Australia’s Defence Minister, Peter Dutton, has been dragged for setting up a GoFundMe page for members of a flood-stricken community in Queensland, instead of mobilising the government’s $4.7 billion emergency response fund.
On Sunday afternoon, Dutton announced on Twitter that he’d created a fundraiser for members of the Pine Rivers community in Queensland – who are residents of his electorate – to help them get “food and essential supply packages”, clean-up supplies, equipment to help “businesses get back up and running” and “any other assistance”.
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“We are raising money from all across the country to support residents and business owners in Pine Rivers whose lives and livelihoods have been affected by the February 2022 floods,” the GoFundMe page reads.
“Your donation will provide immediate assistance in the aftermath of the flood to those most in need.”
At least eight people have died after flash floods tore through north-east New South Wales and south-east Queensland over the last few days, leaving countless others homeless and the state’s major town centres fully submerged. Queensland has been by far the worst hit.
In Brisbane alone, about 1,400 homes have been described by authorities as at risk, while more than 1,000 across the state have been evacuated and some 34,000 homes were stranded without power over the weekend.
During a press conference on Sunday, Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk described the deluge as a “rain bomb”. The next day, she compared the floods to cyclones Oswald and Debbie, which pummelled the state in 2013 and 2017 respectively. Only a few hours later, Brisbane’s lord mayor, Adrian Schrinner, issued a foreboding warning: “We are not out of the woods yet”.
In the meantime, Prime Minister Scott Morrison reminded residents who stand to lose everything that they can apply for emergency relief funding of $1,000 per person through Services Australia.
Dutton’s fundraiser announcement came shortly afterwards. It has already secured more than $21,000 of its total $25,000 goal over the last 24 hours.
But critics were quick to point out that the government already has a pretty robust fund-raising system: the Australian Taxation Office. The irony wasn’t lost on Labor’s Josh Wilson, who suggested the move painted a mirror image of the Coalition’s mismanagement of natural disasters in recent years.
Complaints came in thick and fast. Some were quick to point to the fact that Morrison has been cutting taxes which, in turn, has stalled the government’s ability to raise money for disasters like these. Others, though, were just as quick to highlight the fact that the money is there. It just isn’t being spent.
Why, they asked, should they have to pay twice?
The complaints eventually made their way to the fundraising page itself, where people took the opportunity to donate while protesting the government’s spending record. “Doesn’t the gov have a disaster fund,” read one description. “Voldemort Returns,” read another. “Give the victims THEIR government money dutto”.
Disaster relief funding has become, among other things, an Achilles heel for the Morrison government. Since 2019, the Coalition has been sitting on more than $4.7 billion worth of funding meant for emergency responses to events like those unfolding in Australia’s northeast. But they have refused to even allocate it – let alone spend it.
Opposition leader Anthony Albanese identified it as an election opportunity back in January, when he pledged that a Labor government would not only allocate the billions in relief funding but add a further $200 million every year to spend on disaster prevention protocols, to minimise the damage left behind by floods, cyclones and bushfires if it wins at the next election.
But election promises made by Morrison and Albanese aren’t likely to solve the problems faced by residents across Australia’s north-east this week.
Their promises haven’t helped those like Katie Davies from Lismore, who along with her three children have been forced onto their roofs to avoid “rapidly rising” water. They don’t help her elderly neighbours, who according to recent reports are still trapped in their roof cavity. And they don’t help those whose homes have been forcefully ejected from their foundations by floodwaters, pictured floating downstream, to who knows where.
For them, the federal election might as well be years away.
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