Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

My electorate was hit by serious flooding in 2011 and 2013. Generally the governments at state and federal level have acted promptly to put emergency assistance in place, and the electorate is very grateful for that. However, a number of anomalies have been identified in the way in which the assistance has been provided. I want to draw attention to some of those today.

Under the guidelines of the Australian government disaster payment, someone must be isolated from or stranded at their principal place of residence for 24 hours. If four or five adults are in that property they can claim between $4,000 and $5,000 if their gas or other utility is not available for a period of 48 hours. Those payments are generous and in 2011 they were also interpreted very liberally. But in the 2013 flood, there seemed to have been a radical change in the way in which the same guidelines were interpreted.

Whole suburbs that were isolated received assistance in the 2011 flood but in this flood there was a very strict interpretation put on isolation on your property. If you could take one step onto your neighbour's property you no longer qualified, even though that neighbour might also have been isolated. They are many examples like that. For instance, Kay Kelly could get onto her neighbour's property but her neighbour was also isolated so to do that was completely valueless. A person on a farm property could have been isolated for weeks but if they could take one step onto their neighbour's property they did not qualify for these benefits. That seems to me to be grossly unfair and needs to be reviewed.

In addition to that there are issues associated with how assistance could be used. For instance, you were able to use the money to repair your shop or to get your business operational but you could not use the money to replant a crop if you received category C assistance. If you got category D assistance, you could. That to me seems to be illogical.

Another problem my electorate faced was that your local government area had to be declared to receive the benefits. I have examples of people living just across the border of a local government area who would have qualified for the benefits but got absolutely nothing because of the fact that their shire was not declared. These sorts of inconsistencies need to be addressed. When there are no pending disasters it is the right time to review these criteria. I think it is time. I wrote to the minister about these issues. He has declined every single one of them even though he expressed sympathy to me on these matters. Now is the time to review these criteria.

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