Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I understand. I am trying to say that ‘48 hours uninhabitable’ is the guideline. You have to have guidelines somewhere. The Centrelink officers are trying to do the best they possibly can to be fair and equitable to everybody. We are very aware that some people do not have insurance. This is not an issue of, ‘You haven’t got insurance, therefore …’ We are well aware that people have lost the food in their fridges et cetera—all of those things. We also try to have equitable circumstances with other natural disasters. Hence, we have lowered the conditions relating to loss of electricity. We are in winter and we are in New South Wales; we are not in Far North Queensland. As the responsible minister I will continue to monitor this, so if particular things come up where we find that Centrelink, through good faith, does not respond in a way which we think is reasonable then I would be only too open to looking at those circumstances. This is about trying to meet people’s needs in very challenging and difficult circumstances but also about not going so far as to find some people doing the wrong thing, obviously, when others are so desperately in need.

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