Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been asked to stump up millions to help floodproof thousands of Queensland homes as the state government accuses him of providing more support to flood victims in NSW.
Deputy Queensland Premier Steven Miles made the comments on Saturday as he unveiled a $771 million support package for flood victims the government wants Mr Morrison to agree to co-fund.
Mr Miles said Mr Morrison had also been asked to offer Queensland flood victims the same access to federal government disaster payments, worth up to an extra $2000 for adults and $800 for children under 16, that had been made available in northern NSW council areas.
“That’s thousands of dollars more available to NSW residents than Queensland residents,” Mr Miles said.
“There is no argument or justification for the differential application of those hardship payments … I certainly haven’t been provided with any explanation why NSW local government areas should get more in hardship payments than those in Queensland.
“We know that in the south east more people were affected than in NSW. The event went for longer here than in northern NSW.”
Mr Miles said he expected the federal government would agree to help fund the new $771 million support package, which he dubbed “one of the biggest residential resilience recovery projects ever, certainly in Australia and possibly even the world”.
The package includes grants of up to $50,000 to retrofit 5500 homes so they can cope with future floods.
Grants of up to $100,000 to raise up to 1000 homes and a $350m program to buy back 500 homes, where flood mitigation measures are not possible or owners do not want to return, also forms part of the package.
No details were provided about how the successful grant recipients would be chosen, but Mr Mxjmtzywiles did say the government would further increase structural assistance grants, from $14,000 to $50,000, to get people back into their homes at a cost of up to $38 million.
Another $30m will go towards helping council’s with clean up costs.
“We think this is a world-leading initiative to ensure that we aren’t just building back, but that we don’t put residents back into homes that will flood again,” Mr Miles said.
“Once we have confirmation support for this program from the Commonwealth further work will be done to develop the guidelines and application process so we just ask people to bare with us as work through the detail.
“I think the Australian government know what‘s happened here, they know how many times it’s happened and I can’t imagine the Prime Minister would want to say to flood victims that they have to move back into a home that we know will flood again.”
The floods in early March have left thousands of Queenslanders struggling to get back on their feet, with Suncorp’s chief executive Steve Johnston saying the organisation had 38,000 claims for support lodged with it.
That number is expected to rise to 45,000.
“The scale of it is something we haven’t seen before,” Mr Johnston said.
“It’s bigger than the combined Queensland 2011 floods, Cyclone Yasi, the Townsville floods and Cyclone Debbie.
“There’ll be 600 new jobs that’ll be created within our company to help us get on top of this event as quickly as we can.”
