Deputy Premier calls for pre-poll decision on flood grant funding

Queensland Deputy Premier Steven Miles has called on the Morrison government to decide before the election whether it will fund 50 per cent of the assistance grants to flood victims.

The state government has so far paid more than $5.7 million to 437 small businesses, $838,000 to primary producers, $135,000 to 13 NGOs, and $16.6 million to 89,000 people after their homes and businesses were destroyed in the south-east Queensland floods.

Deputy Premier Steven Miles expects the federal government to help Queensland flood victims, but wants it to hurry up and say so.Credit: Getty

But amid speculation the federal election will be called either this weekend or next, Mr Miles urged Prime Minister Scott Morrison to decide on the recovery package before flood victims get caught up in caretaker provisions.

He said it had now been two weeks since Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk wrote to Mr Morrison, but “unfortunately we still don’t have an answer”.

“I just urge the Prime Minister to think of those households who are already starting to rebuild, and they’re rebuilding without knowing whether they’ll have assistance from the government to build back better, whether they’ll be able to retrofit, raise or sell their homes if they are repeatedly flooding,” he said.

“They shouldn’t have to wait – there’s a lot of speculation the government might go to an election this weekend or next weekend.

“We don’t want these assistance grants caught up in the caretaker provisions. We want it to be really clear when they are available to people and how they can apply, so we’re really urging the Morrison government to make that decision before they call an election.”

When asked whether the state would continue to pay if the federal government decided not to fund 50 per cent, Mr Miles said he thought the Commonwealth would help, despite the delay.

He said there was a long history of the Australian government supporting states in the aftermath of natural disasters.

“We’ll have to review our options if that were to happen, but I don’t think it will,” he said.

“This package is a bit different to previous packages because we’ve said we don’t want to just fund people to build back; we want to fund them to build back, so they don’t flood again.”

Mr Miles said while he understood the decision might take longer because the package was slightly different in regard to the Building Back Better provision, flood victims should not have to wait for a six-week election campaign and then a new government to be sworn in to be supported.

“These flooded residents deserve to know now,” he said.

“I don’t think the Prime Minister wants to go into an election without an answer to that question.”