Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Hansard source

It is outrageous, Senator Humphries. That is for the removal of the foil insulation or to install the electrical safety switches in 50,000 homes. Goodness, only 150,000 of the more than 1.1 million homes insulated under the program are set for safety inspections. What about all the other homeowners? How are they going to feel? Are they going to feel safe and secure in their homes? How are their families feeling right now? I do not know. This is despite the department admitting, before our Senate committee—ably chaired by Senator Mary Jo Fisher, who is here in the chamber with me tonight—that there were 240,000 homes with dangerous or potentially dodgy insulation. It is not good enough.

In the last seven days we have had the National Electrical and Communications Association estimating that the cost of fixing this program could be in excess of $400 million. When will this waste end? This is a further example of waste and mismanagement under this program, with no end in sight. When you look back over the program you see that it has been a total waste and a botched approach from the very beginning. And it is all of the government’s own making. They try and hide and shift and twist, but this bungled scheme is all of their own making. It has gone from bad to worse. Up to $200 million was wasted by setting the original rebate too high—$1,600 instead of $1,200. Now we have the $100 million estimated in the reports today that needs to be spent on the audits and fixing. And of course the Prime Minister has recently announced a $41 million rescue package.

I notice that in Minister Wong’s statements today she confirmed that a further 106,000 rebate claims have come in since the program was cancelled. That is a huge number. That is yet to be verified, so they need to confirm that, but if those claims are valid then the government still owes up to $127 million to Australian businesses. That is a lot of money. That is taxpayers’ money. This is another blow-out. The waste and mismanagement is shocking. The pink batts fiasco is fast becoming the biggest and worst example of waste and mismanagement in Australian history, with hundreds of millions of dollars wasted and the budget blow-out now approaching $1 billion. That is an absolute disgrace. It is not a revolution that we should consider; this is a waste revolution—and it is a disgrace. (Time expired)