Emergency Services

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (15:36): My question is to the Minister for Emergency Services. Can the minister please update the chamber about the emergency service sector's response to last week's severe weather event?

The Hon. P. MALINAUSKAS (Minister for Police, Minister for Correctional Services, Minister for Emergency Services, Minister for Road Safety) (15:36): I thank the Hon. Ms Gago for her question. As members are well aware, last week our state endured yet another battering of severe weather in what has been an extraordinarily busy winter period for the State Emergency Service, their busiest in more than 20 years, I am advised.

Over a 24-hour period, the state was hit with both strong winds and rain, with parts of the Adelaide Hills recording in excess of 100 millimetres of rain. As a result, we saw localised flooding across the Adelaide Hills region, as well as in metropolitan areas such as Old Noarlunga, Waterfall Gully and Torrens Park, with dozens of homes affected.

Whether it was cutting up trees that had fallen on houses or over roads, filling and stacking sandbags or pumping floodwater away from people's homes, I am simply in awe of the relentless determination and selflessness of the service of our SES volunteers, who were ably assisted in storm events by CFS volunteers. More than 850 calls for assistance to the SES were received over this most recent and severe weather event. All the while, our emergency response agencies were working shoulder to shoulder with each other, providing an excellent and coordinated response.

As a government, we recognise the impact of this weather event on our communities and that is why we decided early in the piece to provide emergency relief grants of $700, as well as flood clean-up grants of up to $700, to be able to quickly support affected residents with things like emergency accommodation and the resulting clean-up. The clean-up from last week's weather is ongoing.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind all members to help spread the message about the state government's recovery website at www.sa.gov.au/recovery, as well as the recovery hotline on 1800 302 787. This winter period is a culmination of more than 7,300 calls for assistance to the SES across the state and more than 30,000 volunteer hours in total—it is a remarkable number. This is more than double the average requests for assistance the SES receives through the course of an average winter.

While we are still taking stock of the numbers involved in last week's event, I would like to give you a picture of what a mammoth effort our volunteers put in. During the May severe weather, more than 800 calls for assistance were made to the SES. Only taking into account the Monday impact for the May event, this amounted to 1,487 hours of volunteer service for our communities at a peak of 102 requests for assistance per hour between 2 and 3pm.

Later on this evening, I have the great pleasure of hosting a small but representative number of SES volunteers here in Parliament House, to acknowledge the extraordinary contribution they have made over the course of this winter. Like I have said, it has been a very large effort for this winter in particular. When you get around and talk to these people, they are utterly remarkable. Only last week, when I was visiting homes in Old Noarlunga, I spoke to volunteers who had already been working through the night and throughout the course of the day and they were planning to work on early into the evening and some of them were talking about going back to their normal day jobs in the very early hours of the next morning.

These people get little recognition, they certainly don't get compensated for it financially, but we do everything we can as a government, of course, to make sure they've got the equipment available to get on and do the best job that they can. That is only possible through the Emergency Services Levy initiative, commenced, of course, by a state Liberal government. These volunteers do an amazing job, they deserve the recognition that they get and we commend them for their extraordinary efforts.