Scott Morrison has hit back after facing savage criticism about his lack of flood funding for South East Queensland and accused the state of politicising the natural disaster.
Less than 48 hours after he rejected a request from the Queensland government to co-fund a $741m flood recovery scheme to retrofit, raise and buy back vulnerable homes, Mr Morrison has backtracked on radio.
In doing so, he’s accused the Queensland government of playing politics with the flood recovery and demanded the state be more transparent with money it’s already received from his government.
Acting Queensland Premier Cameron Dick ripped into Mr Morrison on Wednesday, accusing him of an “election-eve insult” after the federal government initially turned down a request to co-fund the package.
Mr Dick said a letter from Mr Morrison essentially referred to the program as “not his problem”.
“Scott Morrison does not care about flood victims … He has decided he doesn’t need (them) to vote for him, so he has nothing to offer them,” Mr Dick said.
But Mr Morrison has now agreed to co-fund the scheme and chastised the Queensland government for playing politics with flood recovery.
“The request the Queensland government has made goes well beyond any other requests for floods of this nature in the past. They are things that are the state government’s responsibility,” Mr Morrison told 4BC.
“It’s pretty clear they want to play politics with this. I don’t. I just want to make sure people are getting the support that they need.
“We’ll meet the 50/50 costs, but there will be a couple of conditions.”
Mr Morrison accused the Queensland government of sitting on $52m that the federal government had provided them over the last three years for various disasters that were supposed to help people.
“They haven’t even spent it. My cautiousness in agreeing to this request on the eve of an election, I think people might be able to understand when they won’t even tell you how much they’ve already spent of the money we’ve already committed to this flood,” Mr Morrison said.
“There has to be greater transparency about this.
Mr Morrison added that the government had already poured $379m directly to Queenslanders hard hit by the floods and had put more than half a billion dollars towards grants to help with recovery.
Mr Dick, appearing on ABC Radio at the same time, denied claims his government was playing politics.
“It’s not just the Queensland government calling for action from the federal government, there’s a whole range of stakeholders who say coming out of natural disasters we need to build back better,” Mr Dick said.
“This has been an extraordinary national disaster that’s impacted communities. We’ve got to do better, we’ve got to do better as a nation.”
