Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment) Share this | Hansard source

To the member for Banks, let me start by acknowledging his fundamental role as one of the lead architects of the Georges River recovery plan. Whilst he was a candidate, he worked hard to recognise that this was a fundamental local environmental issue. It is about the health of the river. It is about the health of the fringing communities. In particular, the green army program was announced at a Georges River site. We committed to a significant Georges River recovery plan and I am very hopeful that, in fact, the green army legislation will pass through the Senate, if it has not already, in the coming hours. The consequence of that will be that this program will be ready to roll out and the Georges River will include some of the first projects in the country.

Having said that, the broader challenge raised by the member is of forecasting for Australia's urban and regional communities. In Sydney itself, only some years ago there was a massive and catastrophic hailstorm. In Toowoomba and the Toowoomba Range, we witnessed the most tragic of flood events only a few short years ago. The lesson from that is that early warning and early intervention are absolutely critical. So we as a government have provisioned to acquire a new supercomputer. This will be the eighth supercomputer in the series since they first began to be adopted. The hope is that there will be two key steps over the coming two years. Next year, we are due to acquire new satellite capacity, and the following year we are due to acquire a new supercomputer. It was a project that was, sadly, unfunded. It should have been funded. It was overdue to be funded and there was a black hole in the budget. Nevertheless, we have made space in order to find that funding. We have funded it fully. The funding is set aside to ensure that, once the tender process is complete, the supercomputer will be acquired.

Why is it important? It is important for rural communities because it provides early warning in relation to fire, flood and cyclone. In particular, the fire authorities currently use the existing supercomputer to provide early warnings about wind shifts, which are absolutely fundamental to fighting the fire and even more fundamental to protecting the lives of people in particular communities and firefighters. In the end, there will be fewer lives lost, we hope, as a consequence of this. What is the capacity upgrade? It is a tenfold increase in capacity. That allows us to run more cycles, to look at more activities on a commensurate basis and to give earlier warnings—in short, more data, more frequently, more accurately. That is what the supercomputer is about. For our urban customers, for the population of Australia, they can see if there is the risk of flash flooding, as we saw, tragically, in Toowoomba. If there is the risk of a hail event, precautions can be taken such as placing cars undercover. We cannot stop all of the effects of weather, but we can give people the opportunity to mitigate. That is a quick summary. It is an important acquisition and, at the end of the day, it is about better data for Australians and about saving lives.

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