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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
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Farm Firefighting Units

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (15:47): I rise today to talk about the farm fire units that do such an amazing job on Kangaroo Island. We saw it during the 2019-20 bushfires, those devastating bushfires that actually claimed the lives of a father and son who were out with their farm fire unit fighting the fires. Sabrina Davis is a fantastic woman from the western end of Kangaroo Island. She and her husband, Ben, lost their home and their farm in the bushfire. They and their children live out there on the west end and are rebuilding their home and rebuilding their lives. It is a very tough job for those people who lost so much in the bushfires.

Sabrina has taken on so many additional tasks since the bushfires. She has become an author and has written a wonderful book called Humans of Kangaroo Island. She has received lots of recognition at both the state and national level for her community work. It was no surprise that on Sunday she was there again leading the fundraising efforts and dispersing items to the farm firefighters of Kangaroo Island.

At the Parndana Oval, a flow of utes came through with their farm firefighting gear on the back. The paid staff and volunteers from the CFS were there. All the farm fire units were registered for the upcoming season. They had all their safety equipment checked off to certify that they could go out onto the fireground. When they do go on the fireground, they log in with the CFS to cover them with insurance. It is a very good scheme and makes sure that nothing has been left to chance and that everyone's vehicle and equipment passes muster and is fit for purpose.

I was there with my sidekick, Dusty the Kangaroo Island kelpie. Dusty, of course, was born five weeks before those bushfires. His owner, Shane Leahy, lost his home, lost his farm, lost his sheds and lost his vehicles. In fact, he lost everything except the shirt on his back, the shorts he was wearing and the seven five-week-old pups that miraculously survived.

The main reason that Dusty was there on Sunday—he is always over on the island with me—was that he did a collaboration with Pirate Life Brewing. Michael Cameron and his son Jack, the founders of Pirate Life Brewing, leapt at the chance to do a Dusty Draught, a very tasty beer that was launched last Christmas and raised $3½ thousand for these farm fire units on the island. That money went towards buying fire blankets for the utes the farmers use to go out and fight the fires. That is just one extra layer of protection for them when they are out there.

Interestingly, if we go back to New Year's Eve 2019-20, when the fires were already burning across Kangaroo Island, I had a phone call from someone on the island who said, 'You know, all those guys in the utes are out there with no way of communicating with each other. How can we get the government to give us a whole bunch of two-way radios?' I said, 'It's New Year's Eve, no-one is going to be open for the next few days and, just to fill in all the forms, it would probably take until June or July to get any radios. How about we put out a call on Facebook?'

So we did that and we had about 160 sets of two-way radios bought through Jamieson Marine on the island. I want to give a shout-out to Bradley Jamieson, who does such a great job over there. He was on the phone taking credit card details from people around Australia who purchased a set of these two-way radios that we know saved lives, that we know helped people get through those fires and that we know helped people get to safety during that incredible fire, particularly on 3 January 2020.

The Vietnamese Buddhist group from South Australia also played a part in helping the farm firefighting units as well. I got a phone call in mid-January from my upper house colleague Tung Ngo. He said, 'The local Vietnamese Buddhist community have raised some money and they would like to donate it to a good cause.' I was thinking they might have raised a few hundred dollars. I asked, 'How much have they raised, Tung?' He said, 'More than $60,000.' What we did with that was they pay it to the five or six auto repair places on the island and any farm firefighter who needed to get their gearbox or any other damaged part of their vehicle fixed because of the damage done during the fires could go to one of those auto repairers.

There was a lot of generosity towards the farm firefighting units on the island. I want to thank Sabrina and all those people who have kept that going since the fires and as we prepare for the upcoming fire season.

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