Page 4341 - Week 13 - Thursday, 4 December 2014
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the chamber—the Greens and the Labor Party—are not being fair in this matter. The challenge for government is to balance fairness for individuals and fairness for the whole community. That balance has to be struck somewhere. A line does have to be drawn. I have thought long and hard about this as we have gone through the process of trying to come up with the right package. While the Chief Minister has taken the lead on this, all the ministers in cabinet have had to turn our minds to this because it is such a significant issue for the ACT.
The question I have tried to contemplate, that I have thought about, is this: is justice being done? For those people who have found themselves, through no fault of their own in these circumstances, is this a just outcome? At the end of the day, somebody who does find themselves in these circumstances will be given the full market value of their house. They will be given a range of other assistance packages. There is the actual cash assistance for the short term, there are stamp duty waivers and there are other benefits that are being put in place for people.
I do believe that is a just outcome. To be given the full value of your home is a just outcome. It is certainly better than some people did in the Canberra bushfires. It is better than the situation people often find themselves in as the result of natural disasters. That is not to say there is not still hardship. There is still hardship. There is still loss. There is still dislocation. There is still pain. All of those things are still there. But the government cannot fix all of those things. The government can deliver justice in providing financial recompense for people who have found themselves in these very, very difficult circumstances. So, yes, in thinking about this, I do believe that there is justice, even though those other things cannot be taken away.
The bottom line is that this issue will reverberate through our community for a long time to come. Today is not the end of the matter. It is certainly the beginning of the end because the government has taken a decision to finally, once and for all, deal with the Mr Fluffy issue in this town. Mr Wall touched on it today in his remarks when he said that, as a tradesperson in the company that he ran, he has entered Mr Fluffy houses and done work in Mr Fluffy contaminated houses. So for him there remains an outstanding question.
There are many people in our community who face that prospect, not just the families who are living the homes today but families who have lived in those homes over many years. Earlier this year as this issue came to light I got a phone call from my mother saying, “You recall that we lived in a Mr Fluffy house. You recall the fact that we had the kitchen and the bathroom renovated in that house before the remediation program took place. You will recall that we used the subfloor space as a storage area for our bikes, for our lawnmower, for the family tools.” So we have lived in that place as well. That thought will sit in the back of the mind for many years to come.
Many, many Canberrans have these experiences and this issue will reverberate through our community for many years as more people are diagnosed potentially with diseases arising from this. So today is not the end of the matter. There is so much more to go in this journey for the families who must deal with this in the next few years and the families who deal with it for many, many years to come.
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