STATEMENTS ON INDULGENCE
Mr DAVID SMITH (Bean—Government Whip) (17:37): I rise to speak about the disaster in Nepal and Tibet and to add the voice of the people of Bean to the words of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. At 8.37 on the morning of Wednesday 26 August, a mountainside gave way, and rock and ice fell about 1,200 metres into the river below. What came out the bottom was a wall of mud, water and debris that reached 80 metres high in the gorges.
The first warning texts went out at 9.15 am—38 minutes after the collapse. By then the flood was through the upper valley, taking villages, bridges and hydropower stations with it. As of yesterday, there were 1,399 confirmed deaths and 5,400 still unaccounted for.
About 800 foreign nationals are still missing, including 35 Australians. Those numbers move every day. In every one of them is a family.
At a hydropower project, two workers were found alive 40 metres inside a flooded tunnel on 4 September—nine days after the flood—by a Nepalese army team who heard them calling out in the dark. Around 900 hydropower workers are still missing, several hundred of them in tunnels. Their families are holding onto that rescue on 4 September.
At a temple in Kathmandu, families who cannot find their loved ones have been cremating effigies woven from kusha grass so that the rites can at least be done. The Foreign minister put it plainly: every hour without news is another hour of waiting, of hoping and of fearing. Our consular staff, the case workers assigned to every family and the social workers now in Kathmandu are working to bring those families answers.
I thank them. Here in Canberra, this tragedy landed in our own community within hours. I have stood with this community in happier times: at Albert Hall for a Dashain night, a celebration of the triumph of good over evil; celebrating Teej, here at Parliament House; celebrating the Australia Nepal Friendship Society's 30th birthday at the Multicultural Festival in February; eating momos with Nepalese and Tibetan friends; in April, at Lennox Gardens, as Sanatan Samaj Australia welcomed in the Nepalese New Year 2083 with fireworks over the lake; and on 11 August, in this building, when I hosted the annual general meeting of the Federation of Nepalese Community Associations of Australia, with more than 50 community leaders from right around the country.
None of us in that room knew what the next fortnight would bring. So when the community called people to the lawns outside, on the evening of Friday 28 August, I was with friends. There were candles.
There were prayers. There was a lot of silence. Some of the people near me had family in the Trishuli Valley that they had not heard from.
Prakriti Shrestha grew up in Trishuli Bazar and lives in Canberra now. She told the Canberra Times that all her cousins, all her people were there, and many were simply missing. She is not the only one.
The Australia Nepal Friendship Society cancelled its Teej festival and sent the ticket money to Nepal's disaster relief fund instead. Talking to Krishna Hamal, one of the community leaders here in the ACT, he said that the support from the wider Canberra community had been overwhelming. In our region, there are over 10,000 residents who were born in Nepal.
In 2011, it was less than a thousand. They form the backbone of our care economy, especially across residential aged care. They are our students, our small-business owners and our neighbours in Tuggeranong, the Molonglo Valley and right across the region.
Australia has stepped up as well. Australians have given over $4 million of their own money to the Emergency Action Alliance appeal. The government has matched it with a further $3 million, bringing the total humanitarian support package to $11 million.
An Air Force C-17 has flown almost 24 tonnes of hygiene kits, solar lighting and shelter into Kathmandu. The 15-person Disaster Assistance Response Team, with drone operators from the New South Wales and Queensland fire services, is now in Nepal mapping the disaster zone for the search teams. In all, 49 Australians are deployed on this response, and I thank every one of them.
Nepal itself has more than 21,000 soldiers and police in the search. Nepal rebuilt after the 2015 earthquake, which killed close to 9,000 people, and it will rebuild after this. But it will take years, and it will take friends.
To the people of Nepal, and to the Nepalese Canberrans who are grieving and waiting, my door is always open. As the Prime Minister told the House, you do not carry this burden alone. Bean stands with you.
Canberra stands with you, and this parliament stands with you.