AFTER THE TSUNAMI – HARNESSING AUSTRALIAN EXPERTISE FOR RECOVERY
Canberra, 31 March 2005

Opening address
The Honourable Tim Fischer
Chairman ATSE Crawford Fund; Patron ACIAR; Patron Engineers Australia

Dr John Zillman, Presidents associated with the Academies, professors, engineers, directors, delegates, including Bob Clements, who is the CEO/Director of the Crawford Fund and who has been a great help in my preparation for this day, ladies and gentlemen. It was good to hear Bruce mention the word ‘cyclone’. In a sense, it is a sharp reminder to us all that if you have the right early warning system in place you can have a near-perfect cyclone, because with Cyclone Ingrid there was no loss of life.

Cyclone Ingrid waxed and waned across two states and a territory, and lasted for a cycle of several days, and yet its course was predicted at each stage of the way, the damage levels were predicted and safety precautions taken. And then eventually it turned back on itself and became a rain depression (sadly enough, not a big enough rain depression) and petered out somewhere between Katherine and Tennant Creek. It was also a near-perfect cyclone – I declare an interest as a director of the Adelaide-Darwin railway – because it stopped the road trucks at Katherine for two days but the trains could keep on getting through.

I just make the point that if we can get the tsunami early warning systems as fine-tuned, as Thailand and Australia and others work to sort all of that – and more of that later in this conference – then it is going to be a very exciting thing in lessening the loss of life from such horrific events as happened on Boxing Day.

May I welcome you to this conference in a role as Chairman of the Crawford Fund on international agricultural research. The aim of the Crawford Fund is for food, income, sustainability and peace; it is for a lot of cut-through, pragmatic efforts, in conjunction with AusAID, represented here today, with ACIAR, with being an advocacy group but also fulfilling this role of not only advocacy but training in a purposeful way.

A couple of years ago we did a major master class on biosecurity. We brought a lot of people from Asia and elsewhere to really see firsthand what we are doing at places like Mascot and our ports, with quarantine protocols and the like – a very practical dimension to that. Crawford has introduced the pigeon pea development to India and to very poor farming beltways of India, decimated in part by the tsunami, to nominate one, and the potato to East Timor and elsewhere. We played a key role in Cambodia, which lost all its rice crop production capability under Pol Pot. By going right back to the original gene bank, through the international agricultural research centres and IRRI, we were able to extract the best, re-breed up the varieties of Cambodian rice, with such success over 20 years – thanks to Harry Nesbitt and the team – that in fact Cambodia today is a net exporter of rice. And that in turn is helping in recovery from the tsunami, which we will have other speakers address in more detail.

The two points I just want to put down, because I think Bruce covered a lot of ground, are to salute two lots of people in particular. First I salute the Australian federal Public Service – the Department of Foreign Affairs of Trade, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and other elements of government, including David Templeman’s area, Emergency Management Australia – for what was pulled together in the middle of the worst week in Australia for getting anyone up off a couch or a beach, in the aftermath of Christmas pudding and the like. Peter Shergold recently detailed, at a conference I was at, how quickly the emergency task force, at the highest level, swung into action on 27 December and almost every day, if not twice a day, as Hercules were committed, as some of the other aspects took place which Bruce Billson has detailed.

Just as a matter of interest, that group was fast-moving, with very focused working meetings, some of which were attended by the Prime Minister, amongst others. In the best practice of the Public Service each meeting had an agenda, a minute taker and a follow-up action, so that 12 or 24 hours later the status of the decisions that were taken could be recorded, re-vetted, rechecked, retuned in the absence of the right kind of oxygen bottles or other equipment, all those sorts of things. You do need a paperwork trail even in the worst emergencies and crises, and the Australian federal Public Service – under the leadership of Peter Shergold, with Ashton Calvert as the departing head of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Michael L’Estrange as the incoming head, David Templeman and many others – in a very holistic way ramped up a response from Australia which was pretty incredible when you think about it, in the worst week of a year when you could be mounting any sort of major activity out of Canberra, let alone one which went beyond our shores.

So I take this opportunity to salute the Public Service, much derided over the years as a sort of kicking-horse around Canberra, for their commitment despite the ruined family holidays and ruined arrangements as many of them put in 18-hour days in the bowels of DFAT and elsewhere. It does not hurt to pause a moment to thank them, to congratulate them, to commend the terrific contribution that they made.

Ladies and gentlemen, as we look to the rebuild, the other point I wanted to make is what Crawford is best able to do, in liaison with ACIAR and others – that is, helping with training and retraining, as teachers come out of shellshock (as teachers need to be found – period) in places like the Maldives and elsewhere, as so many other universities have to tool up again from a near non-existent base in the aftermath of the tsunami. The Crawford Fund is working closely to develop a shared understanding of the agricultural R&D infrastructure, especially in northern Sumatra. We are considering, as part of that equation, some of the things which were used before to provide advice and facilitation to strengthen the universities in northern Sumatra, for a scheme similar to the old Eastern Islands universities project, which was one where many of our people in Crawford and ACIAR had very direct roles to play.

Training activities for fisheries lecturing staff at Syiah Kuala University in Aceh is another focus under consideration, which goes very much to the medium- and long-term impacts on the livelihoods of fishermen in northern Sumatra. The current chair of ACIAR, Dr Meryl Williams, was director of the international fishing centre, now in Penang, Georgetown, Malaysia. Fish food product is so essential to the local economy and to the health and wellbeing and nutrition of so many people through that part of the world.

We plan on working to bring forward activities with regard to agricultural and fishery training programs. Dr Bob Clements and others will carry forward the detail of that, some of it to unfold, indeed, from today’s deliberations. It is in the training area, the retraining area, the revitalising of the institutions, many of which have been devastated by the tsunami, that we stand ready to commence and have commenced a number of activities – but all of that after the initial emergency phase which Bruce Billson detailed, to get things bedded down, to get things moving.

May I conclude by saying that, believe it or not, out of something as terrible as this tsunami and the earthquake of last Sunday–Monday, which did not produce a major tsunami but produced yet again horrific damage, horrific sea currents and swells (which very nearly took some Australian lives on some boats in the area), we have learnt a lot. We will fine-tune, and I think governments including the Australian federal government will further fine-tune, all the messages and the information that flowed from the activities over the last couple of months. It has also had a bonus, if you could say that: a reconnect at the highest level, a demonstration of a practical commitment between 20 million people in the European-oriented country of Australia with a very wide cross-section of Asia – including a part of Asia which has been locked off from the rest of the world – in a way which has been very purposeful, very pragmatic, very focused.

I know that you don’t want big events for this to happen, and our longstanding links from Colombo Plans of yesteryear to everything else will always continue to unfold, but it is interesting to reflect that when the crunch came, the dynamic and the commitment and the spirit were there at the highest levels, at the practical levels, at all ranks of the Navy, Army and Air Force and a raft of other NGO levels, to help make a difference. And we did make a difference. I am proud, as one Australian, to be an Australian and see the way our country and our people stepped forward. I think that figure of Bruce Billson’s, that 75 per cent of people were donating for the first time in their lives in response to the tsunami, says a lot of things.

Sadly, the Indo-Australian plate is likely to continue colliding with the Euro-Asian plate, as we learned on Lateline and elsewhere again last night. We cannot rest easy, above all till the warning systems are fully engineered up in respect of tsunamis in the Indian Ocean. That is an absolute priority.