Ms CATHERINE KING (Ballarat) (18:02): As we know, for months our nation has been facing an unprecedented fire crisis. Instead of the summer being a time for relaxation, a time for family, a time for those long, lazy days on the beach, communities across the nation have faced a summer of stress, persistent and ongoing anxiety with heat, smoke and the need for never-ending vigilance. Those of us who live in regional Australia know the impact of fire well. This summer it was the season where the fires came to our cities too. Choking smoke in our capitals, thousands of holiday-makers from Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra evacuated and facing frightening scenes as they fled. Fires in Mill Park on the outskirts of suburban Melbourne. And it still isn't over, as fires still threaten communities across our nation. In recent days, we've seen new threats, including not far from this place, to the south of Canberra. In my own community we've had fires near Clunes, Daylesford and Myrniong just last week. We are still in the middle—the middle!—of the worst fire season in this country for a very long period of time. Our climate is changing. We are facing drier, hotter and prolonged fire seasons. These fires started in September. Our season, if we are lucky, will end in March. We have seen terrible fires before but never over such an extended period of time and in so many parts of our country at once. As things currently stand, more than 3,000 homes have been lost, with that number sure to rise as many of the communities, particularly in the hilly areas, are yet to even be accessed by assessors. More than 11 million hectares of land are burnt, with significant impacts on our livestock, our farming infrastructure, our roads and our natural environment. Tragically, today we grieve for 33 people who have lost their lives in these fires, including nine of our firefighting personnel. Our hearts break for every one of them, their friends, their families and all who knew them. They died defending their homes and their communities. Some have died defending communities very far from their own, sacrificing their lives to keep others safe. In particular I mention the three American firefighters who died tragically in New South Wales only weeks ago. The Australian people are so grateful for the service of firefighters from overseas. At Ballarat Airport in my electorate, every fire season we're home to US and Canadian pilots and crew. They are there for over three months, generally. They are stationed in my community and communities like mine across the state of Victoria and every other state in this country. They're stationed there to protect our communities. I joined them on Australia Day for a barbecue. I know how much they and their colleagues give up to carry out their incredibly dangerous work each year. We cannot thank them enough. They are an incredibly tight-knit community of firefighters—they all know each other and their families know each other well—and I know they feel the loss of their colleagues and their friends very deeply. Much has been said about the efforts of our firefighters, whether they are permanent firefighting staff or volunteers, whether they are from our local forest and parks services or, indeed, from the ADF. In fact, we had firefighters from Airservices Australia out fighting fires. You have done an incredible job; I think it is very important for us to say that. My experience of firefighters is: despite your incredible efforts, you often go home and, while you may not talk about it, you often focus on what was lost, not what was saved—the house that didn't manage to be saved. Every firefighter I speak to will tell you about that. But so much has been saved. I say to them: with every single hour that you've worked, every meal at home that you have missed, every family occasion that you have not been present for over this fire season, you have made a difference. We thank you. I know just how exhausted so many of you are. Please, please stay safe as this unprecedented fire season continues. We want you all to come home to your families. We also extend an enormous thankyou to the public servants, relief workers and volunteers from local councils across the community and from charitable organisations, who have mobilised and spent long hours coordinating support for those who have lost so much. I've seen this dedication firsthand visiting fire-affected communities: a smaller fire at Lexton, near my home in Ballarat; and in Bairnsdale and, in particular, Sarsfield, in East Gippsland, just last week, where 60 homes were lost. I've met community leaders, incident controllers, local business owners, relief workers and volunteers. As is the nature of these events, I met people from Mildura, from my home town of Ballarat and from Geelong, all in Bairnsdale carrying out important relief and recovery work. Strike teams from my region have been across the state, fighting fires, as well as across New South Wales and some in Queensland. It's hard enough to manage a recovery effort after fires have gone through, but a challenge at another level is that recovery is underway while fires are still burning, while incident control centres are still fully operational and while recovery is needed in communities. It will be a long, slow process of recovery and rebuilding. Throughout this process, our regional communities will need all levels of government to come together and provide clear, unambiguous support. This help will have to continue long after this summer has faded from the headlines and long after it has been talked about even in this place. This help will need to support businesses to rebuild infrastructure, rebuild roads, support individuals and strengthen communities. I met with the mayor and staff of East Gippsland Shire last week. They told me that the council is still working through the full cost of rebuilding across the shire, with fires still burning. But they know at this stage that more than half of the council's 2,500 kilometres of road will need repair. Sixteen timber bridges are destroyed, and many kilometres of boardwalk in the tourist areas of Mallacoota will need to be rebuilt. The council stressed that, while conversations regarding the national disaster recovery arrangements are progressing very well, there are restrictions on the type of infrastructure that it covers. It generally only covers essential infrastructure, and there are questions around what 'betterment' means and what the betterment provisions are. For example, they don't know whether they are able to replace the tourism boardwalks that have been burnt out throughout Mallacoota because it is not necessarily essential infrastructure; although it is to the Mallacoota community. But whether here in Canberra it is considered as such is still unclear. It is also important that the federal government releases funds to local councils much more quickly than has been done in the past. Experience shows that it can be, for the national disaster relief arrangements to kick in, six to nine months before councils actually see the cash. I also heard loud and clear from a number of locals in East Gippsland just how hard this bushfire emergency has been on businesses and on workers, not just those physically impacted by the fire but beyond, and many of my colleagues have spoken about that. If there are to be any businesses left standing in these communities around this time next year, we are going to need to do much better than concessional loans and encouraging people to spend time in these communities. That will help some, but it will not be enough to save many of these businesses in these communities. Finally, in my contribution, I want to say we have to learn from these fires. There will be a royal commission and parliamentary inquiries; they're necessary. But with bushfires likely to still burn across the country for months, the window we have to prepare for the next fire season is getting shorter and it's almost upon us. We cannot go into another fire season without having a national plan, without having better resourcing for our aviation firefighting efforts across the country and in our regions, without a clear role for the ADF and when to mobilise them, without having agreed and done much more in the area of hazard reduction, without having talked to former fire chiefs and learnt from their experiences and without, as a parliament, having finally, after 20 years of argument, taken meaningful and sustained action on climate change. If we are to learn anything from these fires, those are the things we must do as a parliament before the next fire season is upon us.