Vol. 75/No. 12      March 28, 2011

Some 12,000 houses across Brisbane were gutted and another 14,000 damaged in the floods.

Newly released official unemployment figures for December and January report that total employment was down by 22,000 in Queensland as bosses laid off many so-called casual workers. Downtown Ipswich was still deserted and the main Coles supermarket was shut.

Although the initial cleanup appeared largely completed, home interiors were stripped bare, awaiting repair or abandoned as repair costs largely fall on working-class flood victims themselves. Rudi, a retiree in East Ipswich, explained that an elderly neighbor had to pay $1,100 to get her electricity repaired and reconnected.

According to area residents, Moore’s Pocket, a neighborhood on the other side of the Bremer River, was submerged under water during the last major flood in 1974. Yet local politicians opened it up for housing in the years since, only for the entire area to flood again this year.

The authorities gave no word to evacuate, leaving residents on their own, said one East Ipswich resident, who asked that her name not be used.

Volunteers from other parts of town were a “magnificent” help with the cleanup. “It’s the bloody government that won’t help you,” she said. Like many others she hasn’t received anything from the Queensland relief fund and had to pay hundreds of dollars to get her electricity reconnected.

Despite the end of a decade-long drought, the “cash drought” remains for most small farmers, ABC Rural reported. “Property values are going down. We’ve got no collateral. We can’t borrow money,” West Victorian grape grower Bob Bates told the national radio program. Farmers hit by the floods have said pasture lands will take years to recover.
 
 
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