It was particularly heartbreaking for the family that actually moved into the late Mr Jansen's house, at Lyons. They unwittingly lived there for more than a decade before it was revealed the home was riddled with loose-fill asbestos.

In a separate development, former residents of Mr Fluffy houses have been devastated to see what they believe to be their furniture being apparently prepared for sale by a second-hand dealer. They had been assured by the Asbestos Taskforce that the furniture would not be recycled. In an attempt to prevent others profiting in this way, fixtures, furniture and fittings from contaminated houses were marked with red paint.

The company at the centre of allegations of household goods being taken from Fluffy homes has been told it must remove no more fixtures, fittings and contents from homes until a police investigation and separate government investigation is complete.

The alleged attempt to resell these items, as revealed by The Canberra Times, greatly adds to the distress already being felt by owners of contaminated homes. Once they had accepted an offer of buyback, they were instructed by the ACT Government to abandon their houses, without taking a single stick of furniture. They were understandably distraught to be forced to abandon sentimental items.

It would seem furniture would pose a minuscule health risk from asbestos fibre but to rule otherwise could be risky. Creating a list of exempted items could easily prompt objections and appeals for more items to be added, and therefore saved, but thereby lead to confusion and chaos.

Clearly the ACT Government wanted to put down a strong psychological marker in this sad saga. Therefore, it decided on a blanket removal policy, a seemingly extreme move but one that it believed would reassure the residents of Canberra that their health was the top priority.

Around the time an agreement was struck with the federal government to lend the ACT the funds for the massive buyback, then-chief-minister Katy Gallagher even talked of scrapping the soil from affected residences. In retrospect, that version of a "scorched earth" policy looks like overkill. Still, the motivation was undoubtedly sincere – to assure people that every effort was being done to make the sites habitable.

In the ACT, owners of Fluffy houses face the dilemma of deciding whether to sell to the government and move, buy back their cleaned blocks, or opt out altogether. So far the government has demolished 144 of the 1022 Fluffy homes. Twenty-three owners have refused to take part in the scheme, with some demolishing their own homes and others continuing to live in the contaminated houses.

A previous attempt to cleanse Fluffy houses failed. The billion-dollar buyback program has a clear objective – to rid the territory of this deadly curse and not have to waste taxpayers' money by revisiting it.