A succession of federal governments have dodged responsibility for a series of costly errors down the years and, whenever budgetary savings have needed to be made, Canberra's institutions and public servants are always the first to feel the heat.

While the most egregious example of the Commonwealth's flight from responsibility is the Mr Fluffy debacle that will ultimately cost Canberrans more than a billion dollars to fix, the minimalist approach federal authorities have taken to the aftermath of the Namadgi fire that threatened the southern suburbs and destroyed an estimated 80 per cent of the ACT's iconic national park runs a close second.

And, of course, Commonwealth funding for local infrastructure projects such as light rail always seems light on when compared to the proportion of funds federal authorities tip into similar undertakings in Sydney and elsewhere.

Canberrans could be excused for thinking many of the parliamentarians who call the so-called "bubble" home for much of the year don't actually like the bush capital.

This indifference has a tragic human face in the form of James Wallner, who suffers malignant pleural mesothelioma as a result of being exposed to "Mr Fluffy" loose-fill asbestos insulation as a boy almost half a century ago.

He and his brothers had a snowball fight with it when they found piles of it in the garage of their home in Canberra's inner north.

Mr Wallner's condition is incurable and he is now dependent on a new generation immunotherapy drug, Keytruda, which has yet to be registered with the pharmaceutical benefits scheme. It costs $8,500 every three weeks.

The federal government had allowed the insulation to be installed in ACT homes despite warnings it could be dangerous and then carried out an ineffectual decontamination program in the 1980s. It washed its hands of responsibility after lending the ACT government the money needed for the recent buyback program earlier this decade. This left the Wallners no choice but to seek financial assistance from the ACT government.

That action for compensation was considered unlikely to succeed given that as the ACT government did not even exist when the product was being distributed it could hardly accept responsibility.

It has been sensitive to Mr Wallner's plight however with the ACT government announcing a $251,474 "act of grace payment" to help the Wallners with two years of medical expenses earlier this week.

This was a landmark decision given no Australian government has paid out on any claims for sickness associated with the "Mr Fluffy" loose-fill asbestos up until now.

It is one clear example of the ACT government having to use Canberrans' funds to clean up a mess the Commonwealth left behind.

The recent $1 million plus spend on restoration works in the Namadgi National Park in the wake of the Orroral Valley fire is another. Despite the fire having been started by an ADF helicopter crew, who then failed to report its location to authorities for 45 minutes, the ACT's request for Commonwealth disaster recovery funding was rejected earlier this year.

The outcome of a compensation claim for the destruction of an estimated 80 per cent of the national park still hangs in the balance.

It's not good enough. It's time for the Commonwealth to own its mistakes.