Thursday, 18 April 2024

Motions

Floods

Debate resumed.

Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (14:01): I am pleased to rise to speak on this motion. Watching the determination and strength of the people of communities in northern Victoria when faced with the millennial floods of 2022 was awe-inspiring. Day after day you dragged sandbags to protect homes and buildings, you rescued wildlife, you rescued each other. During floods and fires Australian communities prove again and again that there is profound altruism in our hearts. Amidst our worst natural disasters, care and solidarity prevail. Looking after each other is our innate and immediate response. This community care is the most valuable resource we have when disasters strike.

In 2022 widespread flooding was devastating for communities across the state. It affected 63 of 79 ‍municipalities, and the hardest hit were those in this part of northern Victoria. Communities like Echuca, Rochester, Shepparton and Yea experienced the unimaginable – homes, farms, businesses, community services, schools, roads and bridges were all damaged. Over 18 months on there are areas where repairs continue, as we have heard, and many remain without homes. This is before the impact on people’s health and wellbeing is considered. This event took an enormous emotional toll that I know continues to this day.

The 2022 flood was not a natural disaster. The increase in devastating flooding on this continent is the result of destructive human interaction with nature to the point where we have changed the climate itself. The Hawkesbury has just flooded again, as have outback Queensland and the Illawarra. Brisbane, Lismore, Fitzroy Crossing, Cairns and even Melbourne have experienced severe floods in the past two years alone. Scientists have been warning us for decades that this is exactly what would happen if we continued to burn fossil fuels and ignore a planet in distress, yet successive state and federal governments – Labor and Liberal – have pursued coal and gas relentlessly. Meanwhile coal and gas corporations continue to make record profits and pay little tax, and communities are left to clean up the mess. The ongoing failure of governments to show the climate leadership we need by ending coal and gas shows contempt for the experiences of those communities affected by the 2022 floods. Rolling out renewables is all well and good, but it must be accompanied by a rapid end to coal and gas, and not only for domestic use. Australia is one of the world’s top exporters of coal and gas, and coal and gas burnt elsewhere impacts our climate just as much as that that is burnt here.

We are also grossly underprepared for the climate change that is already locked in. Even if we stopped burning all fossil fuels immediately, the grim reality is that a hotter planet and more frequent and severe weather events are here and here for decades to come. Once-in-a-generation events are becoming a regular occurrence, and we need to get ready for this new normal, as difficult as that may be to acknowledge. We are seeing the consequences of this lack of preparedness every time a disaster is experienced, and regional communities like this one here are on the front line.

Reducing the risk to people and property in the first place is critical. Apart from emissions reduction, we also need to rethink our planning system and stop allowing development that places people at direct risk of disasters like flooding. Apparently during the 2022 floods, while people were using boats to access their inundated homes, in their letterboxes they found notices that a planning application for townhouses had been approved for a site that was 1 metre under water at the time. Submissions from Echuca residents about these new buildings on a flood plain were not even considered by VCAT. This is a scenario playing out across Victoria on flood plains, on coasts at risk of inundation and sea level rise and in fire-prone areas where both science and local knowledge are not incorporated into planning decisions. We welcome the state government’s recent introduction of a climate trigger of sorts into planning decisions, but it will be slow to roll out through planning schemes if and when they come up for amendment, and it remains to be seen how effective it will be.

Ensuring infrastructure is designed to withstand climate impacts is also critical. Time and again we see infrastructure that is replaced like for like only to be destroyed again the next time a disaster hits. Like-for-like replacement might be fine for a one-in-a-thousand-year flood that actually only occurs actually once every 1000 years, but with these events now occurring much more frequently we must be building back better. Not only should new housing be climate safe and climate ready, we need to be thinking about how we can retrofit existing housing and buildings to ensure that they are more climate resilient. All levels of government need to be considering this.

Disaster responses also need to be stepped up considerably. Victoria’s SES, CFA and other disaster response organisations do an incredible job, and I just want to acknowledge the power of work that they did during the flooding events in 2022. We saw the outstanding commitment to their communities on display during that time, but they are woefully under-resourced and understaffed, and we need a comprehensive rethink and bolstering of our disaster response systems. Inevitably, even with the best preparation, there will be extreme weather events that cause damage. Flood clean-up, as the people of Echuca, Rochester and other towns surrounding this area know, can take months or even years. We need to make it easier for communities to do this work. We heard just last week from councils that were affected by the 2022 floods that they are still waiting on funding to be approved by the state government. The Murray River Group of Councils reported there were still $20 million worth of repairs waiting to be completed in Gannawarra. Shepparton is still $2 million out of pocket for repairs. The Pyrenees Shire Council, which has recently also experienced fires, is still waiting on eight out of nine funding submissions related to the 2022 flood to be approved. Given the scale and ferocity of the disaster, the system of disaster relief grants for councils surely needs a rethink.

The Greens want to see a greater sense of urgency and commitment to climate preparedness to deal with all of these issues. These are issues that were highlighted during the flood inquiry, and we were pleased to see this Parliament support our push for a further inquiry into the climate resilience of built infrastructure, which is currently open for submissions. We really want to hear from people living in these communities, in Echuca and all of northern Victoria, and every Victorian who has been impacted by climate disasters. What sort of planning and infrastructure innovations do we need to prepare for our future? What sort of housing? What sort of town planning? Do we need more cool spaces in our towns to weather heat events? What kind of public spaces will help us weather future storms? Is it possible to live with our rivers and not against them? We can harness the knowledge and care that is already within communities, including those that experienced the 2022 floods, to build better and more resilient towns.

Recently the Greens invited people to respond to a survey about the ways climate change is impacting their communities. Many responded that the people around them are scared. These are communities that have lived through floods, heatwaves and droughts and lost their homes or experienced days cut off from the rest of the world. Climate anxiety is rife, but they also offered hope for a climate-safe future, and amongst this hope were also clear solutions. By working together, by acknowledging the science and the reality of climate change, we can do this. We can end our reliance on coal and gas and start turning things around for future generations. We can get prepared and withstand what is to come in the meantime, but we need governments to step up and take action, including the state government, and it should not take another climate disaster to do so.

Lee TARLAMIS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (14:10): I move:

That debate on this motion be adjourned until later this day.

Motion agreed to and debate adjourned until later this day.