Page 229 - Week 01 - Thursday, 10 February 2022
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government’s own clean-up crews. In that time, the most that the government could offer was an extra green bin, which I have no doubt was actually very much welcomed by the community.
There has been such limited support offered—no food services, power generators, clean-up services—to many of those suffering from excessive and prolonged storm damage, with some of the most vulnerable forced to rely on the goodwill of their neighbours. Even the ACT ESA community hub at Higgins was not made available until the evening of 5 January, two days after the storm. Very few people actually knew about this service. In fact, during the storm and afterwards, the community perceived a significant lack of communication by this government, with no local contact made with those who suffered the worst damage. In a response to the media by the government, they stated that their communication was primarily through radio and social media. I would have to say that it would be difficult for most residents to jump on social media or listen to the radio, particularly if they do not have any power and they are unable to charge their phones.
Since late 2020, in acknowledging the annual storm phenomenon, the government has been working on a communications strategy to get Canberra storm ready. It appears to rely solely on people visiting their website or being on Facebook to see the sponsored posts. I have read some of the comments in response to those posts. They are not complimentary, as people express their frustration at the lack of government response, communication and support in fixing up the mess caused by this storm.
The ACT does not appear to have a second tier of support for cleaning up debris. The second tier support is standard in other states and territories, where councils, governments and SES work together to provide a whole-of-government response. Obviously, here we do not have local councils, so it is expected that the ACT government will fill that gap.
The government’s recommendation in response to people’s questions and comments on social media has been to advise people to lodge their complaints with Fix My Street. According to an answer that Minister Steel provided last year, there were over 47,000 claims lodged in 2021. People were quite frustrated because they were not getting any answers and it was taking months to get any sort of rectification of the issues that they lodged.
Three weeks after the event, on 25 January, the ACT government posted a message stating that, since Monday, 3 January, over 2,000 tasks had been identified through Fix My Street and completed. They made a third observation that the scale of damage, which included entire trees being uprooted, as well as the safety risks presented by the task at hand, meant that the recovery could take months to complete.
In this motion I am proposing to cover a number of different areas. Firstly, I would like the inquiry to look at the social, emotional and financial costs of those who experienced storm damage and the lengthy delays in the redress. Storms are distressing and the damage they cause can be overwhelming, especially for the vulnerable in our community. We have a fantastic community in the ACT and people
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