Mr BOB BALDWIN (7:28 PM) —I rise tonight to inform the House of the events in my electorate of Paterson over the last few days. As you may be aware, Paterson has been subjected to severe wind storms, with winds peaking last night at 84 knots out at Nobbys Head and winds of 140 kilometres an hour regularly during the day. Even as I speak here now, the winds are blowing through the area at around 100 kilometres an hour.

The total effect of the devastation that has been caused up there is not known as yet. Over 30 per cent of the electorate is in blackout with no electricity. Tonight, as we sit in this warm House, we should spare a thought for families up there without electricity and heating and consider what they are going to have to get through tonight.

Today the lower Hunter area emergency services took over 1,700 calls for assistance. We have many houses unroofed. Of even greater devastation is the number of houses with trees now impaled through them. Areas such as Medowie, Metford, Bulahdelah, Allworth, Booral, up through to Gloucester and Stroud—all those areas—have been severely affected. Also, the fences are down in a lot of the paddocks. As you would know yourself from your own electorate, Mr Speaker, a lot of the paddocks that front the highways have trees as windbreaks along the fence lines. As they have come down, they have taken the fences out. So, in conjunction with the windy and wet weather up there, we also have cattle straying out onto the roads.

Today as I took off from Williamtown and came back down to Canberra I saw the ships off Newcastle all straining at their anchors, as the winds are gusting through there just below hurricane level. The ferries have also been cancelled in Newcastle.

One thing I must take the time and opportunity to do is to praise the work of the people in the SESs, the fire brigade, the ambulance, the police—all of the community services that have come together to try to assemble some level of order in the community. The other thing we are seeing is a massive draw down not only on the emergency services but on the emergency provisions available throughout the community.

As I drove home from Gloucester last night through the Bucketts Way, I had to stop eight times to wait or to help clear trees that had gone down across the road. A trip home that is normally an hour took something like 2½ hours. Not only was the Bucketts Way closed last night but also the Pacific Highway was blocked at Twelve Mile Creek, where a tree had come down across a bridge. It has been an expensive drain on the local emergency services.

This afternoon I spoke to Kristey Atkins of 2HD to obtain an update. The electricity is still not on in around a third of the electorate. One of the particular problems is at Bulahdelah, where the sewerage system is driven electrically. Without the electricity, the call is going out for people to restrict the amount of flushing in toilets in order to avoid loading up the sewerage system. We do not want to see a repeat of Wallis Lake, where infections and diseases have been spread out into the water system.

I ask people tonight, as they go home and sit in front of their warm fire, to spare a thought for these people. The full extent of this will not be known for many days yet. The winds are not due to abate until tomorrow some time. But it has been an extremely difficult time for the people in the whole of the Hunter, the lower Hunter and the upper Hunter areas. I ask that this House pay consideration to these people.