VIDEO footage of Tony Abbott being heckled mercilessly by a Mission Beach resident when the Opposition Leader visited cyclone-ravaged north Queensland over the weekend should be compulsory viewing for all politicians.

For hundreds of thousands of Australians in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria who have had their lives affected by flooding rains and cyclones in recent weeks, the last thing they want to hear is politics.

They don't want, need, nor deserve point scoring, blame shifting and party political sniping.

What the people in our disaster zones want are boots on the ground, power tools in the hand, heavy equipment on the roads, and the lights, the water and the phones back on.

They rightly want their roads and rail links repaired as soon as possible; their homes, schools, police stations and community centres rebuilt. It is a lot to do and it will take a lot of money, but it is not a lot to ask.

As Federal Parliament resumes sitting in Canberra tomorrow after the summer break, our elected representatives would do well to remember this.

Many of them have visited the disaster zones and many have electorates directly impacted by the events of the past few weeks. Indeed many have also rolled up the shirtsleeves, donned the gloves and the gumboots and gone out not for a photo opportunity, but just to help friends and neighbours as best they can. That is as it should be and it is where the Australian spirit has shone in recent weeks.

What will take that gloss off is a return to the sort of cheap partisanship and opposition for opposition's sake that too often tends to dominate our political discourse.

Rebuilding ravaged communities should not centre wholly on a politically charged debate about economic management, or serve to be cynically exploited as an opportunity to attack one's opponents.

In economics, disasters like this are described as exogenous events, ones that come outside normal modelling and cyclical patterns. And often, as we have seen over the years with various wars, oil shocks and more recently the Global Financial Crisis, such exogenous events can require an extraordinary response. The Courier-Mail wholeheartedly supports reining in government waste and killing off ill-conceived and expensive spending commitments such as the cash for clunkers scheme, but that stands regardless of cyclones and flooding rains.

We support the principle of a surplus budget over the life of the economic cycle and encourage a low-tax environment that fosters individual endeavours over growth of government.

That said, spending cuts, surpluses and taxation measures are all just legitimate tools to be used to deal with the situation at hand.

The last thing the people at the epicentres of our vast areas of destruction want to hear right now is an endless, unedifying and highly partisan argument - aimed more at damaging an opponent than helping those in need - about how it should be done.

Prime Minister Gillard needs to lead by example here and concede that surpluses and deficits wax and wane with the economic times, and back away from her rigid (and highly political) commitment to a surplus in fiscal 2013. Rebuilding communities and economic capacity can be more important than an arbitrary line in a set of accounts.

For his part, Mr Abbott must abandon his hypocritical stance on the flood levy, given its very modest nature and the previous coalition government's enthusiastic use of such levies to meet all manner of unforeseen costs.

In this regard he must also stop the disingenuous muddying of the waters for political ends, for he risks not only tarnishing his own brand but also undermining community goodwill in the process. The levy is, after all, for rebuilding public infrastructure and unlike public donations, does not go to individuals.

Exploiting natural disasters of this scale for short-term political ends will serve neither side of politics well. People will, however, respect and remember getting the job of recovery done. Right now that is what counts.

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/editorial-no-politics-in-disaster-zone/story-e6freomx-1226001047385

This is why we require a ongoing climate change levy, so we can streamline protection and repair.