Australia: Gillard announces aid for business, nothing for flood victims

[Hannah Bell]

The so-called flood relief announced today at the National Press Club by Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard is an utterly inadequate package of just $5.6 billion—compared with estimated damage of $20 billion. Throughout her speech, Gillard made clear that the priority of her government was not assisting the victims of the floods, but meeting corporate demands that her government return the budget to surplus by 2012-2013 and restore damaged infrastructure that is necessary for the highly profitable operations of major mining conglomerates.


The Labor government is the representative of the most powerful financial and corporate interests and utterly indifferent to the plight of the working class and small business. In Queensland alone, dozens of people have lost their lives and some 28,000 properties and businesses have been inundated by the floods that have engulfed large areas of the state over recent months. It is estimated that 60 percent of those affected do not have insurance for flood damage.


Thousands of business and home owners in Brisbane, for example, did not take out costly flood insurance because they were lulled into a false sense of security by assurances that mitigation measures, such as the Wivenhoe Dam, had removed the risk of catastrophic inundation. In other areas, people were simply not aware that they had purchased property in areas that were at risk during the rare, but inevitable, major flood events.


Gillard announced that no additional federal funds beyond initial, means-tested emergency payments will be made available to ordinary people who have lost virtually everything they own. They have been condemned to protracted legal disputes with insurance companies over whether they were covered or not; or thrown into total reliance on the flood charity fund administrated by the Queensland state government. Despite an outpouring of donations from across Australia, the total funds held by the charity stood at just $168 million as of January 25.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/jan2011/gill-j27.shtml