Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to take note of answers given by Senator Wong, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, to questions from opposition senators today. I am really pleased that Senator Wong is in the chamber to hear this, because, having had conversations with contractors myself, some of whom I have known for 20 or 30 years—because I too come from the construction industry—I can put some perspective on your comments in a moment, Senator Lundy. This is really about the practical impact of what is occurring right now out there in the industry. There has been a lot of discussion about the impacts on and the safety of homes, and they are all very legitimate issues, but some significant issues are occurring within the insulation contractor sector right now that, quite frankly, make for a very chilling tale.

I said in my contribution to the debate on the stimulus that insulation contractors needed to start looking then at what they might do at the end of the program. Little did I realise where we might find ourselves as we got through this program itself. In Tasmania, prior to this program starting, there were six registered insulation contractors and some plasterers who installed insulation in conjunction with their plasterwork. There are now 115—that was the number at the time of the cessation of the program. Senator Lundy talks about how you maintain occupational health and safety values in the construction industry. When you have that level of increase of inexperienced people coming into the industry you are going to get problems with occupational health and safety—things that, by virtue of the fact that they are not experienced and have no understanding of the industry, they will not know. They will fall through ceilings and they will hit electrical cables, as, sadly, has happened. That is what will happen as a result of that sort of growth in the number of contractors in the industry, and that is what this program has promoted: growth from six registered installers in Tasmania at the commencement of the program to 115 by the time the program was closed.

I spoke to some companies last week and I am very concerned about Senator Wong’s answer that 106,000 claims have come in since the program was completed and may take some time to be verified. I spoke to one contractor who is owed $160,000. If it takes a long time for him to get that money, he is in real trouble. He has had four containers of insulation lobbed on him that were dispatched after the scheme was closed. He is in a situation where he has a huge debt owed by the Commonwealth, he has the insulation company on his back for his account and he has this huge amount of insulation that he cannot do anything with. If the insulation company so desire, they can cut him off and close off his credit—where does he go from there?

He was asked by the member for Braddon whether he had any other work to do. Could he mow lawns? He has been an insulation contractor for 25 years. That is what his business is. That is what he has been doing. He sacked most of his employees and sold his vehicles. Where is his business? I raised this during the debate on the stimulus package. The one thing the installation company told me when I spoke to them last week—I note that Prime Minister Rudd asked his backbenchers to go out to talk to contractors and some of them have, which I found as I went around—was, ‘Pay us the money you owe us.’ I sincerely hope the government talks to the major insulation suppliers and says, ‘Work with your clients on payment of accounts,’ because there is huge capacity for companies to go to the wall.

In my local paper on the north-west coast of Tasmania, Craig Polden today has said that his business is finished. He was taken off the register without his knowledge during the chaos of the scheme and had to seek assistance from the local member, who helped to get him back on the register. That created a huge hole in his business and now it is all over; his business has gone. This is complete chaos. The government says it is trying to sort these things out but I do not think it really understands the chaos it has created in the way it has terminated this scheme.

Question agreed to.