Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Climate Change, Energy Efficiency and Water (Senator Wong) to questions without notice asked by Senators Birmingham and Troeth today relating to the home insulation program.

The shameful debacle that is the Rudd Labor government’s Home Insulation Program continues to be a long and sorry saga. Questions have been continuously asked over the last few weeks both here and in the other place of the Prime Minister, Minister Garrett, Minister Arbib, Minister Combet and Minister Wong. None of them have been able to give the Australian people any confidence that the government has the slightest idea of either what it was doing when it was implementing the Home Insulation Program or what it will do now to clean up the mess that was the Home Insulation Program. They have no idea.

There are a few sad facts that we do know about this program. We know that, tragically, four lives have been lost. We know that more than 100 homes fitted with insulation under this program have suffered house fires. We know that 1.1 million homes have been fitted with insulation and that thousands and thousands of them are at risk. We know that the government has already spent $1.5 billion on this program—that is $1.5 billion of taxpayers’ money on a program to create this disaster, this mess, this debacle. We know that there are now thousands of workers who are unemployed—workers who were involved in insulation manufacturing and insulation installation. These workers are unemployed, out of a job and languishing because the government could not get this program right in the first place and had to call an abrupt halt to it. That has pushed workers out of a job and hundreds of businesses out of work. Hundreds of employers are being pushed out of the industry. Installers, manufacturers and importers of insulation are all feeling the pain of this mismanagement.

We know plenty about the results of the government’s mismanagement. We know plenty about the disaster that is the government’s mismanagement of the Home Insulation Program, but we know very little about how the government is going to fix it up. We have explored the issues around how they got into this mess. We know there were lots of warnings. We know there was a lot of evidence. We know the government failed to heed those warnings. It failed to heed that evidence, it failed to act appropriately and it failed to put in place the right standards and safeguards to avert disaster. As Senator Abetz said: they all failed from the Prime Minister right through to Minister Arbib. The kitchen cabinet group failed. And now we have Ministers Combet and Wong left to desperately try to clean up this mess, but we know that they have no idea how they are going to do it.

Last week, Minister Combet delivered a 23-page ministerial statement that is heavy on platitudes but light on detail. What we do not know from this ministerial statement far outweighs what we do know. The government claims it has a clean-up plan, a fix-up plan, in place. But we do not know when that plan will start or when it will finish. We do not know when the first lot of foil insulation installed in a home will be removed. We do not know when the last home with foil insulation will have its foil removed. We do not know where the foil will go after it has been removed. We do not know whether it will go to landfill, whether it will be recycled or what the government will do with it. We do not know when the first inspection of the remaining 1.05 million homes fitted with other types of insulation will take place or when the last inspection of the 1.05 million homes with other types of insulation will take place. We do not know how much this will cost overall. We do not know where the money will come from. And wherever the money comes from, we do not know what impact that will have on the planned new home insulation program. We do not know how many fewer rebates will be offered as a result of that. We do not know how many fewer households will end up with insulation as a result of that.

We do not know whether the homes that have their foil insulation removed will have another type of insulation installed. While we know that some in the insurance industry have given an assurance that nobody has been denied insurance, we do not have a commitment from the government that all home owners will definitely be protected should, indeed, they face a house fire. We do not know this. And how do we know that we do not know it? Because we have heard it from Minister Wong and Minister Combet themselves. We have asked them countless times in this place about each of these issues. We have asked them very direct, very specific questions and on each and every occasion the quickest answer the minister gave was, ‘Don’t know.’ That is not good enough. This chamber and Australia deserve better.