Page 3663 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 28 October 2014
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Importantly, whilst we go through the detail of finalising an agreement which we will then agree on as to the detail of administering that and accessing that loan, the important thing for home owners today is that there will be a process to buy back their homes, to recognise the investment they have made and to allow them to get on with their lives. There will be bumps ahead, I have no doubt. There are going to be some very tricky issues for us to deal with and for home owners individually to reconcile. At the end of the day, we will try and be fair and compassionate to home owners, but at the same time we have to be reasonable on the budget and ACT taxpayers who are going to have to share some of these costs.
MADAM SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Dr Bourke.
DR BOURKE: Chief Minister, what arrangements need to be put in place with the commonwealth government and how quickly do you think this could happen?
MS GALLAGHER: I understand that the asbestos response task force, and Mr Kefford in particular, will be meeting with the commonwealth on Thursday morning. The position put to me by Minister Abetz is that the agreement should allow great flexibility for the ACT government to take responsibility for the scheme and that the detail of that agreement should not be onerous on the ACT government in terms of reporting and acquitting money that has been used against the loan. We have both agreed that this should be done as soon as possible to allow for the relevant pieces of legislation to pass both the federal parliament and the ACT Assembly to allow the cash to be appropriated to support a buy-back scheme to operate from 1 January 2015.
MADAM SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Ms Porter.
MS PORTER: My question is: what immediate action can Mr Fluffy home owners expect now?
MS GALLAGHER: The negotiations have taken some time, which I know has been hard on many home owners. The emergency assistance continues to be made available to affected home owners. The task force is emailing those that are registered today with information. We also sought to provide information this morning when it became clear that this matter was well and truly alive within the media on radio this morning and then following on from that, because it is very distressing for home owners to hear stories like that, as it is for chief ministers, and I imagine other members of the Assembly, to hear it on the six o clock news as well.
We are trying to keep communication between the task force and home owners as good as we can, to make sure that people have that information. There is a whole range of documents which will be available on that site this afternoon, including the task force’s report and some simple frequently asked questions.
I also want to hold—and I hope with other members, of course the Leader of the Opposition and Minister Rattenbury—some community forums where we can hear back from people what they are thinking and feeling when they see some of the draft proposals and the guidelines about how a scheme like this should run. We will be
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