Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment Participation, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

The Rudd Labor government’s home insulation fiasco has had three distinct phases. We had the bragging phase, we had the ducking-for-cover and passing-the-buck phase and now we have the ‘this is all behind us, let’s move forward and look at the future’ phase.

During the bragging phase Senator Arbib was out there claiming responsibility for everything and anything to do with the stimulus package—he was Mr Stimulus himself. He was in fluorescent jackets and hard hats at installation companies bragging about the additional jobs created by the Home Insulation Program, which was clearly not thought through properly. The Prime Minister told us on radio that Minister Arbib was directly responsible for the delivery of this Home Insulation Program as part of the broader stimulus. Senator Arbib, on Lateline, told the world that the most important part of his job was the stimulus package. In the bragging phase Minister Arbib was Minister Stimulus.

But today we saw that he had well and truly moved through the ducking-for-cover and passing-the-buck phase. The former minister for this area Minister Garrett is now the fall guy for this government. We had Minister Arbib in the Senate telling us that he was present at some meetings, as if he was the porter who opened the door and just happened to be there accidentally. This is the minister who had weekly meetings with the department on the Home Insulation Program, according to the audit plan. It was Minister Arbib who came into this chamber and told us about regular meetings he attended. It is Minister Arbib who is now trying to pretend that he just happened to be in the same room as some of these other people who were talking about the Home Insulation Program.

During the bragging phase—I am reading from a press release that Senator Arbib put out during the bragging phase—he talked about how the government had developed a short training course to encourage more people to start working on the Home Insulation Program. It was a short training program—and that, exactly, was part of the problem. He is the minister who took responsibility for it during the bragging phase and is ducking for cover now, quite happy to pass the buck to the hapless Minister Garrett.

This minister was at the heart of it. He was at the heart of the stuff-up. He did not make it his business to find out about the risks that were involved, yet there is no problem for him; it is Mr Garrett who has to take the whole fall for it. We knew that Senator Arbib was at the heart of it, but if we did not know we could read about it in the Australian, which quoted an email that was sent to a journalist by a departmental whistleblower. I will quote it for the Hansard:

Explicit verbal instructions were given to the Department of Environment to deal directly with Mark Arbib rather than our own minister.

And further:

This led to a breakdown in the ordinary briefing process and caused confusion as to who we were actually to report-advise.

The quote continues:

Furthermore, we were told to provide all media opportunities to Mark Arbib first and only when rejected by his office would they be given to [Peter] Garrett. And then, Garrett’s office told us to cut Arbib out; it led to the competitive photo opportunity between the two and cutting Garrett out from key economic stimulus plan meeting.

No wonder that people out there are being put at risk. No wonder the government does not have time to properly assess the risks involved or put proper risk management strategies in place if this sort of carry-on goes on behind the scenes and if it is all about, ‘How can I look as good as I can, personally?’ rather than focusing on proper and sound implementation of the program.

The question was put to the minister today and he was using weasel words to suggest that this was not actually true—that we were being misled by an article in the paper. If that is the case, why did he not say so much more clearly than he has? What Minister Arbib said today was, ‘I am not aware of a direction like this and I don’t believe such a direction has been given.’ Those are, absolutely, weasel words. What we have here is a minister who was quite keen to brag and to put himself in the sunlight and the reflected glory of all this money that was dished out as part of Labor’s various spending sprees. He was quite happy to be up there with the hard hats and the fluorescent jackets but he is not here when it comes to taking responsibility for some of the failures. He is not here to take responsibility. The compensation package that was announced last week is a complete joke. It is just reshuffling some existing money. (Time expired)