John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Before asking my question I would just like to add that I have had quite a lot of discussions with those involved with Storm Financial, including literally hours with Emmanuel Cassimatis—and I do not wish to even go down the road of Storm. Tomorrow I will be lodging a notice of motion and will leave it to the appropriate inquiries to come out with the details of that, and, as Minister Sherry said, there are already some investigations underway so I prefer not to comment on them.

Last Thursday I spoke in the Senate about batts in the ceiling. There are many people in Australia, especially in New South Wales and Queensland, who live in timber homes. My better half, Nancy, is one who has a small timber two-bedroom home in Bingara near the Tamworth/Inverell area, where it gets extremely hot. Forty degrees is nothing new during summer there. A couple of years ago, she put batts in the ceiling and none in the walls—there is no insulation in the walls. Because of the sun on the walls during the day, the heat comes through the walls and the house gets extremely hot. She has a dual-read thermometer that reads the inside and outside temperatures—it has a little lead going out the window. Of a morning it tells the temperature inside and outside the house.

She will wake up tomorrow morning and I would guess that the temperature will probably be around 24 degrees inside the house and 19 degrees outside the house. What happens is that without insulation in the walls the house is worse. I can assure you that by putting the batts in the ceiling the house is hotter in summer during the day and during the night. Frankly, the place needs air-conditioning the way it is now. To put insulation into the walls, you would have to remove the weatherboards. These are aged houses, and there are thousands of them throughout New South Wales and Queensland. The weatherboards are Cyprus pine. If they were removed, they would simply split and fall to bits. To insulate that house properly, you would have to remove the weatherboards, put the insulation in and then put new weatherboards on and paint them. It would cost thousands of dollars.

Is the minister aware of this? With some 2.7 million homes projected to get ceiling insulation batts, what are you going to do about these wooden homes, especially in northern New South Wales and Queensland? If you put batts in those ceilings, I can tell you that during summer the houses will be worse; they will be hotter inside day and night than if they had no ceiling insulation at all. What is the government’s plan on this? Are you simply going to allow people to spend the $1,600 bonus to put the batts in the ceiling and leave the walls as is? If you are, it is up to you to inform the public of the ramifications: it would be money wasted. Nancy’s home is worse as a result of the batts in the ceiling, which have been there a couple of years. If I had a bit of time, I would certainly remove them.

Are you going to make the people who own those older weatherboard style homes—and there are literally thousands of them in those areas that I mentioned—aware that, if they do not put insulation in the walls, they will be worse off? I can take you to the thermometer and show you the reading tomorrow morning. I am not telling porkies; I am telling the honest truth. This is the situation: the house is worse because of those batts in the ceiling.