Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

My questions go to who gets exempted. In this place just recently I tried to establish the eligibility under the Australian Government Disaster Recovery Payment scheme for the $1,000 per adult and $400 per child payments. I asked—and I did not get a satisfactory answer—whether it was true that a community 1,700 kilometres north of Brisbane, just south-west of Cairns, was receiving the $1,000 cheques in consideration of the floods in Brisbane, 1,700 kilometres to the south, and then after Cyclone Yasi struck North Queensland there was yet another community half way up Cape York who were hardly affected, if at all, and yet people lined up to get their $1,000 per adult and $400 per child. In fact they did not even have to make an application to Centrelink; their’s was paid into their bank accounts.

What was interesting was that I was told in that circumstance—and this goes to the question I would like clarified—that there were people in North Queensland particularly who applied for, received and contributed back to various charities their $1,000 figure and their $400 figure. It was put to me that, having received the funding under the Australian Government Disaster Recovery Payment scheme, they too would then be exempted from contributing to this levy. I am keen to know whether that is true, whether it happened, to what extent it happened, how Centrelink or other agencies have been able to establish this and what action, if any, is being taken to recover those funds. It could not be a greater contrast at this time with the shocking events in Japan recently—the earthquake followed by the tsunami—to have the realisation that the Japanese government, prudent as it is, has just gone into its sovereign wealth funds to fund the recovery from that dramatic and disastrous event. It draws to our attention the fact that any intelligent, wise or prudent household or any prudent business would always put to one side funds to use in the event of some disaster befalling that household or business. In Japan we see the prudence of their government over time and its capacity to place savings to one side so that, in the event of a disaster, of whatever magnitude, they are not in a position of going to their citizens for this purpose.

I do not want to go over the ground of companies, trusts and other entities that will be exempted from paying this levy. It seems to me so ridiculous that we would frame the legislation in such a way that a group of individuals in the community would be so taxed but companies and others would not. How do we know that the $1.8 billion will be recovered in 12 months. What if it takes two years? What if it takes six months to recover these funds? What will happen then? If it is in six months, will the levy stop? Or if at the end of 12 months the $1.8 billion has not been recovered, will it continue? These are questions which I believe we have the right to ask and have answered.

Senator Cormann drew attention to the bushfires affecting people in Kelmscott and Armadale after the events of the floods. It also begs the question: what about the people in Lake Preston whose homes were destroyed prior to Christmas, who are equally in a situation of financial and emotional embarrassment. What about the Gascoyne where the worst floods in WA’s history in December wiped out most pastoral Gascoyne Junction properties, about 160 kilometres from Carnarvon. At the time I asked the question of Minister Ludwig representing the Attorney-General. Despite the Premier of the state calling it a natural disaster and, to her credit, despite the Prime Minister having said yes, this was a natural disaster category C in which the people of the Gascoyne should enjoy funding under the Australian Government Disaster Recovery Payment scheme, Emergency Management Australia had taken it upon itself to decide that it really was not a severe flood and no payments were to be made. It was only with the intervention of the West Australian newspaper with whom I consulted after question time that day, who put the questions to the Prime Minister’s office the very next day, being 11 February, that an edict was put out that, yes, those people in the Gascoyne themselves—