Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against the motion moved by the member for Flinders, and I shall carefully set out the reasons why. The government is extremely disappointed that the opposition has decided to move this motion in the House. To stand accused by the opposition of not putting the safety of Australian householders first is both unfair and misleading. The government has done two significant things, among others, on this issue. It has provided several opportunities to privately brief the opposition on the current safety inspection results and has consistently explained its reasons for not releasing this data prematurely. Furthermore, the government has also explained many times that the decision not to release the current inspection results is based on advice provided by the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. As I will discuss shortly, independent advice from the CSIRO also supports the government’s approach. I can say regretfully that the opposition has responded by refusing to accept the offer of a private briefing. It also continues to publicly distort the facts on this issue, which only serves to undermine the public confidence in the insulation industry and the current inspection programs.

Tonight I wish to reinforce to the House one more time why the government is adopting its current approach. The inspections under the HISP taken to date have not been done on a random basis. They have been targeted according to a risk assessment and focus carefully on safety issues. Safety is paramount. Given the importance of the targeted risk assessment, the government has commissioned the CSIRO to assist by conducting a statistical analysis of the inspection data to inform the HISP. In addition, the government has asked the department to commission a leading independent, internationally recognised consultancy firm to carry out analysis of the safety inspection programs and the results to provide advice on the extent of risk mitigation. Together, the inspections results data, the work conducted by the CSIRO and the report of the consultancy firm will inform the government’s future decisions on the safety inspection programs.

When all of this work has been considered by the government it will be released publicly in the appropriate form. A considered release of this information will build further public confidence in the safety inspection programs. Confidence is vital for the future of the insulation industry. The government has acted upon the advice of the department in taking the decision not to release the data concerning the HISP safety inspection results at this stage of the inspection process. This advice is based on the fact that non-foil inspections undertaken to date are not a random sample and therefore are not representative of potential issues across the HIP. That was a fact noted by the ANAO in its recent report on this. The non-foil inspections are being targeted according to a risk assessment. For example, businesses that have been associated with noncompliance or fire incidents are being targeted, rather than installations of businesses that have no compliance issues.

The release of the results of the targeted, risk assessed inspections would be misleading with respect to the incidence and type of safety concerns and the relationship between the incidents and the type of insulation product used across the 1.2 million households. The results would therefore be open to misrepresentation, potentially causing unnecessary apprehension. For these reasons, the results could also generate further disruption in the insulation industry by deepening the loss of confidence in the insulation market or segments of it when it may not be warranted on safety grounds—for example, where the issue relates to the manner of installation of a particular product rather than the product itself. In particular, I ask the House to consider that the politicisation and misrepresentation of the results would likely drive an increase in general household requests for inspections, taking inspectors away from the targeted safety program, thereby diverting resources, increasing costs and extending the time needed to inspect the houses identified by the risk assessment. This is a very serious consideration that has influenced the advice provided to the government.

The government’s advice is that all these factors indicated it would not be in the public interest to release the non-foil inspection results until the inspection program is far more advanced, at which time a more definitive assessment could be given about the number of any further houses to be inspected, the remediation measures that may be required, the impact on the industry and possible future regulatory measures. The inspection data is also being shared with state and territory regulatory bodies and law enforcement agencies for the pursuit of non-compliance remedies, and specific elements of the data are sensitive in this regard. The advice provided to the government by the department concerning this issue has been very carefully considered and supported by the department’s audit committee that is chaired and attended by independent advisers.

I also draw the House’s attention to the recent Auditor-General’s report into the HIP—which the opposition supported given the auditor’s independence—which clearly found that the government’s remediation and safety inspection programs were appropriate and well designed. This was the reason that the Auditor-General did not find it necessary to make any recommendations in his report. All of these points, as well as an offer of a private briefing, were made by my colleague the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, the Hon. Greg Combet, in a letter to the member for Flinders on 5 November. The honourable member for Flinders still has not responded to this letter, as I am advised. CSIRO has since written to the department on these matters, and I quote directly from this letter:

The CSIRO opinion is that the data set of 58,000 inspections made so far does not provide a representative sample of the approximately 1.16 million population of installed households for the following reasons:

• many of the inspections occurred as a result of calls to the Centrelink hotline by householders concerned about the quality of their installations.
• another significant component of the inspections thus far has arisen from a targeting program developed by PWC.

As a result, among the total population of installed households, these 58,000 inspections would provide a misleading picture of the overall fire safety risk.

In our view, the sampling we have proposed will provide more reliable estimates of (i) the overall fire safety risk and (ii) the impact of various risk factors on that fire safety risk.

This independent advice from CSIRO completely supports the reasons the government has provided for not releasing the safety inspection results. Minister Combet wrote to the member for Flinders on 16 November providing him with the CSIRO letter and once more offering the honourable member the opportunity to receive a private briefing. I am advised that the member for Flinders has failed to reply. The opposition simply does not want to listen to the facts. Instead it wants to wreck the current inspection programs and force the government to pursue other options. In precisely the same way that it has been said it does not matter what happens with the NBN, the opposition leader has said, ‘Wreck at all costs.’

The issue of asbestos is also raised in the opposition motion and it is being addressed by the government. The government has recognised issues surrounding the inspection of the roofs containing asbestos. On 12 November a tender was released for phase 2 of the HISP which will seek to secure the services of a specialist contractor to resolve this complex issue. In view of all of the above that I have just spelt out I encourage the House to respect the government’s approach. I would also encourage the opposition to drop this motion and reconsider the government’s offer of a confidential briefing. Further the Foil Insulation Safety Program involves inspections of all 50,000 homes insulated with foil under the HIP. In closing, I reiterate that the government is extremely disappointed that the opposition has decided to move this motion.

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