Mr Kefford said health was only one of the reasons to buyback and demolish Canberra's 1021 Fluffy homes.

Inner South Council chairman Gary Kent said the government's draft plan change to allow Fluffy blocks to be divided and sold off as two new blocks was confused and unfair. It applied only to blocks bought by the government, allowing the government to make a premium when it sold the blocks, but not to cases where Fluffy owners had demolished their own homes.

"Why it is appropriate for the government to be able to recover its remediation costs this way when private owners may not, is puzzling, and is not explained," he said, saying a bad precedent was set by the government weakening planning rules simply to resolve a funding crisis.

In the standard residential zone, dual occupancy is only allowed on 800-square-metre blocks and even then the blocks can't be subdivided. The territory plan change now on the table will allow Fluffy blocks of only 700 square meres to be divided for dual occupancy, and sold as strata titles - as two separate blocks. The plan has upset Fluffy owners who say their blocks will be too expensive for them to buy back, and neighbours, who say suburbs will be transformed with higher-density developments.

Mr Kent said the change would create "quasi RZ2" blocks in the midst of RZ1 zones and disadvantage neighbours. Real-estate agents had suggested the loss in value of neighbouring homes could be $50,000 to $100,000. If that was accurate, the amount gained by the government by allowing strata title was effectively being paid by the neighbours.

Given Fluffy homes are clustered, because the company went door to door selling its product, the impact would be intensified in some streets. And he questioned what would happen later if a developer wanted to merge a Fluffy block with a neighbouring block, both of which still retained an RZ1 zone, but under very different rules.

The government should test houses and exempt those that presented no realistic risk, Mr Kent said, suggesting a the national occupational cut-off of 0.1 fibres/ml of air, or a level of asbestos associated with other common risky behaviours, such as smoking a packet of cigarettes a day.

The government's position that there was no safe level of asbestos exposure was confused, he said, given asbestos risks were dose dependent in the same way radiation risks were dose dependent.

Mesothelioma was overwhelmingly a disease of older men, with 84 per cent of deaths among men, and a lag time of 20 to 40 years or longer after exposure. The scheme would not prevent a single death from people exposed when the insulation was installed in the 1960s and 1970s, and seemed unlikely to prevent new cases. Any it did prevent would be cases occurring between 2035 and 2055, he said.

"The expenditure of $1 billion to acquire and demolish all potentially affected houses, prior to any testing to determine whether there is a need to demolish, cannot be characterised as efficient," he said, asking how many fatal traffic accidents or deaths from other diseases could be avoided by spending $1 billion.

"Given that the programs will neither prevent very many, if any, deaths from asbestos-related diseases ... nor protect the ACT from litigation by sufferers of such diseases, it also does not appear to be efficacious."

People who wanted to age in their own homes should be allowed to stay as long as they chose.