Annette Hurley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Certainly, as Senator Ryan said in this debate to take note of answers, the Home Insulation Program was introduced in response to a financial crisis—a financial crisis that threatened to engulf this country. I notice that some people are now referring to it as a ‘North Atlantic problem’. That is just nonsense; that is just rewriting history. I think a number of those manufacturing industries in Asia and South-East Asia that have seen their consumer manufacturing industries decimated would take issue with that.

This government acted quickly and swiftly to put in place stimulus measures to ensure that Australia would not be badly affected by the crisis. Those stimulus measures were put in place not only to bring confidence and stability to our economy but also to save employment, because the evidence is that employment suffers badly post recession and that it takes some time for the employment rate to pick up. This installation program was one of those stimulus measures that was designed to assist in that, and that is why the coalition opposed it—not because they saw any particular problem with this program but because they opposed every single measure in the stimulus package. The coalition’s view was that they would do nothing in response to the global financial crisis. That was the basis of their opposition. It had nothing to do with the inherent good or otherwise of the package.

The economy, as has been widely recognised, is now in terrific shape. That has been stated by Treasury, by the Reserve Bank of Australia and by a number of commentators. It is in terrific shape with our stimulus measures working properly, our debt well under control and our growth now looking on track. So we have had excellent results from our stimulus package. The government designed the stimulus package measures with the intention that they would not just be job creation measures but would also have longer-term benefits. For example, in the Building the Education Revolution program, which in fact the coalition opposed more fiercely than they did the installation program, they fiercely opposed the building of school halls because the program was a stimulus measure, not because of any other aspect of it. But the government wanted to do something that would have long-lasting benefits for the community, unlike some of the programs that the previous government had under the regional rorts program, which produced no benefit whatsoever for the community and which chewed up millions of dollars for no discernible gain to many of those communities.

The government was determined to avoid that kind of behaviour and did put in place programs that it expected would have long-lasting benefits. The government has been very upfront about this. There were problems with the insulation program which the government right up to the Prime Minister has accepted full responsibility for and has apologised for, and it has now put in place measures to remedy those problems. And now we have the coalition, rather than saying that it is a good thing that we have the programs in place and the priorities in place that will ensure the safety of the program and that those employed in the industry will have some safeguards for their ongoing employment, carping at and criticising this as well. But the government is determined to put in place measures that will ensure that households can be confident that any insulation put in is safe; it has a detailed program in place for that. The government also has a detailed employment program in place which fortunately has a good chance of succeeding because our unemployment is still in a very good position thanks to the stimulus measures and the actions that this government took at the start of the global financial crisis. I commend the government for that.