Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts. I refer the minister to an email from 25 August last year from the Association of Building Sustainability Assessors, the ABSA, which is the accreditor of green assessors, urging his department at that time to urgently cap accreditor numbers to prevent further overloading and protect the work available to assessors. Will the minister accept responsibility for the impact of this massive oversupply of assessors on people like Robert from Cleveland in my electorate of Bowman, who has seen his livelihood destroyed and can never hope to recoup a return on the thousands of dollars he has invested in becoming an assessor? Why should the public have any confidence in this minister, given his gross incompetence displayed in the managing of his responsibilities?

Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question—in fact, I welcome it—because it gives me an opportunity to take the House and those listening through the process of assessment that assessors go through in terms of their accreditation, an assessment journey between wanting to become an assessor and being contracted to do work through the government. The fact is that the decision to embark on the journey of becoming an assessor is an individual decision that is taken by assessors through training organisations and through the Association of Building Sustainability Assessors. It is not a decision that involves a relationship between the government and the assessor. I welcome the fact that a number of people have expressed great interest in becoming assessors under this program because this is a good program. Yes, issues have been raised which I will address—I am absolutely clear about that—but this is the first time that we have provided Australians with the opportunity to build a career path for themselves which centres on providing information to householders about what they can do in their homes by way of energy efficiency measures and the like. The situation in relation to assessors is a matter between the assessors and the body that is required to accredit those assessors, not between the government and the assessors.

An additional point is that in this program we did not set out to limit the number of assessors. When it was drawn to my attention that there was a large number of assessors seeking to be accredited under the program and when ABSA brought forward the proposal for a moratorium on assessors being accredited, we did not oppose that moratorium. I think it is worth pointing out that ABSA communicated to all those potential assessors, by email and other means, offering them the opportunity not to continue with their accreditation and to have a refund of their application fee if they desired to take that course of action. Notwithstanding that the Association of Building Sustainability Assessors had said to its cohort of potential assessors, ‘We have large numbers of assessors coming through the system; do you want to continue with your training or not, given that we are going to impose a moratorium?’ many of them took the decision to continue.

One of the reasons for that is that there are a number of other programs that this government delivers and that state governments deliver that enable sustainability assessors to make an income and to make a living. I am very confident that, as we see increased energy efficiency standards become part of the planning code over time, as we see additional requirements and an awareness of the need—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I say to the member for Sturt: less talk, talk, talk from him.

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, on a point of order: I have asked a specific question about the impact of delays. We are not interested in an answer about what he did two weeks ago. We would like to know how his actions and delays have affected—

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Bowman will resume his seat. That is not a point of order. When the question goes to matters of confidence in the minister, the minister has a long bow to use. The minister is responding to the question.

Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts has provided additional information on the rollout of the program to provide the necessary information for assessors who are accredited and those who are contemplating assessment, who are considering becoming an accredited assessor, to understand how this program is being rolled out. We have delivered over 140,000 assessments. In the period through December, when the moratorium was proposed by the Association of Building Sustainability Assessors, we saw significant numbers of assessments take place. It is the case that the increased demand on the department by way of contact did result in delays. Additional resources have been identified to ensure that those delays are kept to a minimum. But, in terms of the decision that people take to become an assessor under this program, our commitment to deliver 360,000 household assessments remains and we will have a workforce in place that is trained to do that job.