Page 4322 - Week 13 - Thursday, 4 December 2014
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We are taking the government on a great deal of faith here today in passing this appropriation, but everyone in this place wants that money to flow to ameliorate the impact on all of the families who are suffering.
If members go to the documents that were provided by the Treasurer, the committee asked the Treasurer for some more of the financials. He provided a document; there are a couple of charts in it. For instance, the analysis that we already have excludes the impact of the financing costs. So interest has to be included in these numbers and that is when we will get a fuller picture. But then he indicated it is about the timing and the sequencing. It will affect the cash flow and it will affect the operating balance.
In that regard I will take my own advice from the committee report—that, notwithstanding all the previous recommendations and that we pass the bill today, at least we know what is certain. There are 1,021 houses that may be acquired by the government for remediation and the costs are set out by the government. There is an average of about $620,000 per home, then the cost of the demolition and then the cost of remediation.
The important part, of course, will be what comes back into the coffers from the sale of land. Many recommendations in the report will require extra funding, if the government accepts them. I have had a chance now to read the government response and I will go to some of the responses.
We are taking the government on faith. As the Treasurer knows, we will watch and keep an eye on what is happening. We will certainly be reporting to the community regularly on this. I note that he accepted the recommendation that they report quarterly.
The government have not accepted some of the exceptional circumstances, in that we said they should consider that some people may be able to stay in their home for longer periods. And the reason is that these homes are dangerous. There seems to be deadly contradiction in what the government have been doing and what the government are saying will happen. If, as of February, the government were aware that these houses were in effect death traps then people should have been moved out immediately. If it was a building, say, following an earthquake, that potentially was going to collapse, everybody would have been evacuated, whether we had somewhere for them to go or not.
But we have left people, since February, in these houses. Indeed some people may not get out of their homes under the current scheme for 12 months; it might be 15, 18 or 20 months. We actually have to come to a point where we say, “Yes, they are deadly and everybody should leave.” But if that is the case then they should be gone now.
We all know that the more time you spend there, the degree of exposure and the amount of dust in the air will affect that. We all know from what we have heard––I am not sure if you would call it an incubation period—that the potential impact period is in 20 or 30 years, so there is going to be a long wait. One of the saddest moments of the public hearing was when one of the submitters said:
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