Floodlines
I don't know if it's just me, but a lot of people who have been calling me to claim flood relief payments have been really chatty.
And not in a "I'm traumatized and need someone to talk to" way. More in a "This is everything which happened in the last two weeks and I need to get it out in one breath" way. Sometimes it can be twenty minutes or more before I can start the claim process, purely because I can't get a word in edgeways.
I mean, I guess I could interrupt or talk over them, but it seems a little rude when the person on the other end of the line might have just watched their house float off downstream.
Fortunately, we seem to have finally pulled enough people together so that callers aren't backed up on the phone for ages, so I don't technically have to rush through each claim at top speed to get to the next one. Not that I really could anyway, as the computer systems for processing said claims are string-and-spit concoctions pulled together at the last moment and tend to crash or be really awkwardly designed. The programmers back at head office are still fine-tuning them, and they can change on a day-to-day basis - much like the official government word on who's eligible for what.
And on that last aspect, the eligibility criteria are very crude. They've been put together with the thought in mind that it's better to overpay someone who doesn't need it than leave someone both destitute AND broke, so you have scenarios where Person A spent a lazy Saturday at home playing Xbox and baking cookies with the kids because the bridge to their million-dollar ranch was underwater on that day, Person B watched their own kids be swept off that same bridge and drowned by the torrent that also washed away their house and their employer and put them in hospital for three months, and both people get paid the same emergency amount by the government.
However, we're starting to see signs that there is more tweaking going on. Not in the area of payment reductions, but different areas of government are starting to offer additional payments for very specific flood-related circumstances, and generally the more someone's lost, the more of these extra payments you can access.
For anyone reading this who isn't sure if they qualify for anything, CALL. The worst that can happen is that you're not eligible. But there are a lot of little side cases where you might be able to get a couple hundred or couple thousand dollars for stuff you didn't even know about, and more situations are being compensated every day. At the moment, they include death, injury, being cut off from your house for a while, being trapped inside your house (including not being able to get into town or out of the area), having water in your house, having electricity, water, or sewage cut off, unusable, or backed up, various types of damage to your property, temporary or permanent loss of income or job from an employer, loss of self-employment income, damage to a business you own,... uh, there's a couple of other ones as well, and they're being added to all the time.
Even if it's something like you were on holiday and couldn't make it back home on time because the roads were flooded, so you had to spend an extra night camping or in a hotel. THAT's compensatable too.
On top of that, it's not just Queensland areas and people who can claim now. It's started to extend to parts of NSW and Victoria. So don't hold off calling just because you're not a bananabender. Other Australian and NZ citizens and residents who were affected in some way might be able to claim too - you don't have to live somewhere that's currently underwater to ring up and check.
And to reiterate - if you don't fit any of the above categories, CALL ANYWAY. The rules are literally changing daily, so you could well be eligible tomorrow even if you're not today.
One last note - the lines (federal and state) are open seven days, and some of them are 24/7. Call on a weekend if you have to - we WILL pick up.
And not in a "I'm traumatized and need someone to talk to" way. More in a "This is everything which happened in the last two weeks and I need to get it out in one breath" way. Sometimes it can be twenty minutes or more before I can start the claim process, purely because I can't get a word in edgeways.
I mean, I guess I could interrupt or talk over them, but it seems a little rude when the person on the other end of the line might have just watched their house float off downstream.
Fortunately, we seem to have finally pulled enough people together so that callers aren't backed up on the phone for ages, so I don't technically have to rush through each claim at top speed to get to the next one. Not that I really could anyway, as the computer systems for processing said claims are string-and-spit concoctions pulled together at the last moment and tend to crash or be really awkwardly designed. The programmers back at head office are still fine-tuning them, and they can change on a day-to-day basis - much like the official government word on who's eligible for what.
And on that last aspect, the eligibility criteria are very crude. They've been put together with the thought in mind that it's better to overpay someone who doesn't need it than leave someone both destitute AND broke, so you have scenarios where Person A spent a lazy Saturday at home playing Xbox and baking cookies with the kids because the bridge to their million-dollar ranch was underwater on that day, Person B watched their own kids be swept off that same bridge and drowned by the torrent that also washed away their house and their employer and put them in hospital for three months, and both people get paid the same emergency amount by the government.
However, we're starting to see signs that there is more tweaking going on. Not in the area of payment reductions, but different areas of government are starting to offer additional payments for very specific flood-related circumstances, and generally the more someone's lost, the more of these extra payments you can access.
For anyone reading this who isn't sure if they qualify for anything, CALL. The worst that can happen is that you're not eligible. But there are a lot of little side cases where you might be able to get a couple hundred or couple thousand dollars for stuff you didn't even know about, and more situations are being compensated every day. At the moment, they include death, injury, being cut off from your house for a while, being trapped inside your house (including not being able to get into town or out of the area), having water in your house, having electricity, water, or sewage cut off, unusable, or backed up, various types of damage to your property, temporary or permanent loss of income or job from an employer, loss of self-employment income, damage to a business you own,... uh, there's a couple of other ones as well, and they're being added to all the time.
Even if it's something like you were on holiday and couldn't make it back home on time because the roads were flooded, so you had to spend an extra night camping or in a hotel. THAT's compensatable too.
On top of that, it's not just Queensland areas and people who can claim now. It's started to extend to parts of NSW and Victoria. So don't hold off calling just because you're not a bananabender. Other Australian and NZ citizens and residents who were affected in some way might be able to claim too - you don't have to live somewhere that's currently underwater to ring up and check.
And to reiterate - if you don't fit any of the above categories, CALL ANYWAY. The rules are literally changing daily, so you could well be eligible tomorrow even if you're not today.
One last note - the lines (federal and state) are open seven days, and some of them are 24/7. Call on a weekend if you have to - we WILL pick up.