Federal Government backflips on Queensland package

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says the Federal Government will pay for half the Queensland $741 million flood recovery package, after coming under fire yesterday for not providing funding.

Mr Morrison told radio station 4BC that Queensland Government requests for support went beyond requests for floods of the same nature in the past and related to things that fall within the state’s responsibility.

“It’s pretty clear they want to play politics with this,” he said. “I don’t want to play politics with this. I just want to make sure people are getting the support that they need. So we’ll meet that, the 50/50 costs.”

The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) which had criticised the Federal Government for being “short-sighted” in not funding the package, said today’s decision was “very welcome”.

“We hope it’s the first of a series of announcements to split funding with states and territories on measures to better protect communities and homes from the impacts of extreme weather,” CEO Andrew Hall said.

“Resilience and mitigation funding is an investment into future protection, and we support comments by the Prime Minister for other states and territories to do more to improve community resilience in their own jurisdictions.”

Suncorp CEO Steve Johnston says the co-funded resilience package should become a template for similar action in other states and territories.

“Across Australia we spend far too much on mopping up after disasters and not enough in preparing for them. This investment starts the process of correcting that imbalance,” Mr Johnston said.

“This is not about finger pointing or politics – all levels of government must contribute, and we all need to work together.”

ICA has called for $2 billion to be spent over five years, funded equally by the Federal Government and states and territories. The resilience funding investment would save governments and households at least $19 billion to 2050, it says.

The Queensland Government said last month that its resilience funding package would provide people whose homes have been badly damaged by the floods with options that may include retrofitting, house raising or voluntary buy-backs of properties at high risk from future events.

Acting Premier Cameron Dick said on Twitter today that Queenslanders had a win with Mr Morrison “walking back his refusal” to fund the package.

Mr Morrison said this morning Queensland had not been transparent about the amount of money it had already received from the Federal Government.

“What this will mean with our commitment today, is that there’s been $1.9 billion committed between the State government and the Federal Government to supporting the Queensland flood response, $1.3 billion of that will be coming from the Federal Government,” he said.