The taxpayer has already spent at least the modern-day equivalent of $250 million - about $250,000 a house, about 10 per cent more than the median Canberra house was then worth - in trying, apparently ineptly, to remove this asbestos during the 1980s and 1990s, yet gave no assistance to Australians other than in Canberra also trying to deal with the problem of building and insulation asbestos in their living environments. It was not fair to other Australians - including other victims of Mr Fluffy living in Queanbeyan - then, and it is no more fair now.

There are skerricks of arguments going in the opposite direction. Some would point out that during the 1960s, when most of the houses were being built, probably half were "guvvies," built at Commonwealth expense, allocated by waiting list, primarily to public servants being transferred to Canberra, and ultimately bought by their occupiers. Could one, in such a case, sue the Commonwealth as builder, or former landlord? Hardly. Such houses were not insulated, and installing insulation may have been eco- and energy-friendly, but was generally done at personal expense, not by the landlord.

Is the Commonwealth responsible because it set Canberra building standards until self-government in 1989, and implicitly approved the installation of asbestos fibres, whether in concrete sheeting or through insulation schemes such as the Mr Fluffy processes? Perhaps, but no more so than the state governments, or municipalities in the rest of Australia. I have not heard of many class actions or damages claims based on the to-be-assumed negligence of building inspectors or departments of housing, let alone any successful programs by which regional or national groups of taxpayers have been lumbered with the cost of the supposed negligence.

There's a very good argument that governments, public health authorities and building inspectors should have recognised much earlier, and acted much more quickly about, the dangers of asbestos in building materials. A good part of suburbia - the western or "fibro" suburbs of Sydney - would hardly exist but for fibro, even as respiratory physicians seemed to know about about dangers from them, and as some of the operators - Lang Hancock's Wittenoom in Western Australia - were moving out of mining production for fear of litigation. But though there have been a good number of successful negligence actions by people exposed to asbestos against miners, manufacturers and even users of asbestos products, the case books seem short of suggesting that governments, at any level, can be held responsible for regulatory or inspection failure. Except, by implication in the ACT, it seems.

Another head of suggested liability points out that the Commonwealth "owned'' the ACT (and, thus, apparently its Mr Fluffy problem) until self-government in 1989. Before then, the minister responsible for the ACT, Clive Holding, had announced that the financial burden of removing asbestos from Mr Fluffy houses would be born, half and half by the Commonwealth and the ACT community (per money allocated to the new government). As it turns out, the Commonwealth seems to have paid more than two-thirds of the bill, and more, in total, than had been estimated as the combined cost.

The Canberra Times, editorially, was comfortable with the deal, thinking Holding a great statesman for defeating, in particular, the opposition of finance minister Peter Walsh. Referring to the risk that interstate politicians might have opposed the subsidisation of asbestos removal as one of pampering Canberra, an editorial (which may have been written by me), said complacently: "But there is no favouritism in the asbestos case. It was the neglect of a government agency that put the health of a significant section of the community at risk and under considerable expense and inconvenience to have the asbestos removed.''

As Peter Walsh remarked sarcastically later, the Commonwealth's readiness to pay Canberra's bill was not extended to help the citizens of Queanbeyan, whose taxes helped repair Canberra houses but who got no help, whether from NSW or the Commonwealth. Nor did governments, at any level, do anything to help householders remove asbestos other than in the ACT.

Walsh thought the whole project a example of intellectual dishonesty in health scaremongering, set up as a make-work program supported by the ACT Trades and Labour Council.

"The best professional advice available to the Government was that the problem, if any, could be dealt with most cheaply and safely by sealing off the asbestos, but otherwise leaving it alone,'' he said.

"The local TLC, seeing an opportunity for lucrative employment prospects for some of its members and supported by local resident action groups demanded the asbestos be 'safely' removed, costing up to $100,000 a house - and paid for, of course, by the Commonwealth.''

Being hard-hearted and hard-headed about such matters may seem tough on 1000 or so families whose houses may not have been properly fixed up 30 years ago, and who face enormous losses. Yet all sorts of bad luck hits people without it being assumed that it must be someone else's fault, or that the government ought to pick up the tab.

There are thousands of Australians with permanent disability who are unable to establish that their injury or condition is a result of someone else's negligence, and who are thus (at least pending the proper development of the NDIS) cast upon their own resources and starvation-level invalidity pensions. Meanwhile, some with identical conditions get generous compensation (particularly through a socialised third party insurance system) because they can establish negligence.

The ACT government may have been its own worst enemy in this matter. An ACT contribution to the cost of the removal scheme did continue for a while after self-government, but then the program ceased, with most people believing that the problem had been dealt with.

But once it became clear that the scheme had been less than totally successful in removing all asbestos fibres, ACT politicians, in their anxiety to empathise and show compassion seemed to assume that the Commonwealth could and should be made to pay.

It happened on the Commonwealth's watch, declared Simon Corbell. It was the Commonwealth which "allowed this dangerous carcinogen to be pumped into people's homes.''

It is just such nonsense that creates expectations that someone ought to pay. If anyone must, it will end up being the citizens of the ACT.

When the Commonwealth gave, or imposed, self-government on the people of the ACT, it gave it as found, with all defects and imperfections it carried. It also handed over a massive patrimony - the land of the ACT, worth many times the cost of remedying the odd defect - and helped the ACT fiscus claim a host of disabilities, through the Commonwealth Grants Commission, for the financial cost and inconvenience of hosting the nation's capital. It is hardly the Commonwealth's fault if we have been squandering our inheritence, or if ACT citizens having been stirring up asbestos dust.