Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I would like to alert you to a terrible story about the government's continued failure on the home insulation scheme—a scheme that has cost lives and homes, destroyed businesses and cost the Australian taxpayer $1.7 billion and counting. The week before last I was contacted by a constituent of mine in Carnegie, Mr Horvath. You will remember that the government sent out insulation installers door to door to doorknock pensioners like Mr Horvath. He agreed to have them install insulation as it was a government program. He told me that, eight weeks after he had the roof insulation installed under the government's program last year, part of his bedroom ceiling collapsed at 1 am while he and his wife were sleeping. I just want to read part of the discussion that Mr Horvath had with Neil Mitchell where he described what happened:

Neil Mitchell: This must have given you an almighty fright, did it?

Geza Horvath: Yeah, I thought it's an earthquake because it happened at one o'clock in the morning. We were in bed.

Neil Mitchell: Did it come down on you?

Geza Horvath: Not exactly on us. It's about a metre from us. It came down on the wardrobe, top of the wardrobe, and it probably slipped over to the bed or hung down right on the end of the bed.

Neil Mitchell: Well, you're very lucky.

Geza Horvath: We were very lucky because it could have come down, the whole lot, because the weight of the concrete, this is the slab, the concrete (inaudible) into the timber and then plaster closed up on the front, so it's really heavy. When we cleaned it up, it was four wheelbarrows topped up of rubbish.

Neil Mitchell: And you're quite sure this was caused by the insulation work?

Geza Horvath: Definitely, because the timber with the (inaudible) timber where it's squeezed into the plaster into it. It's broken.

Neil Mitchell: And you still haven't had a government inspector out to look at it?

Geza Horvath: No. I couldn't cope with it because I'm on chemo, and the second chemo now, and I couldn't cope with it. But I was expecting, I got a call from Sydney about the first time I reported it, and these people they rang me up and they asked me if I have any spotlights, and I tell them I haven't got. But the crack was already there, and what he was saying is, "Look," he said, "you'll be alright", and boom, he dropped the phone.

There was no inspection. Clearly the safety of Mr Horvath and his wife is the most critical thing. I contacted the office of the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, Greg Combet, straight away to get a safety inspector out there. Until Mr Horvath spoke to Neil Mitchell, there was no day or time Mr Horvath had been given as to when an inspector would come. Straight after the interview we got a call from the minister's office letting us know that an inspector would be out by Friday 3 pm. It should not have to be like that.

Now that we know that the ceiling is safe, the key problem is fixing the ceiling. Yet—get this—the government takes no responsibility to ensure that there is a rectification of damage under the Home Insulation Program. This is despite the fact that they put the program in place and paid the bills. They leave it to the homeowner to pursue and resolve.

I specifically asked the parliamentary secretary's office what assistance would be provided to the people affected and what he would do to help Mr Horvath repair the damage to his home. The advice back from his department was that all that they would do was provide the name of the installer and the installer's insurer to Mr Horvath and then it was up to him. So they expect the victims—people who might be confused by the process and who might not be well enough to hunt down their installer—to write a letter to them, follow them up, contact the installer's insurer to check that it is being progressed and so on and so on—to do all the work.

The department advised me that they would give him a caseworker from the department. Yet all the caseworker will do is encourage him to continue to make calls to the installer. According to the annual report of the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, the minister and his parliamentary secretary have 1,027 people working there. If they are not helping elderly and vulnerable people who have been affected by this botched scheme, what are they all doing? The government has to take responsibility for cleaning up the mess that they have created. (Time expired)