Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of answers given in question time today by the Minister for Climate Change, Energy Efficiency and Water, Senator Wong, in respect of the Home Insulation Program. It is clear that we know more about that which we do not know in respect of the government’s Home Insulation Program than that which we do know. What is clear is that the government has not learnt the lessons of the past, nor is it learning lessons from the fast-unravelling present. It has not learnt any lessons for proceeding in the future with the new program, which we hear is going to be rolled out from 1 July this year.

If there were any compelling lessons from the mess that is the present, they came very early on in warnings in the independent risk assessment by Minter Ellison, which centred around the haste with which the government and the department were rolling out the Home Insulation Program. They are the lessons—not to unroll the program with the haste in which the government did and to make sure that those tasked to deliver the program are equipped and resourced to do so.

Exactly the same mistakes are writ large, looming large, to be repeated from July 2010. The Home Insulation Program was announced by Rudd Labor in February last year and implemented in July last year. In February this year, the then Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Mr Garrett, and Prime Minister Rudd announced a new program to be unrolled and implemented in July this year. The Home Insulation Program was in gestation for some five months last year from its announcement last February to its implementation last July. That is exactly the same time frame for the new program—announced in February this year to be rolled out five months later, in July this year. That is five months in the making again, so what has changed? The time frame and the haste are the same. The warnings are being ignored—‘Oh, but we’ve got a new department to deliver the program.’ We have a new department whose CEO—Lord love him—said on the day he was effectively told he would be tasked with delivering it, ‘But, but, but we’re more policy wonks than we are program wonks.’ Mr Parkinson told his own department that. When he was told about it, he thought, ‘Oh, my God, I know little about program delivery, yet we are being tasked with doing this.’ So we do know that the government has learned nothing from the past and nothing from the fast-unravelling present and yet is hell-bent on proceeding, plagued with the same problems, into the future.

This is an interesting contrast with Rudd Labor’s proposed time frame for paid maternity leave. When asked why the government has not proceeded with its scheme, Minister Macklin told ABC NewsRadio:

There’s been a lot of detailed issues that needed to be worked through that’s been done in a very systematic way and a thoughtful way … The Labor Government wants to do this properly. We … want to make sure we get this right.

Look at the contrast between paid parental leave and the government’s Home Insulation Program. The paid parental leave scheme was announced by Rudd Labor in May last year and we are still waiting for it some nine months later. It has been some nine months in gestation, and we are talking about human gestation—mums and dads. Maybe the government is waiting for something more like the elephant’s gestation period, which is 22 months, for its paid parental leave policy to be implemented. We know not, but why is Rudd Labor saying to Australian families that the need for detailed, systematic and thoughtful implementation—the need to do it properly and make sure it is done right—is more important in respect of paid parental leave than it is in respect of insulating the homes of Australian mums and dads? There was plenty of detail, to use Minister Macklin’s words, to which the government did not attend in respect of home insulation, including the difference in laying processes and practices between alfoil, polyester and cellulose. What is the purpose of insulating? Is the purpose to keep the cold out or to keep the cool in? (Time expired)

Question agreed to.