Page 4313 - Week 13 - Thursday, 4 December 2014
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exceeds what assistance has been provided to individuals who have found themselves in that unfortunate circumstance. The government’s assistance package is us stepping in to address insurance failure. There is no insurance provided for these families. Without the government stepping in and providing the financial support and certainty that we are doing through the buyback program, these families would face financial disaster. That is the purpose of the buyback scheme at its heart—to make sure that people can realise the financial investment when all other supports to them have failed.
We will continue to engage with Mr Fluffy owners and residents, and across the community, as we seek their support and cooperation in implementing this ambitious program. To those that are unhappy with the scheme as it is offered, I urge you to engage with the task force; I urge you to explain your circumstances so that we are able to assist. There are opportunities—for example, the use of land rent—that may address some of the concerns people have about the affordability of getting back onto their block. There is flexibility in the scheme already, but I just do not accept, and cannot accept, that we do not use the only mechanism we have available to us to recoup some of the costs associated with this scheme—and it is just some of them, a very small amount of the cost associated with this scheme—through the resale of the land and the uplift that we can provide through that. It is the only way that we will get any money returned to the ACT budget, which is being asked to shoulder a $300 million to $400 million expenditure without any assistance from the commonwealth government.
That is the problem. Whilst we would love a scheme that met everybody’s needs, that tailored a solution to everybody’s circumstance, that is simply not how these programs have ever operated anywhere else. It is impossible to create a scheme that addresses everybody’s individual needs, as much as we would like to. Perhaps we could do it if we were dealing with 20 homes or 30 homes, but we are not. We are dealing with a thousand homes and a thousand individual circumstances—a thousand different financial circumstances, a thousand different home and family circumstances.
The buyback scheme is the fairest way we can provide a system which realises people’s financial investment; which treats everyone equally, regardless of their financial position in life; and which seeks to offer an enduring and eternal solution to a problem that has hit this city—a very expensive problem, not only in financial terms but in the emotional distress that it has caused to this city for the last 50 years.
I hope the Assembly can maintain its unity through this process. Our guiding principle should be that this solution is in the long-term interests of all Canberrans. The principles that underpin the scheme, of fairness, equity and affordability, will remain. It is these principles that continue to guide us as we work individually—I repeat, individually—with all affected home owners. I commend the bill to the Assembly.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo—Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Corrective Services, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs and Minister for Sport and Recreation) (10.12): On behalf of the ACT Greens I give my support to this bill, which will appropriate additional funds needed to administer a program to eradicate loose-fill asbestos insulation in the ACT. Loose-fill asbestos insulation, commonly known as Mr Fluffy, has been a scourge on Canberra
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