Mr BURKE (Watson—Manager of Opposition Business) (16:59): My part of Sydney got the smoke. We didn't get the flames; we were a long way from the flames. But the response from my part of Sydney is something which I'm tremendously proud of and I want to say a few words about, because parts of my part of Sydney—some of the suburbs in particular—are often lightning rods for some people to use when building arguments of division in Australia. At different points people turn up with TV cameras to try to argue that in some way some parts of my part of Sydney aren't truly Australian. I think that after I explain a little bit of the effort and the response from my local area, anyone who previously had those views will be affected. There are a series of community groups throughout the electorate of Watson that have played an extraordinary role. I'm going to go through some of them, but if anyone wants to have a look, we've launched a web page called Side By Side—Our Community Standing With Yours. On that we have been listing all the different projects that different community groups have been involved with. The total value so far is $380,000 worth of donations to various bushfire appeals from my part of Sydney, with a long way to go. In the main street of the suburb of Lakemba, a separate office from the organisation Human Appeal was taken over and became a donation site. There were pallets and donations coming in, and as a result of work between Human Appeal, Lighthouse Community Support and Bankstown PCYC, which had already been involved in this following the fires in Taree, the level of generosity was beyond belief. Supplies were delivered to Cobargo, Braidwood, Taree, to the Indigenous community of Purfleet on Biripi land. When I say 'donations', we're talking five trucks, all donated by individual members of the community: two trucks to Taree and three trucks to Cobargo and Braidwood. In coordination with the Muslim Women's Association and BlazeAid they delivered supplies to Adelong. The amount of donations, including goods, money, transportation and time, totalled more than $100,000. We had an elderly lady come in wearing a hijab with canned food, saying, 'I have no cash to donate but they need this more than I do.' She handed over effectively the contents of her pantry. When the trucks were going to the different fire affected communities people were saying that we had got there well ahead of the charities and in some cases well ahead of the government. When some of the volunteers said, 'What did you think of us before?' people were pretty blunt, pretty honest. One said, 'Oh, you are the people we normally don't like.' Another used a description that explains a lot, but is not parliamentary, so I can't go there. Then, when asked, 'What do you think of us now?' those community members were greeted, as they should always be greeted, as proud fellow Australians. I acknowledge Bilal El Hayek, Gandhi Sindyahn, Bashar Al Jamal and the local state member there, Jihad Dib, all of whom were involved in those trucks at different points, as well as a series of volunteers. The trucks as well were donated by local trucking firms. This sort of effort has spread across the whole community. The Canterbury City Community Centre knitting group, based in Lakemba, has been knitting blankets for animals and trauma teddies for children in bushfire affected communities. My local rugby league club, the Bulldogs football club and Canterbury League Club pledged $50,000 towards natural disaster relief. Melkite Catholic Welfare and iMelkite, based in Greenacre, donated a further $10,000 to the Rural Fire Service. CASS Care, the Chinese Australia Services Society, set up a donations site on their own site. Canterbury Bankstown council cancelled its fireworks for Australia Day and donated $10,000. Maronites on a Mission donated $10,000. Strathfield Men's Shed has been building possum boxes and bee hotels that will be delivered where they're needed in the Blue Mountains. The Belmore Greek Orthodox parish, All Saints, has been delivering and donating kitchen goods to Central Mangrove. The United Australia Lebanese Movement donated $5,000 to the Rural Fire Service Cumberland Zone. Sydney Muslim Cyclists donated medical supplies for on-duty firefighters at Tumut Rural Fire Brigade and donated $10,000 to the station on behalf of the Tumut Cycle Classic. Campsie RSL has raised $220,000 for bushfire relief and $50,000 for drought relief, with a further $15,000 donated to the Lake Conjola Bowling Club. Campsie RSL also donated $50,000 to Litres for the Land, a drought project. But the challenges came as the donations kept coming in locally. There was a new problem when some of the communities started to send back the message: 'Nothing more at the moment, please,' because they were running out of the capacity to manage the level of donations that were arriving. At that point the community groups, together with Jihad Dib, Sophie Cotsis—the state members—gathered in my office and came up with the next stage of the project. It was based on discussions with the member for Macquarie, Susan Templeman, who was explaining, having been through it herself, that you get to a point after about a few months, a year or two, when you realise you were insured and the insurance is being paid, but the insurance does not cover everything. It is at that point that the kids come back with different things that were special to them. You want to give them those things and you just don't have the money. So we decided that our local project would be for the kids in fire-affected areas who had lost their bikes. We would fundraise to make sure they can get bikes. And for kids who had musical instruments that had been lost, we would fundraise to purchase musical instruments. That is the next stage that we're going through. We're working now to try to identify local businesses in fire-affected areas that would otherwise sell bikes and musical instruments so that we can purchase from them, do the assembly back in our area, and then provide them down there as gifts. Because we don't want, as can so easily be the case, to turn up with donations and gifts which in fact do a local business harm at a time when it is desperately trying to find customers. That's the local effort, which has been extraordinary. As I say, Side By Side: Our Community Standing With Yours is a webpage where we've put all of that together. I couldn't be more proud of the community. There are more people in the other place than in this place who, from time to time, have tried to vilify my local area. Have a look at the webpage first, is my suggestion. I also want to acknowledge, just in my shadow portfolio areas, the work of the union movement and the work of the arts community. Union members, both in their professional capacity and in a voluntary capacity, have been making an extraordinary effort. I refer to the Maritime Union of Australia and kiwi seafarers on the Far Saracen who were first on the scene at Mallacoota with much needed supplies of food, water and diesel. The civilian crews of the training vessel MV Sycamore and the supply vessel Far Senator worked to back up the firefighters to bring relief to those stranded and cut off by fires. Australian seafarers made up of MUA, AMOU and AIMPE members on board these ships worked tirelessly over a period of weeks to assist the 4,000-plus people trapped by fires at Mallacoota Beach. When things were tough in the Blue Mountains fires, the Electrical Trades Union and the Rail Emergency Response Unit worked side by side with the Rural Fire Service to protect Sydney's train infrastructure in the Blue Mountains line and the Southern Highlands line. Their efforts were simply heroic. ETU members have been working long hours to restore power after the fires, including replacing power poles and other assets. The CEPU, the communications union, in an initiative which started amongst the posties at Wagga distribution centre—all 43 employees across the delivery centre in the Riverina Mail Sorting Centre—decided to forgo their work Christmas celebrations. Instead, they used the cash to donate items being specifically requested by a local bushfire appeal centre. They threw in over 100 bottles of Gatorade and 20 bags of Allen's snakes—a special request from the fireys on the front line. The newly amalgamated United Workers Union established a half-million-dollar climate disaster relief fund to provide immediate assistance to members impacted by the unprecedented fires that continue to devastate communities in this country. The Transport Workers Union truck drivers have been providing relief to bushfire affected families in their spare time with their own resources. The ACTU and state based labour councils, along with many, if not all, unions have raised substantial funds for bushfire relief or encouraged their members to donate. And here is one short anecdote from the union movement of a combined effort, because I don't think anything speaks more powerfully than this simple story about a family from Cobargo. Toby, Nicole and Layla lost their home in Cobargo from the bushfires and were made homeless. They're a young couple with a young child who have been forced to live in a campervan. The local union members from a range of different unions got together and volunteered to help rebuild their home, and they built a house for the family in 10 days. The concepts that we talk about at times like this—about people looking out for each other, people sticking up for each other—are summarised in one word, which is 'solidarity'. In many of the discussions that happen about the union movement in this place, I think it's important that stories like this are kept in mind as well. With respect to the arts community, I came across this beautifully summarised article by someone—I have no idea who she is other than the Instagram title 'The Emma Files'—who gave a lovely summary of how many artists had come forward. I'll go to it in a bit more detail than she did. In Ulladulla, one of the generators that was keeping the evacuation centres running was supplied by a circus. Online, there have been endless auctions from 500 authors and illustrators on the Authors For Fireys campaign, raising money through auctions. An online auction for visual arts called Art Fights Fire raised a further $160,000 for bushfire relief. Opera Australia and a series of different performing arts companies had collections after all their performances. Even The Wiggles hosted a reunion show for bushfire relief on 18 January. Classical musicians in Sydney held a fundraising concert on 30 January called Music for Our Country, with all of the proceeds going to bushfires. Support actors set up a bushfire relief fund. And those in Victoria would know that after it had started and they got the first day out of the way, the Falls Festival in Lorne then had to be cancelled because the site wasn't safe; fire was on the way. A whole lot of musicians who were about to have one of their biggest gigs of the year suddenly found they were among the 9,000 campers who had to be evacuated from the site. What happened? Spontaneously in Melbourne there were bushfire relief concerts: Halsey, Yungblud, Peking Duk, Holy Holy, Baker Boy, Bad Dreams, Totally Unicorn, Eaglemont and Lime Cordiale, all holding off their immense disappointment, making sure that they were holding fundraisers to help the people who were being most harmed. This is a wonderful time in terms of the response and a horrific time in terms of what we are responding to. What needs to be understood is it is hard for anyone so directly affected to know the extent to which the whole nation wants to stand with them. So I speak simply, as someone from an area where we breathed in the smoke but we never saw a flame, to say that our community now is making the biggest effort I've seen in my lifetime from our part of Sydney, and for the people who are harmed we intend to be there for the long haul.