Disaster funding in Cyclone Debbie’s wake has become a political football as the Queensland and federal governments continue to trade barbs over who is doing the right thing.
The Palaszczuk government implored the commonwealth to “cut the red tape and stop playing political games” after its request for the fast-tracking of recovery grants for farmers, small business and non-profit organisations was knocked back on Tuesday.
But the acting prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, insisted the request was hopelessly short on detail, and the commonwealth was only able to start expediting grants after the state gave more information on Wednesday night, two weeks after the cyclone struck.
On Thursday the Queensland deputy premier, Jackie Trad, told ABC radio that Joyce should “stop acting like a child” and “scoring cheap, political points”.
Joyce in turn called on the state government to “get competent” and complete critical paperwork instead of holding “a thousand and one” media conferences.
Joel Fitzgibbon, federal opposition spokesman for agriculture and rural and regional Australia, said Joyce’s “behaviour over relief funding is unbecoming for an acting prime minister”.
The Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, wrote to Joyce on Wednesday saying she was “concerned” at the refusal of her request as it “arose from your suggestion when you indicated your government would be open to providing urgent assistance”.
Palaszczuk said the refusal was “at odds” with commonwealth and state agreements in past disasters, citing the former Gillard government’s approval to speed up the grants for severely impacted areas in Cyclone Oswald at the request of then premier Campbell Newman in 2013.
Joyce on Thursday said the state government needed to make a proper application like its New South Wales counterpart had already done over flood impacts from Debbie.
Joyce told the ABC: “They’re just trying to be smart alecs by sending across this ridiculous little letter saying, ‘Please give us a lot of money, love the Queensland premier’.”
“We’ll keep staff here over Easter so these people can actually get competent and get their work done, and get it down to us so we can get this money back to the people who need it.”
Joyce’s spokesman told Guardian Australia that Palaszczuk’s funding request on Monday to the federal attorney general, Michael Keenan, did not name the affected council areas, what the money was for, or estimates of damage costs.
“No one asked for precision, we know this is a disaster, but you’ve got to have some sort of map,” he said.
A spokesman for Palaszczuk said paperwork to support claims for funding in nine councils had been delivered overnight “as we said we would in our request to the Turnbull government”.
“The impact on Queensland is much broader than what we’ve seen in NSW and compiling the information required by the federal government will take time,” he said.
There were 29 Queensland local government authorities activated for disaster assistance compared with six in NSW. The Queensland Reconstruction Authority had been providing extra information to their federal counterpart “as they always do”.
“We need the federal government to cut the red tape and stop playing political games,” Palaszczuk’s spokesman said.
“Barnaby Joyce surely can’t find any more excuses for withholding this funding from Queensland’s primary producers.
“All we’ve been asking for is the same treatment the Gillard government gave the Newman government in 2013.”
Joyce’s spokesman said the comparison with Newman’s request to Julia Gillard was incorrect, as the then-premier had been forced to supply sufficient information on affected council areas before funding was signed off by auditors.
He said the funding requests for farmers in Mackay, Whitsunday, Isaac, Livingstone, Woorabinda, Central Highlands, Gold Coast, Somerset and Logan council areas would now be put through within 36 hours.
The Palazczuk government was also expected on Thursday to submit business cases for small business and community organisation funding, as well as a $20m community recovery fund that would include counselling for hard-hit residents.
