted use (prohibited method), Possession and Use |
Two years (3 months suspended) |
Cycling |
Attempted use, Possession and Use |
Two years |
Cycling |
Attempted use, Attempted use (prohibited method), Possession, and Use |
Four years |
Rugby league |
Refusal/failure to comply |
Four years |
BMX |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Cycling |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Powerlifting |
Possession, Presence, and Use |
Four years |
Rugby union |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Powerlifting |
Presence and Use |
Two years |
Tennis |
Presence |
Two years |
Powerlifting |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Volleyball |
Presence and Use |
One year and six months |
Basketball - wheelchair |
Presence and Use |
Four years |
Rugby league |
Presence |
Two years |
Question 2
ASADA's testing program combines government-funded and user-pays arrangements. Anti-doping tests carried out by ASADA are paid for by either:
User-pays - the sporting organisation that requests the test (representing approximately 48% of total tests in 2018-19), or
Government-funded - ASADA tests Australian athletes as part of its test distribution plan (representing approximately 52% of total tests in 2018-19).
Question 3
Sport Australia is responsible for administering the National Sporting Organisation Recognition program. Sporting organisations are required to apply and meet the criteria as established by Sport Australia to obtain recognition as a National Sporting Organisation. There are currently nine criteria that must be met to be recognised by Sport Australia, this includes the requirement for the organisation to have a current ASADA approved Anti-Doping Policy.
All recognised National Sporting Organisations are subject to ASADA oversight and can be found on the Sport Australia website https://www.sportaus.gov.au/australian_sports_directory
1 Parent compound refers to the substance which would have been used
2 Metabolite is formed by the body following use of the related prohibited substance
3 This entry represents the disclosure of 17 Cronulla–Sutherland Sharks Football Club players following the finalisation of outstanding cases resulting from the Operation Cobia investigation.
4 This entry represents the disclosure of 34 past and present Essendon Football Club players following the Swiss Federal Tribunal's dismissal of the players' final appeal.
Pacific Labour Scheme
(Question No. 240)
Mr Conroy asked the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs, in writing, on 25 November 2019:
(1) Why did the Minister respond to the question, which asked for the assumptions underlying the Department of Home Affairs' revenue estimates for the Pacific Labour Scheme (PLS), by saying this information was cabinet in confidence when the Treasurer responded to question in writing No. 123 (House Hansard, 14 October 2019, page 206), which asked for the assumptions underlying the Australian Taxation Office's revenue estimates for the PLS, by providing these assumptions.(2) Did the Treasurer breach cabinet in confidence requirements or did the Minister use cabinet in confidence as an excuse to avoid accountability to the parliament.
Mr Tudge: The answer to the honourable member's question is:
(1) The Department of Home Affairs from time to time receives Questions on Notice (QoNs) relating to the disclosure of revenue modelling and assumptions that support an agreed revenue measure. For these types of QoNs, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) have advised that any disclosure of the revenue model and associated assumptions could potentially reveal the deliberations of the Cabinet, which are confidential.
(2) The Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs provided a response in line with PM&C advice. Questions relating to the actions of the Treasurer would be a matter for the Treasury.
Kangaroo Island Natural Resources Management Board
(Question No. 247)
Ms Sharkie asked the Minister for the Environment, in writing, on 25 November 2019:
(1) Further to the answer to question in writing No. 906 from the 45th parliament (House Hansard, 28 March 2018, page 3224): (a) since expending the $500,000, what funding has the Government: (i) allocated and on what date; and (ii) disbursed and on what date; and (b) on what date did activity under this funding for the eradication of feral cats on Kangaroo Island cease.(2) Further to the answer to question in writing No. 10 (House Hansard , 9 September 2019, page 2223): (a) will any of the $1.5 million for Dunnart recovery efforts on Kangaroo Island be expended for feral cat eradication; if so, what is the projected amount.(3) Does the Government plan to provide further funding for feral cat eradication; if so: (a) in which months and years; and (b) what amounts.
Ms Ley: The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:
(1) Further to the answer to question in writing No. 906 from the 45th parliament (House Hansard, 28 March 2018, page 3224): (a) since expending the $500,000, what funding has the Government: (i) allocated and on what date; and (ii) disbursed and on what date; and (b) on what date did activity under this funding for the eradication of feral cats on Kangaroo Island cease.
Program |
Recipient |
Project title |
Project description |
Funding (ex GST) |
Date funding allocated |
Date funding disbursed |
Project duration |
National Landcare Program - Threatened Species Recovery Fund |
Kangaroo Island Land for Wildlife Association Inc. |
Protecting the Kangaroo Island dunnart with community action |
Enable Kangaroo Island Land for Wildlife landholders with key dunnart habitat to actively reduce the impacts of feral cats and better manage their properties to improve habitat for the dunnart for the long term. The project will also support landholders, community members, volunteers and school students to increase their awareness and understanding of, and skills in, threatened species conservation through development of property management strategies to control threats including fire, invasive plants, livestock grazing and Phytophthora cinnamoni. |
$65,000 |
29/4/2018 |
7/6/2018 |
2017-18 to 2018-19 |
National Landcare Program - Threatened Species Recovery Fund |
Kangaroo Island Natural Resources Management Board |
Felixers versus Felis: Innovative engagement of Kangaroo Island landholders in feral cat control activities |
Engage landholders by assisting them to undertake feral cat control using cage traps and to trial Felixer™ grooming traps on private land. This will provide a vital opportunity to comprehensively field test and improve grooming trap effectiveness under Kangaroo Island conditions, establish a community of practice for feral cat management, and collect data on cat abundance and distribution, and community attitudes to feral cat eradication, in preparation for the onset of landscape-scale eradication of feral cats on the island in 2019. Community control and monitoring activities will be coordinated and supported by a liaison officer who will also be responsible for handling toxic cartridges for the grooming traps. |
$236,500 |
5/9/2017 |
Project funding was provided to the recipient in instalments: 28/3/2018 – $207,500 8/3/2019 – $29,000
|
2017-18 to 2018-19
|
National Landcare Program – Regional Land Partnerships |
Kangaroo Island Natural Resources Management Board |
Creating a safe haven for the Kangaroo Island Dunnart and other priority threatened species by eradicating feral cats from the Dudley Peninsula |
Create a permanent safe haven for the endangered Kangaroo Island dunnart and other EPBC-listed species such as the KI echidna and hooded plover by eradicating feral cats from the Dudley Peninsula (DP) on eastern KI. The DP will be isolated from the remainder of KI by a barrier fence to prevent reinvasions. Feral cats will be eradicated by trapping, baiting and hunting, with verification by detector dogs. Threatened species and rodents will be monitored to measure eradication outcomes. There are no recent records of KI dunnarts from eastern KI despite large tracts of suitable habitat. Dunnarts are difficult to find and search effort has been limited so there may be an undetected population. Cat eradication will enable an extant dunnart population to increase, or, if absent from the DP, create a safe haven for a re-introduced population in the future. |
$2,000,000 |
1/2/2019 |
Project funding to date was provided to the recipient in instalments: 2/8/2019 – $211,208 14/10/2019 – $12,847 |
2019-20 to 2022-23 |
National Landcare Program – Bushfire Recovery Pest and Weed Management |
Kangaroo Island Natural Resources Management Board |
Support to RLP Service Providers for Emergency Pest Mitigation and Habitat Protection (Phase One) |
Assist the recovery of threatened species and threatened ecological communities in areas impacted by the significant 2019/2020 bushfires through the implementation of priority pest animal, weed control and habitat protection activities on Kangaroo Island. Management interventions will occur in direct fire affected areas and areas of unburnt refuge patches in proximity to fire-affected areas. |
$200,000 |
13/1/2020 |
An initial payment of $50,000 is currently being processed. |
2019-2020 |
(1) (2) Further to the answer to question in writing No. 10 (HouseHansard , 9 September 2019, page 2223): (a) will any of the $1.5 million for Dunnart recovery efforts on Kangaroo Island be expended for feral cat eradication; if so, what is the projected amount.
Subject to negotiations with the Kangaroo Island Natural Resources Management Board and in light of the extensive bushfires on the island, the $1.5 million Environment Restoration Fund project is likely to include feral cat management to safe guard any Dunnart populations that survive the fires.
(3) Does the Government plan to provide further funding for feral cat eradication; if so: (a) in which months and years; and (b) what amounts.
The Government will continue to deliver its $2 million Regional Land Partnerships project 'Creating a safe haven for the Kangaroo Island Dunnart and other priority threatened species by eradicating feral cats from the Dudley Peninsula'.
Subject to negotiations with the Kangaroo Island Natural Resources Management Board and in light of the extensive bushfires on the island, the $1.5 million Environment Restoration Fund project is likely to include feral cat management to safe guard any Dunnart populations that survive the fires.
As noted in the table in response to Question 1, $200,000 has recently been allocated to the Kangaroo Island Nature Resources Management Board to assist the recovery of threatened species and threatened ecological communities in areas impacted by bushfires on the island. Funding will support emergency intervention activities such as priority pest animal control, which may include feral cat management.
This funding is part of the Australian Government's initial investment of $50 million to support immediate work to protect wildlife and longer-term protection and restoration efforts. The $50 million funding package comprises:
$25 million to establish an emergency intervention fund to assist the immediate survival of affected animals and plants.
$25 million to support wildlife rescue, zoos, and conservation groups with on the ground activities.
A panel of experts led by Threatened Species Commissioner Dr Sally Box will be charged with advising the Government on further critical interventions required and developing a strategy to recover animal and plant populations, ensuring their resilience into the future.
Funds will be allocated at the local and national level and the Government will coordinate with organisations across Australia to ensure the money goes where it is most needed.
Product Stewardship Act 2011
(Question No. 251)
Ms Sharkie asked the Minister for the Environment, in writing, on 25 November 2019:
(1) When will the first review of the Product Stewardship Act 2011 be finalised.
(2) Given that public consultation for the review closed in June 2018, why is the review of the Act taking so long.
(3) When will the submissions to the review of the Act be published on the Department of the Environment and Energy's website.
(4) Why: (a) have no annual product lists been published under the Act since June 2017; (b) were no new products added to the 2017-18 list; and (c) have no mandatory product stewardship schemes been implemented under the Act.
(5) Will proposed stewardship schemes for batteries and photovoltaic systems be implemented under the Act; if so when; if not, why not.
Ms Ley: The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:
(1) The Product Stewardship Act review will be completed in the coming months.
(2) The Coalition Government recognises that product stewardship has a critical role to play in improving Australia's waste management and recycling outcomes. Since public consultation closed, the review has had regard to domestic and international best practice experiences, and has been carefully considering interactions between the Product Stewardship Act 2011 and broader waste policy developments, such as the National Waste Policy (approved by Environment Ministers in December 2018), the National Waste Policy Action Plan (approved by Environment Ministers in November 2019) and the Government's $20 million Product Stewardship Investment Fund.
(3) The submissions to the review will be published on the Department of the Environment and Energy's website following delivery of the review report to the Minister.
(4) a) No new product issues have been brought forward since June 2017.
b) The Coalition Government is encouraging industry to take greater responsibility for its waste and identify problematic products that may be dealt with through the product stewardship framework. On 13 November 2019, I announced my intention to add child car seats to the Priority List under the Product Stewardship Act, as old, worn or damaged seats with reduced structural integrity are less able to protect a child in an accident.
c) Since June 2017, significant progress has been made on items listed on the 2017-18 Product List. The Meeting of Environment Ministers (MEM) has overseen a voluntary phase-out of microbeads in rinse-off cosmetic and personal care products, as well as work on schemes for batteries (Queensland Department of Environment and Science) and solar photovoltaic panels (Sustainability Victoria) which are being progressed through state governments.
The Government is likely to consider mandatory product stewardship schemes where industry has not been able to address identified product issues.
(5) The Government has set aside funding under the $20 million Product Stewardship Investment Fund for the development of industry-led schemes, which also covers batteries and photovoltaic systems.
At the ninth MEM in November 2019, Ministers agreed to strongly encourage major battery manufacturers, Energizer and Duracell, to participate in a new industry-led Battery Stewardship Scheme to improve the rate of battery recycling. The Government has indicated it will move to a Regulatory Impact Statement process from January 2020.
Australian Renewable Energy Agency
(Question No. 252)
Ms Sharkie asked the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, in writing, on 25 November 2019:
In respect of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency media release of 26 August 2019, 'Ultra fast highway charging network for electric vehicles':(1) How many of the 42 charging sites will be located in: (a) South Australia; and (b) in the electoral division of Mayo.(2) In which town or suburb will each of the 42 charging sites be located.(3) When is construction of these sites expected to commence and finish.
Mr Taylor: The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:
1 - How many of the 42 charging sites will be located in: (a) South Australia; and (b) in the electoral division of Mayo.
Evie's deployment plan proposes a total of four sites in South Australia. Three of these sites are planned within the greater Adelaide metro area in the Adelaide Hills, Bolivar and Noarlunga, with a further site along the Dukes Highway at Tailem Bend.
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency has been advised by Evie that there are no sites confirmed for the electoral division of Mayo as part of this deployment plan. However, specific details around the site development process including final confirmed locations, construction and commissioning for the majority of locations are still being finalised by Evie. The Australian Renewable Energy Agency will be happy to provide additional information on this aspect as the roll-out progresses.
2 - In which town or suburb will each of the 42 charging sites be located.
The Evie website provides an overview of anticipated charge site locations.
Map available in original document from Table Office
3 - When is construction of these sites expected to commence and finish.
Construction of sites commenced in August 2019, with the first site at Coochin Creek commissioned in November 2019. It is expected that 23 sites will be operational by the end of the first year with all sites expected to be operational by early 2022.
Health Care
(Question No. 253)
Ms Wells asked the Minister for Health, in writing, on 25 November 2019:
In respect of the Government's Long Term National Health Plan, will the Minister extend access to telehealth services for Australians under the age of 70 and living with chronic illness, including Australians who do not live in remote areas but because of the nature of their illness are unable to travel to medical appointments; if not, why not; if so, when.
Mr Hunt: The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:
The 2019-20 Budget included $448.5 million in new investment from 1 July 2020 under the Strengthening Primary Care measure. This funding will enable patients aged 70 years and older, as the first cohort of this new model, to enrol with their usual GPs to receive enhanced primary health, including more flexible care and non face-to-face services. Voluntary Patient Enrolment has been developed as a mechanism to formalise patient-provider relationships and provide additional resources to support continuity of care for patients leading to better primary care outcomes.
In the 2019-20 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO), the Australian Government has announced that Voluntary Patient Enrolment will extend to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 50 years and over.
Services provided through the implementation of voluntary patient enrolment are distinct from telehealth items provided under the MBS. The Government's commitment to telehealth includes a new investment of $33.5 million over four years at MYEFO 2018-19 for new MBS items for GP telehealth services for eligible patients living in rural and remote areas (Modified Monash Model areas 6-7). The new items commenced on 1 November 2019.
Under the MBS, patients not living in remote areas are eligible to access telehealth services, provided they are: a care recipient in a residential care service; or a patient of an Aboriginal Medical Service; or an Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Service.
The MBS Review Taskforce's General Practice and Primary Care Clinical Committee (GPPCCC) has reviewed GP Medicare items, including GP telehealth items. Reforms recommended by the GPPCCC will be considered by the Taskforce, which will make final recommendations to the Government in early 2020.
Mayo Electorate: Roads
(Question No. 246)
Ms Sharkie asked the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development, in writing, on 25 November 2019:
In respect of the Government's federal election commitments in 2016 for $1.2 million for road safety upgrades in the electoral division of Mayo:
1. Can the following information be provided in tabular form and itemised by project: (a) the Government's commitment; (b) the eventual Government contribution; and (c) percentage variation of the contribution from the commitment.
2. Is it a fact that: (a) all six projects have now been completed; and (b) the Government underspent its $1.2 million commitment by $222,408; if not, what was the aggregate underspend, and why was there this underspend.
Mr McCormack: The answer to the honourable member's questions are as follows:
1. Six Black Spot projects itemised in tabular format. The following table summarises:
(a) The Australian Government's commitment;
(b) The eventual Government contribution; and
(c) The percentage variation of contribution from the commitment
Black Spot Project |
Government Commitment |
Total Government contribution |
Percentage variation |
Reason for variation |
Project ID: 062615-16SA-BS |
$405,000 |
$330,001 |
-19% |
Project savings realised |
Project ID: 062602-16SA-BS |
$253,500 |
$253,500 |
0% |
On budget |
Project ID: 062597-16SA-BS |
$155,220 |
$61,855 |
-60% |
Project savings realised |
Project ID: 062625-16SA-BS |
$37,150 |
$23,238 |
-37% |
Project savings realised |
Project ID: 062600-16SA-BS |
$215,280 |
$147,320 |
-32% |
Project savings realised |
Project ID: 062612-16SA-BS |
$130,000 |
$157,828 |
21% |
Increased costs due to unforeseen site conditions |
|
$1,196,150 |
$973,742 |
|
|
2.
(a) All six Black Spot projects have been successfully completed.
(b) There is no Government underspend. Councils were invited to provide estimates for the project work. The total budget estimate for the six Black Spot projects was $1,196,150.
(c) Four projects were delivered under budget and one was delivered on budget. Savings realised were put towards the cost increase on the final project which was over budget. Final project costs for the six projects totalled $973,742.
Note:
(a) Project cost estimates are provided by proponents. Any costs savings from project underspends are put back in the State pool to be made available to the program.
The Government is providing $1 billion to the Black Spot Program from 2013-14 to 2022-23.
Infrastructure
(Question No. 256)
Ms Sharkie asked the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development, in writing, on 25 November 2019:
Further to the answer to question in writing No. 6 (House Hansard, 9 September 2019, page 2222) and to the Prime Minister's media release 'Faster delivery of road and rail projects to boost South Australia's economy' (18 November 2019):
1. Broken down by financial year, what is the projected expenditure over the forward estimates by the Government on the project to duplicate Victor Harbor Road between Main South Road and McLaren Vale, in South Australia.
2. When will the project; (a) commence; and (b) be completed.
Mr McCormack: The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:
1.
2019-20 ($m) |
2020-21 ($m) |
2021-22 ($m) |
2022-23 ($m) |
Total ($m) |
11.0 |
7.0 |
37.0 |
18.6 |
73.6 |
2. The project is expected to commence in Quarter 1, 2021 and be completed in Quarter 1, 2023.
Whitlam Government
(Question No. 259)
Mr Hill asked the Prime Minister in writing, on 28 November 2019:
(1) Why hasn't the Prime Minister advised the Queen to authorise the release of the 'Palace letters' which are currently subject to an expensive High Court appeal (High Court Case Number: Case No. S262/2019).
(2) When will the Prime Minister stop wasting taxpayer money and simply advise the Queen to authorise the release of the 'Palace letters'.
(3) Why has the Prime Minister not indicated his support for Australian historian, Professor Jenny Hocking's claim, and by extension the Australian people's, of a right to know what the 'Palace letters' contain regarding relevant parties prior to the dismissal of the Whitlam Government by Sir John Kerr on 11 November 1975.
(4) In what circumstances will the Government deem correspondence between the Monarch and the Governor-General as 'personal'; (a) what is the distinction between 'personal' and 'non-personal'; and (b) what are the defining characteristics that distinguish correspondence as 'personal' as opposed to 'non-personal'.
Mr Morrison: The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:
As this matter (Hocking v. Director-General of the National Archives of Australia) is currently before the High Court of Australia, it would not be appropriate to comment.
National Broadband Network
(Question No. 261)
Mr Keogh asked the Minister representing the Minister for Finance, in writing, on 02 December 2019:
Further to the answer to question in writing No. 208 (House Hansard, 25 November 2019, page 244), and in respect of part (3) of the question:
a. why are 114 electorate offices on copper (PSTN/Copper) and not on the NBN; and
b. what does copper refer to, if not PSTN
Mr Frydenberg: The Minister for Finance has supplied the following answer to the honourable member's question:
a. The rollout of NBN is scheduled to complete its build phase in June 2020, with 90 per cent of residential premises Ready to Connect to the NBN now. As at 2 December 2019, there were 150 electorate offices on the NBN, with a further 19 in the process of transitioning to NBN. Finance works with each electorate office to transition to NBN as it becomes available in each location.
b. In Australia, the bulk of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PTSN) is provided over copper. There are some lines however which technically could be provided over other technology. For example, services in major cities could be provided over a fibre network. For simplicity, this would still be referred to as PSTN.
Climate Change
(Question No. 264)
Mr Conroy asked the Minister representing the Minister for Defence, in writing, on 2 December 2019:
In respect of 'Project Climate Ready', referred to in the article, 'The country's top bureaucrats say Government unprepared for climate change' by Michael Slezak and Michael McKinnon (ABC News, 11 September 2019):
(1) What departments and agencies were involved in the project.
(2) What was the role of the Minister's department in the project.
(3) What exercises did the project conduct.
(4) What scenarios did the project consider.
(5) Over what period of time was the project carried out.
(6) Which body oversaw the project.
(7) Did the body that oversaw the project have terms of reference.
(8) What project reports were: (a) released publicly; and (b) not released publicly.
(9) Did the project warn the Government of: (a) health risks resulting from climate change; (b) national security risks resulting from climate change; and (c) litigation risks resulting from climate change.
Mr Dutton: The Minister for Defence has provided the following answer to the member's question:
In March 2017, the Secretaries Group on Climate risk tasked the Departments of Defence and the Environment and Energy to jointly manage the development of scenarios to examine climate risks and implications for public policy responses. This body of work was referred to as "Project Climate Ready" and developed scenarios that considered climate change impacts on various matters over various time periods, including health and wellbeing, cities, infrastructure and energy security.
Defence developed an initial scenario that was considered by the Secretaries Group on Climate Risk, and two subsequent scenarios that were considered by various departments from the Australian Government Disaster and Climate Resilience Reference Group (Resilience Reference Group). The scenarios were developed with consultation across Government including Geoscience Australia, the Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation, the Bureau of Meteorology, the Attorney-General's Department, and the departments of the Environment and Energy, Foreign Affairs and Trade, Home Affairs, Health, Agriculture, Education, Finance, Communications and the Arts, Employment Skills, Small and Family Business, Industry, Innovation and Science, Social Services, and the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Defence was not involved in the preparation of subsequent scenarios, but participated in the fourth exercise, which completed the scope of works in February 2019.
Defence and the Department of the Environment and Energy reported on the outcomes of respective scenarios to the Resilience Reference Group and the Secretaries Group on Climate Risk. The outcomes have supported the understanding of climate risks that are common across the public service and informed the development of cross-agency approaches to frameworks to consider climate risk. Information related to the scenario exercise reports was released publicly through a Freedom of Information Act (FOI) request in April 2019. That original Freedom of Information decision went to review and the applicant was advised in late August 2019 that the original decision was upheld. The decision was to partially deny access to parts of the documents under sections 33 [Documents affecting national security, defence or international relations], 42 [Documents subject to legal professional privilege], 47C [Deliberative process] and 47F [Personal privacy] of the FOI Act, and this decision included denying access to the scenarios.
Education
(Question No. 268)
Ms Sharkie asked the Minister for Education, in writing, on 2 December 2019:
With the abolition of the Education Investment Fund, how does the Government plan to assist universities to undertake major campus renewal projects that maintain facilities for teaching and research.
Mr Tehan: The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:
The Australian Government announced in the 2014–15 Budget, that the Education Investment Fund (EIF) would be abolished in response to a recommendation from the National Audit Commission. At this point responsibility for the EIF funds transferred to the Department of Finance.
At the end of 2018, Australia's public universities, as well as the Australian Catholic University and the University of Notre Dame Australia, had total cash and financial investments of nearly over $20 billion. These institutions generally have low levels of debt relative to these assets even without considering further non-financial assets. The university sector is well-placed to provide for its own capital investment needs.
With regard to research infrastructure, university researchers will benefit from the $1.9 billion committed by the Government in the 2018–19 Budget to the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS). NCRIS, which commenced in 2004–05, is a national network of world-class research infrastructure projects that support high-quality research that will drive greater innovation in the Australian research sector and the economy more broadly. It enables open, merit-based access to research infrastructure in areas of national priority identified with the research sector.
NCRIS projects support strategically important research through which Australian researchers and their international partners can address key national and global challenges. The most recent NCRIS program guidelines (2018) provide projects with funding through to 2022–23.
The Government will also provide $910 million to higher education providers (HEPs) in 2020 through the Research Support Program (RSP). The RSP provides a flexible funding stream for HEPs to support their research activities, with funding able to be spent on any activity related to the conduct of research, including research infrastructure projects, the maintenance costs of research facilities and the indirect costs associated with Australian competitive research grants.
Through the National Competitive Grants Program, the Australian Research Council (ARC) administers the Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) scheme. The LIEF scheme enables researchers to participate in cooperative initiatives so that expensive research infrastructure, equipment and facilities can be shared between higher education organisations and also with industry. It also fosters collaboration through supporting the cooperative use of international or national research facilities.
Under the LIEF scheme applicants may seek ARC funding for:
infrastructure, equipment and facility purchases, construction and installation;
salaries directly associated with creating and installing infrastructure, equipment or facilities;
leasing of infrastructure, equipment or facilities;
consortium membership costs, in the case of Australia's participation in the use of significant international-scale or national research facilities;
specialised computing facilities and software; compilations, catalogues, clearing houses or bibliographies.
All commitments made under the EIF were honoured, with the last payment made in 2018. The Government announced in the 2019–20 Budget that remaining uncommitted EIF funding would be used to fund the new Emergency Response Fund (administered by the Department of Finance).
Asylum Seekers
(Question No. 212)
Ms Sharkie asked the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs, in writing, on 15 October 2019:
1. As at September 2019 (or more recently) and expressed in tabular form: (a) what is the number of asylum seekers in each category of detention in Australian sovereign territory, broken down by number of total whole years of their detention (whether continuous or non-continuous); and (b) what is the number of asylum seekers who have been detained for more than a total of five years (whether continuous or non-continuous), broken down by category of reason for their continued detention.
2. What are the most significant reasons the Government has been unable to deport or release asylum seekers who have been detained for more than a total of five years (whether continuous or non‑continuous).
Mr Tudge: The answer to the honourable member's question is:
1. a) Table 1 provides the number of persons in each category of detention in Australia with an application for a Temporary Protection (subclass 785) visa, Safe Haven Enterprise (subclass 790) visa, or Protection (subclass 866) visa on hand before the Department of Home Affairs (the Department) as at 30 September 2019.
Table 1 : As at 30 September 2019, persons in each category of detention in Australia with an on hand protection visa application.
|
Place of immigration detention |
In community under Residence Determination |
Total |
||
IDC |
APOD |
ITA |
|||
<1 year |
22 |
0 |
9 |
0 |
31 |
1<2 years |
19 |
0 |
<5 |
0 |
>19 |
2<3 years |
12 |
0 |
<5 |
0 |
>12 |
3<4 years |
8 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
8 |
4<5 years |
<5 |
0 |
<5 |
0 |
<5 |
5+ years |
<5 |
0 |
<5 |
<5 |
>5 |
Total |
>61 |
0 |
>9 |
<5 |
>70 |
Please note:
1. Figures were extracted from departmental systems on 28 November 2019. As data has been drawn from a live systems environment, the figures provided may differ slightly in previous or future reporting.
2. For privacy reasons, the Department does not provide figures where there are less than five individuals.
3. Periods of detention are cumulative whether the individual is held for a continuous or non-continuous period.
4. Places of immigration detention include: immigration detention centres (IDC), alternative places of detention (APOD) and immigration transit accommodation (ITA).
1. b) Data on the number of persons with an ongoing protection visa application broken down by reasons for continued detention cannot be readily reported by departmental systems. However, the reasons for continued detention most commonly include unresolved identity, health issues that cannot be managed in the community, national security risks or serious criminality.
2. The most common reasons individuals are in detention for more than five years are unresolved identity, national security risks or serious criminality. The Department is unable to remove these individuals from Australia where they have ongoing matters including merits or judicial review.
Youth Jobs PaTH
(Question No. 227)
Ms Sharkie asked the Minister representing the Minister for Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business, in writing, on 22 October 2019:
MS SHARKIE: To ask the Minister representing the Minister for Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business—(1) Expressed in tabular form, and broken down by annual aggregate turnover size of the employing firm and number of firms, what were the total payments made to employers under the PaTH program.(2) Expressed in tabular form, and broken down by electorate and industry, how many interns: (a) started their internship; and (b) completed their internship.
Mrs Andrews: The Minister for Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business has provided the following answer to the honourable member's question:
(1) As at 31 October 2019, $8.7 million has been reimbursed to employment service providers (providers) for 4527 businesses who were paid PaTH Internships Host Payments. The Department of Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business does not record the annual aggregate turnover for businesses using PaTH Internships. As such, we are unable to provide a breakdown of total payments as requested.
(2) As at 31 October 2019:
INTERNSHIPS BY ELECTORATE
Host Business Electorate |
Internships Commenced* |
Internships Completed |
Adelaide |
378 |
211 |
Aston |
22 |
14 |
Ballarat |
51 |
31 |
Barker |
64 |
29 |
Bass |
132 |
98 |
Bean |
21 |
15 |
Bendigo |
112 |
68 |
Blair |
100 |
63 |
Blaxland |
14 |
11 |
Bonner |
42 |
26 |
Boothby |
40 |
24 |
Bowman |
37 |
25 |
Braddon |
273 |
192 |
Bradfield |
11 |
<10 |
Brand |
88 |
55 |
Brisbane |
372 |
242 |
Bruce |
84 |
55 |
Burt |
55 |
37 |
Calare |
99 |
79 |
Calwell |
172 |
104 |
Canberra |
28 |
16 |
Canning |
55 |
35 |
Capricornia |
29 |
15 |
Casey |
26 |
18 |
Chifley |
11 |
<10 |
Chisholm |
12 |
<10 |
Clark |
139 |
96 |
Cooper |
21 |
<10 |
Corangamite |
11 |
<10 |
Corio |
63 |
39 |
Cowan |
70 |
29 |
Cowper |
458 |
304 |
Cunningham |
130 |
72 |
Curtin |
48 |
31 |
Dawson |
109 |
61 |
Deakin |
28 |
22 |
Dickson |
235 |
134 |
Dobell |
55 |
35 |
Dunkley |
66 |
35 |
Durack |
86 |
56 |
Eden-Monaro |
13 |
<10 |
Fadden |
169 |
100 |
Fairfax |
141 |
92 |
Farrer |
173 |
85 |
Fenner |
18 |
<10 |
Fisher |
80 |
57 |
Flinders |
36 |
27 |
Flynn |
130 |
91 |
Forde |
147 |
99 |
Forrest |
144 |
77 |
Fowler |
17 |
11 |
Franklin |
72 |
46 |
Fraser |
54 |
37 |
Fremantle |
119 |
70 |
Gellibrand |
36 |
19 |
Gilmore |
54 |
31 |
Gippsland |
120 |
90 |
Goldstein |
16 |
12 |
Gorton |
17 |
12 |
Greenway |
17 |
12 |
Grey |
107 |
60 |
Griffith |
72 |
52 |
Groom |
60 |
46 |
Hasluck |
88 |
50 |
Herbert |
132 |
74 |
Higgins |
20 |
14 |
Hindmarsh |
111 |
67 |
Hinkler |
284 |
187 |
Hotham |
26 |
12 |
Hume |
12 |
<10 |
Hunter |
92 |
67 |
Indi |
38 |
22 |
Isaacs |
34 |
16 |
Jagajaga |
18 |
11 |
Kennedy |
25 |
17 |
Kingston |
92 |
49 |
La Trobe |
32 |
15 |
Lalor |
36 |
18 |
Leichhardt |
37 |
24 |
Lilley |
169 |
123 |
Lindsay |
22 |
<10 |
Longman |
176 |
105 |
Lyne |
211 |
157 |
Lyons |
30 |
22 |
Macarthur |
11 |
<10 |
Macnamara |
99 |
56 |
Macquarie |
11 |
<10 |
Makin |
114 |
60 |
Mallee |
96 |
61 |
Maranoa |
96 |
63 |
Maribyrnong |
17 |
11 |
Mayo |
37 |
28 |
McEwen |
35 |
18 |
McMahon |
20 |
13 |
McPherson |
78 |
50 |
Melbourne |
233 |
145 |
Menzies |
13 |
<10 |
Monash |
59 |
40 |
Moncrieff |
313 |
192 |
Moore |
28 |
17 |
Moreton |
74 |
51 |
New England |
93 |
61 |
Newcastle |
210 |
139 |
Nicholls |
52 |
33 |
O'Connor |
115 |
59 |
Oxley |
54 |
38 |
Page |
227 |
139 |
Parkes |
88 |
46 |
Parramatta |
30 |
17 |
Paterson |
220 |
142 |
Pearce |
74 |
54 |
Perth |
218 |
125 |
Petrie |
140 |
86 |
Rankin |
148 |
94 |
Reid |
11 |
<10 |
Richmond |
133 |
94 |
Riverina |
71 |
40 |
Robertson |
36 |
21 |
Ryan |
27 |
18 |
Scullin |
31 |
16 |
Shortland |
63 |
45 |
Solomon |
35 |
19 |
Spence |
150 |
80 |
Stirling |
39 |
25 |
Sturt |
44 |
29 |
Swan |
155 |
89 |
Sydney |
70 |
52 |
Wannon |
40 |
27 |
Werriwa |
14 |
11 |
Whitlam |
123 |
78 |
Wide Bay |
130 |
86 |
Wills |
18 |
<10 |
Wright |
72 |
51 |
* The internships commenced numbers include: 352 internships still in progress and 151 internships which have ended but are awaiting finalisation by the provider. Once these internships are finalised they will increase the count of completed internships in applicable electorates. Other internships commenced but not recorded as completed were ended early by either the job seeker, host business, provider or the department.
* Internships Commenced and/or Internships Completed, with a value of 10 or less, are represented as <10 due to privacy considerations.
* Electorates with a count of 10 or less for both elements are not represented in the table, due to privacy considerations.
INTERNSHIPS BY INDUSTRY
Host Business Industry |
Internships Commenced* |
Internships Completed |
Accommodation and Food Services |
3501 |
2097 |
Administrative and Support Services |
557 |
372 |
Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing |
214 |
142 |
Arts and Recreation Services |
140 |
99 |
Construction |
463 |
276 |
Education and Training |
325 |
219 |
Electricity, Gas, Water, Waste Services |
66 |
45 |
Financial and Insurance Services |
76 |
43 |
Health Care and Social Assistance |
267 |
178 |
Information Media and Telecommunications |
347 |
235 |
Manufacturing |
589 |
367 |
Mining |
11 |
<10 |
Other Services |
2198 |
1360 |
Professional, Scientific, Technical Services |
165 |
124 |
Public Administration and Safety |
32 |
28 |
Rental, Hiring and Real Estate Services |
66 |
53 |
Retail Trade |
2227 |
1430 |
Transport, Postal and Warehousing |
292 |
177 |
Wholesale Trade |
153 |
88 |
* The internships commenced numbers include: 352 internships still in progress and 151 internships which have ended but are awaiting finalisation by the provider. Once these internships are finalised they will increase the count of completed internships in applicable industries. Other internships commenced but not recorded as completed were ended early by either the job seeker, host business, provider or the department.
* Internships Commenced and/or Internships Completed, with a value of 10 or less, are represented as <10 due to privacy considerations.
Education
(Question No. 230)
Ms Sharkie asked the Minister representing the Minister for Families and Social Services in writing on 24 October 2019:
(1) When was the last time the Government undertook a non-administrative review of the Assistance for Isolated Children (AIC) payments.(2) Will the Government conduct a review of AIC payments; if so, when; if not, why not.(3) Has the Government considered different AIC payment rates for geographically isolated children as compared to non-geographically isolated children; if so, what was the result of that consideration; if not, why not.(4) Why are AIC payments currently indexed to the consumer price index rather than the education sub-index.(5) Broken down by state and territory, how many geographically isolated students are enrolled in an early years' program via distance education in their pre-school education year prior to compulsory schooling.(6) Has the Government considered allowing access to AIC payments for parents of children undertaking an early years' program via distance education prior to compulsory schooling; if so, what was the result of that consideration; if not, why not.(7) In respect of Senate general business notice of motion no. 200 ( Journals of the Senate , 17 October 2019, page 715), will the Government implement a rural hardship education fund or grants program linked to disasters such as drought, bushfire and flood to assist rural and remote students continue their education unchanged; if so, can details be provided; if not, why not.
Mr Robert: The Minister for Families and Social Services has provided the following answer to the honourable member's question:
(1) The Department of Social Services regularly provides advice on a range of issues related to social security payments, such as Assistance for Isolated Children, including policy options, payment rates, cohort analysis and commentary on analysis undertaken by research and other organisations.
(2) The Department of Social Services regularly provides advice on a range of issues related to social security payments, such as Assistance for Isolated Children, including policy options, payment rates, cohort analysis and commentary on analysis undertaken by research and other organisations.
(3) AIC allowances are intended for the families of students who do not have reasonable daily access to an appropriate state school. This may be because of geographical isolation or because the student has special needs due to a disability or other health-related condition. The Department of Social Services regularly provides advice on a range of issues related to social security payments, such as Assistance for Isolated Children, including payment rates.
(4) Consumer Price Index (CPI) increases to AIC allowances commenced from 1 January 2000. The application of CPI increases to AIC allowances is consistent with CPI increases applied to other student payments such as Youth Allowance, Austudy and ABSTUDY.
(5) The Department of Education is unable to provide an answer to this question. Information on preschool enrolments is contained in the National Early Childhood Education and Care Collection (NECECC). The NECECC does not include a variable identifying whether a preschool program is provided via distance education. The collection does provide information on preschool enrolments by geographic location, available at www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS%5Cabs@.nsf/0/BC7AC812771E8FEFCA2578680014F525?Opendocument. State and territory governments are responsible for preschool delivery and, as such, may be able to provide information on distance education preschool enrolments.
(6) The AIC Scheme provides assistance to students undertaking compulsory education. Responsibility for early education resides with state and territory governments, which provide a range of programs to support early education.
(7) Special Circumstances Funding provides financial help to eligible schools when unexpected circumstances or events cause severe and temporary financial difficulty. A dedicated $4 million Special Circumstances Funding round was conducted during early 2019 to provide support to schools affected by the 2019 North Queensland floods. Likewise, a $10 million 2019/20 Drought Relief Fund for non-government schools opened on 12 November 2019. Applications for the drought relief fund closed on Monday 16 December, and the department is currently assessing the applications received, with funding to be delivered during early 2020.
Community Child Care Fund (CCCF) Special Circumstance funding is available to support approved child care services impacted by local emergencies, natural disasters or operating in drought affected areas that are experiencing financial pressure putting them at risk of closure. A dedicated $5 million funding for 2019-20 was made available from November 2019 for eligible child care services in drought affected areas. Another $4 million is available in 2019-20 for services affected by natural disasters such as floods and fire, or other unforeseen circumstances causing financial pressure and putting the service at risk of closure. Applications for this grant opportunity are available on the Department of Education website and are assessed on a case-by-case basis.
Vehicle Emissions Testing
(Question No. 234)
Ms Sharkie asked the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, in writing, on 24 October 2019:
Further to the answer to question in writing No. 99 (House Hansard, 14 October 2019, page 203):(1) In respect of the answer to part (1) of the question: (a) what happened to in-service emissions testing that stopped in 2008; and (b) how can Australia adequately track its vehicle emissions without actual measurements, especially considering its unique international position on issues such as fleet characteristics and fuel quality.(2) In respect of the answer to part (2) of the question, why have there been no updates regarding national air pollutant emissions from motor vehicles for base years beyond 2010.(3) In respect of the answer to part (3) of the question, have any new policy measures focused on more effective control of real-world emissions; if so, what are they and can details be provided.(4) In respect of the answer to parts (4) and (5) of the question: (a) is it a fact that a draft regulation impact statement was released in 2016 that clearly identified net benefits of introduction of Euro 6 emission standards; (b) what is the reason that the Government is still 'considering' this issue three years later; (c) what does the Government mean by 'considering'; (d) is there an agreed process with clear timelines to progress policy; and (e) can a clarification be provided as to exactly who is being consulted, and when this has happened or will happen.(5) In respect of the answer to part (6) of the question, how does the Government plan to respond to claims that current Australian fuel (petrol) quality will create technological issues for owners of Euro 6 technology cars?
Mr Taylor: Mr Taylor: The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:
(1) The Hon Michael McCormack MP, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development is leading this work, and questions are best addressed to the Deputy Prime Minister.
(2) In May 2019, the Department of the Environment and Energy published the latest release of the National Inventory Report along with updated data for Australia's UNFCCC Inventory (ageis.climatechange.gov.au/UNFCCC.aspx). The UNFCCC Inventory includes national road transportation emissions trends to 2017 for the following (as well as other) gases:
carbon dioxide
methane
nitrous oxide
carbon monoxide
nitrogen oxides
non-methane volatile organic compounds
sulfur dioxide.
For the first time, the 2019 release of Australia's UNFCCC Inventory included road transportation emissions trends from 2009 to 2017 for:
black carbon
particulate matter ≤2.5 µm (PM2.5)
particulate matter ≤10.0 µm (PM10).
The Department of the Environment and Energy will continue to track road transportation emissions for the above gases in future years.
The methods underpinning the estimates for road transportation are set out in Australia's National Inventory Report 2017 (volumes 1 and 3):
environment.gov.au/climate-change/climate-science-data/greenhouse-gas-measurement/publications/national-inventory-report-2017
(3) The Hon Michael McCormack MP, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development is leading this work, and questions are best addressed to the Deputy Prime Minister.
(4) The Hon Michael McCormack MP, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development is leading this work, and questions are best addressed to the Deputy Prime Minister.
(5) Manufacturers that have concerns about the suitability of current Australian market fuels are able to specify the use of a higher grade of fuel (eg 95 RON) as a condition of warranty.
Health Care
(Question No. 237)
Ms Sharkie asked the Minister for Health, in writing, on 24 October 2019:
1) Is it a fact that expenditure on health and medical research through the National Health and Medical Research Council and Medical Research Future Fund equates to 0.53 per cent of total health expenditure; if not, what is the Government's expenditure on health and medical research as a percentage of the total health budget for 2018-19.
2) Does the Government accept the recommendation of the 2013 Strategic Review of Health and Medical Research to increase investment in medical research to 3 per cent of total health expenditure and what steps, if any, is the Government taking to meet that target; if not, why not.
3) Does the Government accept that an increase in expenditure on medical research will lead to better health and economic outcomes; if not, why not.
Mr Hunt: The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:
1) The Department of Health is unable to reconcile the 0.53 per cent figure from the honorable Member's question.
In 2018-19, Commonwealth total health expenditure was $100.7 billion and the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) and National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) expended a combined $1.2 billion. As such, the sum of NHMRC and MRFF expenditure was 1.14 per cent of total Commonwealth expenditure on health for 2018‑19.
The sum of NHMRC and MRFF funding does not represent the total Australian Government support for research and development provided to the health and medical research sector.
The Australian Government provides substantial support for health and medical research and development including through its support of tertiary institutions through Research Block Grants and through the Research and Development Tax Incentive. Details of the Australian Government's approximately $9.6 billion contribution to research and development (2019-20) are available in the Science, Research and Innovation tables (SRI tables) published by the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science.
The SRI tables attribute $1.47 billion of R&D funding to the socio-economic objective (SEO) of health for 2018-19. This figure is a conservative estimate of total Commonwealth Government spending on health and medical research as it does not count, for example:
R&D tax incentive amounts attributable to businesses that perform health and medical research but that are identified against another SEO, for example 'industrial production and technology', or
funding for health-related Collaborative Research Centres.
It should also be noted that all research block grant funding in that document is attributed to the SEO 'General advancement of knowledge'. Based on Research Australia's estimate that health and medical research accounts for one third of all R&D expenditure in higher education institutions, and 2018-19 research block grant expenditure estimates published in the 2019-20 SRI tables, approximately $700 million of research block grant spending could be attributed to health and medical research.
Combining this attribution of research block grant funding with the published figure of $1.47 billion gives a total of $2.17 billion for health and medical R&D. This represents a total of 2.2 per cent of total Commonwealth expenditure on health.
It should be noted that disbursements from the MRFF are projected to nearly triple over the period 2018-19 to 2021-22, which will increase the Commonwealth's contribution to health and medical research as a proportion of health spending.
2) The Australian Government is committed to funding health and medical research and building a strong, sustainable research sector and industry more broadly.
The Australian Government established the MRFF to provide grants of financial assistance to support health and medical research and innovation to improve the health and wellbeing of Australians. The MRFF operates as an endowment fund with the capital preserved in perpetuity. At maturity, the MRFF will reach $20 billion. It is estimated that MRFF earnings will reach $650 million by the end of the forward estimates. Increasing earnings from the endowment fund will result in higher disbursements.
In the 2019-20 Budget, the Government announced its continued commitment to supporting lifesaving medical research with a $5 billion 10-year investment plan for the MRFF. It will place Australia at the leading edge of research in areas like genomics and will support the search for cures and treatments, including for rare cancers.
The MRFF complements the National Health and Medical Research, which will provide around $850 million in funding for health and medical research in 2019-20.
The Government has also established the Biomedical Translation Fund (BTF), which comprises a $250 million contribution from the Commonwealth, more than matched by private capital, to form a $501.25 million fund to fast‑track investment in late stage medical innovation of commercial potential. As at the end of September 2019, BTF Fund managers had invested $150.20 million in late stage research including for the development of an artificial heart and for the development of a drug to treat kidney disease.
In addition to direct health and medical research funding, the Australian Government supports health and medical research and development through a range of programs as mentioned in the answer to (1).
3) Health and medical research improves and saves lives, plays an essential role in health system improvement and is leading our innovation economy.
The Australian Government is committed to ensuring Australia is a health and medical research powerhouse.
Health and medical research has been identified as one of the key pillars supporting the health system and is essential to building a stronger, sustainable health system.
The above reasons contributed to the Government's decisions to boost the health and medical research sector and the Medtech and Pharmaceutical (MTP) industry more broadly through the introduction of the MRFF and BTF. In the 2017-18 Budget, the Government launched a National Health and Medical Industry Growth Plan, which aimed to:
add an estimated 28,000 new jobs;
provide a minimum of 130 new clinical trials;
generate a 50% increase in exports, new markets and global market leadership in biotechnology, medical devices and pharmaceuticals;
improve healthcare outcomes from new medicines, devices and treatments, embedded genomics technology, clinical trial activity and data analytics; and
boost the Australian economy through jobs and export potential.
According to the Industry Growth Centre for the MTP Industry, MTPConnect, the MTP industry supported an estimated 70,000 jobs in 2018, including 26,650 in research, an increase of 6 per cent since 2016. In 2018 it was responsible for $6.5 billion in exports (up 12 per cent since 2016) and had market capitalisation of $129 billion (MTPConnect Sector Competitiveness Plan 2019).
Australian Aid Budget
(Question No. 245)
Mr Conroy asked the Minister representing the Minister for Foreign Affairs on 25 November 2019:
To ask the Minister representing the Minister for Foreign Affairs—Further to the Minster's answer to question in writing No. 141 (House Hansard, 17 October 2019, page 108), how much of the $300 million that the Government is spending over four years to 2020 to deliver climate and disaster resilient low carbon growth in the Pacific region was spent in 2018-19.
Mr Morrison: The Minister for Foreign Affairs has provided the following answer to the honourable Member's question is as follows:
Of the commitment to spend $300 million over four years in climate and disaster resilience support in the Pacific, $101.7 million was spent in the 2018-19 financial year.
Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency
(Question No. 269)
Ms Sharkie asked the Minister for Education, in writing, on 2 December 2019:
(1) Is the Government aware of concerns that the registration process of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) has lost its focus on the Higher Education Standards and is using TEQSA guidelines as if they were required standards rather than advice.
(2) What action will the Government take to ensure TEQSA focuses on whether each provider is meeting the Higher Education Standards.
Mr Tehan: The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:
The definitive instrument for the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) to register a higher education provider has always been the Higher Education Standards Framework (Threshold Standards) 2015, which is established under the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act 2011 (TEQSA Act).
The functions of TEQSA under Section 134 of the TEQSA Act include 'to collect, analyse interpret and disseminate information relating to: (iii) quality assurance practice, and quality improvement, in higher education; and (iv) the Higher Education Standards Framework'. This provides the basis for the exercise of the TEQSA's provision of guidance notes. Guidance notes are not legislative instruments and do not impact on the assessment of applications.
Bushfires
(Question No. 275)
Ms Sharkie asked the Minister for the Environment, in writing, on 05 December 2019:
(1) When was 'fire regimes that cause biodiversity decline' (formerly 'contemporary fire regimes resulting in the loss of vegetation heterogeneity and biodiversity throughout Australia') first nominated as a key threatening process (KTP) under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act).(2) Is it a fact that, as stated on the Department of the Environment and Energy's website, the Threatened Species Scientific Committee (TSSC) provided finalised advice to the Minister on this nomination in March 2011.(3) Has any further advice been provided by the TSSC since March 2011.(4) In respect of the statement on the department's website that the timeframe for the Minister to make a decision on whether to list this KTP was extended to 31 August 2013 to allow for further consultation with state and territory governments and to allow the Minister to consider the department's review of key threatening processes, and was then further extended to 29 November 2013 to allow the committee to review the further input from the states and territories—why has there been such a delay in making a decision on this nomination.(5) When will a final decision be made on whether or not to list 'fire regimes that cause biodiversity decline' as a KTP under the EPBC Act.
Ms Ley: The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:
(1) 'Contemporary fire regimes resulting in the loss of vegetation heterogeneity and biodiversity in Northern Australia' was nominated as a key threatening process (KTP) in 2007. As the issues raised in the original nomination were also relevant to other areas of Australia, the Threatened Species Scientific Committee broadened the nomination to encompass the whole of Australia and changed the title to 'Contemporary fire regimes resulting in the loss of vegetation heterogeneity and biodiversity throughout Australia'. The broadened nomination was included on the Finalised Priority Assessment List for the assessment period commencing 1 October 2008 and subsequently renamed 'Fire regimes that cause biodiversity decline'.
(2) Yes.
(3) Yes. The Committee sent a letter to the then Minister (Minister Burke) in May 2013.
(4) The assessment is particularly complex, requiring consideration of multiple aspects of fire and biodiversity management in Australia.
(5) I have asked the Threatened Species Scientific Committee to review its assessment of this threatening process and provide me with advice on next steps following its February meeting.
Bomana Immigration Centre
(Question No. 277)
Ms Sharkie asked the Minister for Home Affairs, in writing, on 5 December 2019:
1. Does the Government have any role or control over the operation of the Bomana Detention Centre in Papua New Guinea.2. Have there been any Australian public servants involved in the operation of Bomana; if so, how many.3. Have any contractors or subcontractors involved in the operation of Bomana been paid by the Government; if so, how many, broken down by category.4 .Has the Government paid for training of any Bomana staff; if so: (a) how many people have been trained; (b) what is the total number of participant hours of training; and (c) what was the total value of that training; if not, why not.5. Can a copy be provided of the agreement or agreements made between the Australian and Papua New Guinean governments regarding Bomana; if not, why not.6. Did the Australian Government contribute to the: (a) construction of Bomana; and/or (b) ongoing operational costs of Bomana; if so, how much (in tabular form by financial year, including projected costs over the forward estimates).7. Is the Government aware that multilateral and not-for-profit organisations have been denied consistent access to Bomana; if so, has the Government made any representations to the Government of Papua New Guinea to encourage access; if not, why not.
Mr Dutton: The answer to the honourable member's question is:
1. No.
2. No.
3. The Department of Home Affairs provides funding support to the Papua New Guinea Government for its operation of the Bomana Immigration Centre. The Department does not hold any contracts in relation to the operation of the Bomana Immigration Centre.
4. At the request of the Papua New Guinea Government, the Department of Home Affairs provided training to six Papua New Guinea Immigration and Citizenship Authority officers working at the Bomana Immigration Centre.
The Papua New Guinea Immigration and Citizenship Authority also engaged local service providers to deliver other relevant training directly to staff working at the Bomana Immigration Centre at cost of $12,952.25. The training included first aid, fire equipment training and St John's Ambulance defibrillator training.
5. The arrangement between the Australia and Papua New Guinea Governments was agreed in confidence. If released, it could undermine Papua New Guinea's confidence in its good working relationship with Australia and may jeopardise cooperation on people smuggling matters more broadly.
6. (a) Yes. The cost to construct the centre was approximately $23.2 million.
(b) As noted in 3) contracts are held by the Papua New Guinea Government.
7. Access to the Bomana Immigration Centre is a matter for the Papua New Guinea Government.
Seasonal Worker Program
(Question No. 242)
Mr Conroy asked the Minister representing the Minister for Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business, in writing, on 25 November 2019:
In respect of the Seasonal Worker Program administered by the Department of Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business, for each of the financial years from 2013-14 to 2018-19, how many seasonal workers participated in the program by: (a) nationality; (b) occupation at the Australia and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations 4 digit level; (c) the sponsoring employers' industry subsector at the Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification 4 digit level; and (d) location of the sponsoring employer at Statistical Area Level 4.
Mrs Andrews: The Minister for Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business has provided the following answer to the honourable member's question:
(a) Seasonal workers participation in the Seasonal Worker Programme (SWP) by nationality
Table 1 represents the number of subclass 416 and 403 visas issued under the SWP from 2013–14 to 2018–19 by the country of citizenship.
Table 1 |
|||||||||||
Financial Year of Visa Grant |
Fiji |
Kiribati |
Nauru |
Papua New Guinea |
Samoa |
Solomon Islands |
Timor-Leste |
Tonga |
Tuvalu |
Vanuatu |
Total |
2013-14 |
0 |
14 |
0 |
26 |
162 |
<10 |
74 |
1497 |
20 |
212 |
2014 |
2014-15 |
<10 |
11 |
0 |
35 |
185 |
21 |
168 |
2179 |
<10 |
567 |
3177 |
2015-16 |
160 |
20 |
17 |
42 |
140 |
61 |
224 |
2624 |
<10 |
1198 |
4490 |
2016-17 |
190 |
124 |
0 |
139 |
309 |
87 |
477 |
2691 |
0 |
2149 |
6166 |
2017-18 |
247 |
364 |
0 |
92 |
527 |
175 |
915 |
2790 |
0 |
3349 |
8459 |
2018-19 |
436 |
377 |
0 |
128 |
677 |
314 |
1567 |
3738 |
0 |
4965 |
12,202 |
a) Source: Department of Home Affairs, 2019 (BR0146.04)
b) Note 1: Seasonal Worker Programme includes visa subclass 416 and subclass 403 under the Seasonal Worker Programme
c) Note 2: Excludes subclass 416 visas granted under the Pacific Seasonal Worker Pilot Scheme
d) Note 3: Figures are from a dynamic source as reported on 30 November 2019 and are subject to variations.
(b) and (c) Seasonal workers occupation and industry sub-sector
The Department of Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business does not collect SWP data by occupation at the Australia and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations 4 digit level and the sponsoring employers' industry subsector at the Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification 4 digit level.
Table 2 provides the number of approved places for seasonal workers by eligible industry under
the SWP from 2013–14 to 2018–19.
Table 2 |
Number of SWP Approved Places* |
|||||
Industry |
13–14 |
14–15 |
15–16 |
16–17 |
17–18 |
18–19 |
Accommodation |
32 |
40 |
50 |
91 |
109 |
151 |
Agriculture |
|
|
15 |
56 |
101 |
139 |
Horticulture |
1843 |
3261 |
4625 |
6241 |
8831 |
13,000 |
Viticulture |
|
|
|
84 |
|
<10 |
* The department approves SWP places based on the requests from the Approved Employers .
The number of SWP places ultimately filled depends on the availability of workers and the issued visas.
Note: The number of SWP approved places does not align with the numbers of issued visas each financial year, as they are separate processes subject to different timing and workers ' availability.
(d) Location of the sponsoring employers
The Department of Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business does not collect the data on location of the sponsoring employers at Statistical Area Level 4 level (SA4). Around one third of SWP approved employers are labour hire firms/contractors that operate across the states and/or nationally. In addition, some growers have farms in different SA4 locations. However, SWP data is available for approved places for seasonal workers at the SA4 level as per Table 3.
Table 3 provides a breakdown of SWP approved places from 2013–14 to 2018–19 by location at SA4 level.
Table 3 |
Number of SWP Approved Places* |
|||||
ABS SA4 |
13–14 |
14–15 |
15–16 |
16–17 |
17–18 |
18–19 |
NSW |
216 |
409 |
713 |
1024 |
1236 |
1439 |
Baulkham Hills and Hawkesbury |
|
<10 |
<10 |
10 |
10 |
12 |
Capital Region |
|
|
|
<10 |
25 |
<10 |
Central Coast |
24 |
46 |
20 |
88 |
162 |
176 |
Central West |
<10 |
16 |
47 |
97 |
136 |
128 |
Coffs Harbour - Grafton |
<10 |
22 |
38 |
416 |
105 |
48 |
Mid North Coast |
12 |
<10 |
10 |
<10 |
<10 |
12 |
Murray |
|
40 |
145 |
64 |
103 |
151 |
New England and North West |
83 |
132 |
127 |
194 |
232 |
316 |
Richmond - Tweed |
30 |
32 |
34 |
31 |
65 |
140 |
Riverina |
|
44 |
230 |
39 |
297 |
319 |
Southern Highlands and Shoalhaven |
|
|
|
|
|
<10 |
Sydney - Baulkham Hills and Hawkesbury |
34 |
35 |
23 |
29 |
32 |
48 |
Sydney - Outer South West |
19 |
35 |
34 |
44 |
61 |
66 |
Sydney - South West |
|
|
|
|
|
12 |
NT |
125 |
98 |
208 |
269 |
543 |
680 |
Darwin |
|
|
|
119 |
146 |
183 |
Northern Territory - Outback |
125 |
98 |
208 |
150 |
397 |
497 |
QLD |
952 |
1695 |
1884 |
2685 |
3424 |
4595 |
Cairns |
69 |
179 |
363 |
748 |
1212 |
1655 |
Darling Downs - Maranoa |
86 |
10 |
63 |
148 |
283 |
255 |
Fitzroy |
280 |
478 |
405 |
607 |
447 |
407 |
Ipswich |
33 |
11 |
12 |
14 |
15 |
46 |
Mackay |
62 |
346 |
335 |
195 |
191 |
345 |
Moreton Bay - North |
40 |
|
|
44 |
135 |
55 |
Queensland - Outback |
99 |
80 |
128 |
158 |
302 |
569 |
Sunshine Coast |
18 |
44 |
59 |
56 |
73 |
109 |
Toowoomba |
40 |
|
|
|
|
70 |
Townsville |
|
20 |
<10 |
50 |
15 |
157 |
Wide Bay |
225 |
527 |
515 |
665 |
751 |
927 |
SA |
103 |
136 |
331 |
746 |
1297 |
2030 |
Adelaide - Central and Hills |
<10 |
<10 |
<10 |
|
60 |
12 |
Adelaide - North |
|
|
20 |
246 |
230 |
371 |
Adelaide - South |
|
|
|
|
|
36 |
Barossa - Yorke - Mid North |
|
|
|
|
130 |
|
South Australia - Outback |
|
|
|
70 |
173 |
217 |
South Australia - South East |
96 |
134 |
307 |
430 |
704 |
1394 |
TAS |
65 |
162 |
281 |
206 |
629 |
1309 |
Hobart |
|
|
<10 |
11 |
14 |
10 |
Launceston and North East |
15 |
71 |
81 |
175 |
439 |
594 |
South East |
|
|
|
|
|
59 |
West and North West |
50 |
91 |
195 |
20 |
176 |
646 |
VIC |
310 |
564 |
948 |
1169 |
1317 |
2236 |
Gippsland |
|
|
|
10 |
<10 |
<10 |
Hume |
|
|
|
|
22 |
12 |
Latrobe - Gippsland |
|
45 |
115 |
111 |
174 |
216 |
Melbourne - Outer East |
20 |
64 |
17 |
22 |
32 |
181 |
Melbourne - South East |
|
96 |
310 |
277 |
372 |
548 |
Melbourne - West |
|
|
15 |
15 |
89 |
133 |
Mornington Peninsula |
|
|
|
|
<10 |
39 |
North West |
230 |
228 |
192 |
587 |
443 |
920 |
Shepparton |
60 |
131 |
299 |
147 |
171 |
184 |
WA |
104 |
237 |
325 |
373 |
595 |
1010 |
Bunbury |
58 |
68 |
162 |
190 |
346 |
382 |
Mandurah |
|
|
|
|
30 |
18 |
Perth - North East |
|
|
|
|
|
15 |
Perth - North West |
|
36 |
|
|
|
|
Western Australia - Outback |
36 |
124 |
122 |
141 |
164 |
350 |
Western Australia - Wheat Belt |
10 |
<10 |
41 |
42 |
55 |
245 |
* The department approves SWP places based on the requests from the Approved Employers .
The number of SWP places ultimately filled depends on the availability of workers and the issued visas.
Note: The number of SWP approved places does not align with the numbers of issued visas each financial year, as they are separate processes subject to different timing and workers ' availability.
Health Care
(Question No. 260)
Ms Sharkie asked the Minister for Health, in writing, on 02 December 2019:
(1) Has the Government undertaken a formal investigation into the benefit of telehealth psychiatric services during and following natural disasters such as drought or floods; if not, why not.(2) What steps, if any, is the Government taking to encourage the use of telehealth psychiatric services in rural, regional and remote communities.(3) What financial incentives, if any, does the Government make available to telehealth providers who offer psychiatric services to rural, regional and remote communities.
(4) Does Item 288 of the Medical Benefits Schedule (telehealth) encourage providers to offer telehealth services; if not, why not.
Mr Hunt: The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:
(1) Telehealth psychiatric services are currently being considered by the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) Review Taskforce (the Taskforce). The Taskforce includes independent clinical and consumer representatives, and is reviewing all Medicare items to ensure that they align with best clinical practice. The Taskforce is expected to provide its final recommendations about specialist services, including telehealth psychiatry, in early 2020.
(2) Medicare rebates which support non-metropolitan patients' access to telehealth psychiatry services are a long-standing feature of the MBS, introduced in 2011.
In response to the bushfire emergency affecting many rural, regional and remote communities, new bushfire MBS items have been made available for MBS-subsidised psychological services for people who have been adversely affected by bushfire in 2019-20. Items commenced on 17 January 2020 and provide MBS rebates for up to 10 individual mental health services per calendar year. People can self-refer to an eligible allied mental health professional (GPs, psychologists, social workers and occupational therapists) and do not have to have a diagnosed mental illness or a GP Mental Health Treatment Plan to access support.
This complements patients' entitlements through the existing Better Access to Psychiatrists, Psychologists and General Practitioners through the MBS (Better Access) initiative, and the GP mental health and well-being telehealth services for bushfire-affected patients introduced on 10 January 2020.
(3) The Medicare rebates for telehealth psychiatry provide an additional 50% loading on the relevant face-to-face MBS attendance item.
(4) Medicare data indicates that the uptake of telehealth services has increased every financial year since the introduction of the first telehealth items in 2011. Over this time, the proportion of specialist psychiatry telehealth services (MBS item 288) has increased from approximately 24.5% to 40.8% of all specialist telehealth services (see table below).
Table: MBS specialist telehealth services by year
Year |
Psychiatry* |
All specialist** |
% Psychiatry |
2011/2012 |
3,932 |
16,050 |
24.5% |
2012/2013 |
14,023 |
46,380 |
30.2% |
2013/2014 |
24,198 |
67,100 |
36.1% |
2014/2015 |
33,238 |
84,385 |
39.4% |
2015/2016 |
40,860 |
103,432 |
39.5% |
2016/2017 |
44,098 |
111,968 |
39.4% |
2017/2018 |
51,246 |
129,837 |
39.5% |
2018/2019 |
66,408 |
162,710 |
40.8% |
Source: Department of Health analysis of unpublished MBS data
* MBS item 288
** MBS items 112, 113, 114, 149, 16399, 17609, 2799, 2820, 288, 3015, 6016, 6025, 6026, 6059, 6060, 99
Climate Change
(Question No. 262)
Mr Conroy asked the Minister for the Environment, in writing, on 2 December 2019:
In respect of the Australian Government Disaster and Climate Resilience Reference Group:(1) Which departments or agencies are members of the group.(2) Which officials represent those departments or agencies.(3) When was the group established.(4) What are the responsibilities of the group.(5) Does the group have terms of reference.(6) How many times has the group met.(7) When and where does the group meet.(8) What reports has the groups published and are they publicly available.(9) Will the group produce reports in the future that will be publicly available.(10) What is the relationship of the group to the 'Secretaries Group on Climate Risk' referred to in the article, 'The country's top bureaucrats say Government unprepared for climate change' by Michael Slezak and Michael McKinnon (ABC News, 11 September 2019).
Ms Ley: The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:
1) Members of the Australian Government Disaster and Climate Resilience Reference Group (the Resilience Reference Group) include:
Department of the Environment and Energy;
Department of Home Affairs;
Attorney-General's Department;
Department of Human Services,
Department of Industry, Innovation and Science;
Department of Agriculture;
Department of Communications and the Arts;
Department of Defence;
Department of Education,
Department of Finance;
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade;
Department of Health;
Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Cities and Regional Development;
Department of Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business;
Department of Social Services;
Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet;
Department of Veterans' Affairs;
The Treasury;
Geoscience Australia;
CSIRO; and
The Bureau of Meteorology.
2) Participating departments or agencies are formally represented at the Deputy Secretary level.
3) The Resilience Reference Group was established in 2015.
4) The Resilience Reference Group is a coordinating group of senior officials which considers the risks and opportunities arising from climate change and natural disasters.
5) The Resilience Reference Group has Terms of Reference.
6) The Resilience Reference Group has met 12 times.
7) The Resilience Reference Group meets approximately on a quarterly basis. Meetings are held in Canberra, generally hosted by the Department of the Environment and Energy or the Department of Home Affairs.
8) The Resilience Reference Group has not published any reports.
9) The Resilience Reference Group currently does not have any plans to produce any reports.
10) The Resilience Reference Group supports the Secretaries Group on Climate Risk by progressing actions as directed by that Group.
Climate Change
(Question No. 263)
Mr Conroy asked the Minister for the Environment, in writing, on 02 December 2019:
In respect of 'Project Climate Ready', referred to in the article, 'The country's top bureaucrats say Government unprepared for climate change' by Michael Slezak and Michael McKinnon (ABC News, 11 September 2019):(1) What departments and agencies were involved in the project.(2) What was the role of the Minister's department in the project.(3) What exercises did the project conduct.(4) What scenarios did the project consider.(5) Over what period of time was the project carried out.(6) Which body oversaw the project.(7) Did the body that oversaw the project have terms of reference.(8) What project reports were: (a) released publicly; and (b) not released publicly.(9) Did the project warn the Government of: (a) health risks resulting from climate change; (b) national security risks resulting from climate change; and (c) litigation risks resulting from climate change.
Ms Ley: The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:
1) The delivery of "Project Climate Ready" was tasked to the Australian Government Disaster and Climate Resilience Reference Group by the Secretaries Group on Climate Risk. The Disaster and Climate Resilience Reference Group has representatives from all Australian Government departments and key science agencies. Departments participated in individual scenario exercises as appropriate.
2) The Department of the Environment and Energy led the development and delivery of scenarios for the project, in close consultation with the Disaster and Climate Resilience Reference Group. Two of the scenario exercises were managed jointly with the Department of Defence.
3) The project conducted a series of scenario exercises. These were designed to explore plausible future impacts from climate change and extreme weather events over the medium term (roughly 5-10 years).
4) Scenarios explored some of the possible impacts of extreme weather events in a number of sectors including health, cities and infrastructure and energy.
5) The project was carried out over the period March 2017 to February 2019.
6) The Disaster and Climate Resilience Reference Group oversaw the delivery of the project.
7) Yes.
8) Information on the scenario exercise reports was released publicly through a Freedom of Information Act request in July 2019.
9) The project was designed to explore plausible future impacts from climate change and extreme weather events over the medium term. The intention was to understand what challenges could be presented by such events, in order to inform policy and program design and thinking.
Bulk-Billing
(Question No. 265)
Ms Sharkie asked the Minister for Health, in writing, on 02 December 2019:
Further to the answer to question in writing No. 94 (House Hansard, 14 October 2019, page 201), and in respect of the Minister's statement on 5 April 2019 that 'GP bulk billing rates under Medicare rose to 86 per cent in the six months from July to December 2018, a record high for this period': what percentage of patients who visited a general practitioner for the period 1 July 2018 to 30 March 2019 were bulk billed.
Mr Hunt: The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:
(1) For the period 1 July 2018 to 30 March 2019, 86% of visits to the general practitioner were bulk billed, a record high for the period.
Excise Act 1901
(Question No. 266)
Ms Sharkie Rebekha Sharkie asked the Assistant Treasurer, in writing, on 2 December 2019 ‑
(1) Are the maturation requirements for rum, whisky and brandy in Section 77FI of the ExciseAct 1901 a barrier to entry for small distillers; if not, why not.(2) What is the policy rationale for the maturation requirement.(3) Have changes to distilling practices reduced the relevance or necessity for these maturation requirements; if not, why not.(4) Has Treasury considered, or consulted on, proposals to amend these maturation requirements to assist craft distilleries to enter the market.
Mr Sukkar: The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:
1) The Government has recently enacted a number of measures to extend support to craft distillers. From 1 July 2017, the Government extended the brewery refund scheme, to also include domestic spirit producers and distillers. This expanded scheme allows both brewers and distillers to claim a refund of 60 per cent of the excise duty they have paid, up to an annual cap. From 1 July 2019, this cap was increased from $30,000 to $100,000 per financial year.
2) The requirement for rum, whisky and brandy to be matured for two years in wood barrels prior to its sale in Australia is a long standing policy that ensures a minimum standard of quality.
3) This question is best directed to the Minister for Industry, Science and Technololgy.
4) There are currently no plans to amend the two year maturation requirement.