STATEMENTS ON INDULGENCE
Dr RYAN (Kooyong) (19:03): I rise to speak on the catastrophic floods that recently devastated Nepal and the Tibetan border region and to express on behalf of the people of Kooyong our deepest sympathy for the lives lost and the communities destroyed in that event. On 26 August, a glacial lake burst its banks near the Nepal-China border. There was no rainfall and no warning.
A wall of water, mud and rock tore down the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli valleys at speeds of up to 190 kilometres an hour through the towns of Timure, Syaprubesi and Betrawati and on into the Nuwakot and Rasuwa districts. It happened at nine o'clock in the morning as people were going about their ordinary lives. The scale of what followed is difficult to comprehend.
As of this week, the confirmed death toll stands at over 1,340, with thousands of individuals still unaccounted for. Over 1.6 million people have been affected. Hydropower projects were buried with hundreds of workers still inside.
Entire villages were erased. On the Tibetan side, whole settlements at the border crossing were reduced to rubble. Families are still searching for their missing, and mass burials have had to take place because of difficulties coping with the scale of the loss.
Among the missing and dead are at least 30 Australian nationals caught up in a disaster that struck with no chance for anyone to flee. The tragedy has been felt acutely here in Australia, particularly in Victoria, which is home to one of the fastest growing migrant communities in this country. Melbourne's Nepalese community has more than doubled in the last decade, and thousands of Nepalese Australians, including families in and around Kooyong, have spent the last fortnight in anguish, trying to reach relatives, refreshing news from home and grieving people that they knew personally.
I want to acknowledge the vigil held at Federation Square, where members of the Nepali community gathered to honour the dead and to stand in solidarity with those still searching for news for their missing loved ones. On Sunday 6 September, the Balwyn Rotary Club, of which I'm a proud member, held a fundraiser at the Camberwell Sunday Market. Balwyn Rotary has a special relationship with the Rotary of Kathmandu via Raj Gautam.
That special relationship enabled an immediate commitment to a hyperlocal relief project for the Bhotekoshi flood affected communities in Nepal. The fundraising opportunity and activities on Sunday were facilitated by: Tony Stephen, the Camberwell Sunday Market director and a member of Balwyn Rotary; Julie Mulhauser, President of the Balwyn Rotary Club; and David Hobson, Rotary's disaster relief coordinator.
We were fortunate to have in attendance: Sudeep Shrestha, President of the Nepalese Association of Victoria; Yakindra Timilsena, the past president of NAV and President of the Nourish Nation Foundation; Parsu Budatholi, Director of the Insearch Foundation; Prem Kandel, a member of the Non-Resident Nepal Association; Binit Sharma, a community leader; Rajan Maskey, a community leader; Babin Mishra, a member of the NRNA; Bipan Adhikari, the President of the Rotary Club of Craigieburn; and Madhuri Maskey, a member of both Rotary Club of Craigieburn and Rotary Passport Melbourne Club.
We also invited and hoped to host a number of other community representatives: Mr Niranjan Gauli, the past consul of the Consulate of Nepal in Victoria; Mr Tilak Pokharel, president of the Australian Nepalese Multicultural Centre; Mr Mahadev Dhanuk, coordinator of NRNA Victoria; Ms Bina Adhikari, coordinator of the Nari Nikunja, Women's Forum, of Victoria; Mr Keshab Kandel, the Vice President of the Australian Nepalese Multicultural Centre; and Dr Raju Adhikari, the CEO of Nourish Nation Foundation.
The Victorian Nepalese community's message throughout has been one of unity, a call for everyone affected to stand together, and this parliament stands with them too. I was grateful to receive today an update from a number of senior DFAT officials about the extraordinary efforts being made by DFAT, by the AFP, by Services Australia and by other Australian units to support affected Australian and Nepalese families in Kathmandu and greater Nepal at this very distressing time.
This was not simply a natural disaster. Scientists have been clear that the glacial lake which collapsed had shown visible signs of instability in the days beforehand and that outburst floods of this kind are becoming more frequent as the Himalayan glaciers retreat under a warming climate. Nepal's foreign minister has called on the international community to treat this as a climate event, not a freak accident.
He's right to do so. The Hindu Kush Himalayan region holds the largest volume of ice outside the polar regions, and it's warming faster than the global average. Every fraction of a degree of warming that we fail to prevent increases the risk of another such event.
Nepalese community members present in Kooyong on Sunday asked for our assistance in highlighting how global warming acts as a critical risk multiplier in Nepal's valleys, increasing the risk of flash flooding driven by accelerated glacier melt. They made the point that, as a wealthy middle power with abundant renewable resources, Australia does have a regional influence and a responsibility to lead.
By rapidly decoupling our own economy from fossil fuels, we don't just reduce our own emissions. We can demonstrate that a low-carbon economy is practical and achievable, and we can set a standard for global action to protect vulnerable communities. We can't personally rebuild the homes or return the lives lost in Nepal and Tibet, but we can honour them by taking seriously our own responsibility to cut emissions, to support our Pacific and South Asian neighbours in their climate adaptation and to treat the accelerating instability of glaciers and ice sheets as the urgent global security issue that it now is.
I extend my condolences and those of the Kooyong community to everyone who has lost something in this disaster, and I commit to continuing to press this parliament to act on the climate change that's making tragedies like this more common and more severe.