Remaining Mr Fluffy home owners could stay put: ACT government

For the first time since the scheme began four years ago, the ACT government has signalled it may work with home owners refusing to leave to allow them to remain in their homes beyond 2020.

June 30 next year had previously been described as "the last possible date" for the owners of homes affected by potentially deadly loose-fill asbestos insulation to surrender their leases, but several have refused the government's buyback offer and there is no policy in place to determine what happens to home owners who wish to remain.

Two of the remaining home owners this week vowed to fight any moves to evict them if the territory government does decide to pursue compulsory acquisitions of the final few Mr Fluffy properties, while another who took up the buyback offer said she would have been in "a whole different scenario" had she known years ago that staying put was a potential option.

July 6 will mark four years since the first Mr Fluffy home was demolished under the scheme.

ACT government figures show 1023 properties were affected by Mr Fluffy asbestos, with a further 17 deemed eligible to participate in the loose-fill asbestos insulation eradication scheme.

There are still 41 privately owned Mr Fluffy homes, with 25 of those owners participating in the scheme and set to surrender their leases to the territory before June 30 next year. A further two have recently been demolished privately but are yet to be removed from the affected residential premises register. That leaves the owners of 14 Mr Fluffy homes with an uncertain future.

A spokeswoman said the ACT government's view remained that demolition was the only way to remove the risks associated with living in a property affected by loose-fill asbestos.

Then-chief minister Katy Gallagher said in 2014 that her government had received legal advice indicating compulsory acquisition was available as an option to force home owners who did not participate in the buyback scheme to move out of their homes. Subsequent ACT governments have not ruled out trying to go down that path.

Responding to questions from the Sunday Canberra Times this week, an ACT government spokeswoman said the government was "working with home owners on potential options beyond 2020".

"This may include remaining in homes [with management plans in place] or relocating to another home as two potentials," she said.

"At this stage, we're working towards finalising what this looks like."

The spokeswoman said "information about management options" would be provided to the remaining home owners once the details were finalised later this year.

Aranda resident Jean Geue, the only Mr Fluffy home owner in the suburb to not have surrendered her lease, said she would demand to stay put.

Ms Geue, who turned 80 last year, has lived in the home for 45 years and said she and her husband had not had any health problems associated with asbestos.

Her house is just metres from the Aranda bushland, and Ms Geue is not ready to leave behind the bush surroundings she has volunteered her time to promote and conserve for decades.

"I'm not prepared to leave the house until they wheel me out in a box," she said.

"I just will not move. My wish is that the house be demolished after I die.

"Why should people my age have to pay for another mortgage?"

Former Mr Fluffy home owner Felicity Prideaux lived in Hackett and accepted the ACT government's buyback offer early on.

She said she took what she could get back then because she was concerned about compulsory acquisition and Mr Fluffy home owners being left with nothing or very little.

"I couldn't afford, at my stage of life, to start off with a huge mortgage again and I also knew I wouldn't be able to buy the land back, because it was too expensive," Mrs Prideaux said.

After taking up the offer, Mrs Prideaux and her husband moved to Murrumbateman.

"If they had said to us, 'You can stay in the home', that would have presented a whole different scenario to us," Mrs Prideaux said.

She said it was unacceptable that the ACT government still hadn't finalised its policy for home owners who wished to remain, four years after the start of the buyback and demolition scheme, and 51 years after the Commonwealth government of the day ignored advice from the occupational health department to shut down the Mr Fluffy asbestos company.

Ms Geue agreed and said Mr Fluffy home owners had been unfairly penalised for that negligence.

"I always felt that we should've been challenging the whole thing," she said.

If the ACT government does try to force the remaining Mr Fluffy home owners to vacate after June 2020, the home owners will have only a matter of months to prepare.

Lorraine Carvalho, who still lives in her Mr Fluffy home in Lyons with husband Leo, has no plans to move and said the government should not be allowed to force people into making quick decisions.

"I've got 45 years worth of crap I'd have to get rid of," she said.

"It's not long enough to deal with the emotions of everything, to deal with finding somewhere else to live, especially somewhere in Canberra with what they offered.

"Leo's going to be 75 soon and he doesn't want to be belting up the highway to find somewhere to buy, doing it in a short time and perhaps having to buy something you don't really want to buy.

"Everything I need for my age is where I am, not way out in 'nappy valley' or somewhere."

The Carvalhos were offered $985,000 through the buyback and demolition scheme in 2014, but turned the offer down believing it was not enough.

Mrs Carvalho said a smaller block near hers had recently sold for $1.7 million, demonstrating how inadequate the ACT government's offer was.

"We can stay and we are going to stay," she said.

"All I've ever wanted was to come to an agreement, but they've never wanted to do that. It's their way or no way."

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