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

Well you may laugh, colleagues—Rudd Labor colleagues, if I may. You would not be laughing, I might suggest, were you a homeowner in the tropics with the wrong sort of insulation fitted to the wrong sort of house in the wrong sort of climate. And we do not know how many of those there are because Rudd Labor says that, of the million or so houses fitted with insulation under its Home Insulation Program, it is only going to inspect about a quarter, if we are lucky. We do not know when it is going to start inspecting them. We do not know who is going to inspect them and how well trained they are going to be. We do not know how long the inspections are going to take. We do not know who is going to pay for it. We do not know what is going to happen once those houses are inspected.

To go back to the mismanagement in the first place, part of the trouble is that many of our Australian mums and dads do not know if they have got insulation in their homes. They might think they have but, if they have not had a look, they might find they have not got any at all. And many of them do not know that they are supposed to have insulation in their houses when, in fact, they have not: they are supposed to have insulation in their houses because the department administering the scheme has already paid some shonk for, supposedly, installing insulation in those houses. And, by the way, there are many reputable players in the industry who actually have installed insulation and subsequently sent a bill to the department or sought the rebate in accordance with the scheme only to find they cannot be rebated because someone else has already been rebated—in other words, the shonk has got there first. How is a reputable business supposed to have known that? And how is Minister Combet going to mop up the mess? How is he going to ensure that those reputable operators who are owed money are paid their money when the shonks have already taken off with that money and vanished? And from where will the money come? What about the often well-intended workers attracted to the industry at the behest of the government, many of whom have reportedly not been paid—how are they going to have their wages paid by companies that no longer exist?

Has the government learnt from the failures and the problems that plagued the Home Insulation Program first time around? Is the government learning from the problems that Minister Combet—well-intended as he may be—is having in mopping up the mess? No. The first program was some five months in gestation, from February to July. What is happening with this program? Minister Garrett suspended the old one in February 2010 and Rudd Labor announced the new one in February 2010 to be implemented some five months later. So, a year on: same time frame, same haste. A year on: same bureaucratic shortcomings—on the say-so of the head of the rebadged department tasked with implementing the new program. Dr Martin Parkinson says that his program, his policy—I’ll get it right. It would be good if Rudd Labor would get it right. Dr Parkinson says that his department is experienced in policy, not in programs. In short, they are policy wonks, not program wonks. Once again we have a department, through no fault of its own, being tasked with a program that is potentially beyond its capacity. So: no lessons from the past, and the problems from the past are set to plague the new program in the future.

What of the goals of the Home Insulation Program? It was supposed to stimulate the economy. It was going to cost the Australian taxpayer some $2.7 billion and it now looks like it will cost that and then some by the time the mess is fixed up and the new program implemented—how is that a net stimulus to the economy? How does a program create jobs when workers were sacked at the stroke of a ministerial pen, when Minister Garrett suspended a supposedly successful program? How does a program achieve its so-called environmental aims when the wrong insulation is put in the wrong places in the wrong climates, meaning that householders have little option other than to use air conditioning when the insulation should have done the job and to use heating when the insulation should have done the job? How is it saving ‘carbon miles’ when insulation put in has to be taken out? How is it saving carbon miles when the insulation that was put in has to be taken out and disposed of somewhere, or is now not able to be put in because it is dangerous and dodgy and has to be disposed of somewhere—and, by the way, is not biodegradable? How is that a net environmental benefit? It simply is not.

Speaking of mateship, where was mateship and friendship—and the benefits thereof, supposedly—in the warnings that were apparently given from the South Australian Coordinator-General, Rod Hook, to his federal counterpart, the Commonwealth Coordinator-General, Mike Mrdak, about the dangers and the safety risks inherent in the first round of the Home Insulation Program? Mr Hook says he warned Mr Mrdak. Mr Mrdak, in evidence to the Senate committee, effectively says, ‘Well, maybe you did, maybe you didn’t, but if you did I didn’t really hear it and I certainly didn’t pass it on.’ Did South Australian minister Gail Gago use Mike Rann’s mateship with Prime Minister Rudd to make sure the message got through? No. Yes, sure, the South Australian electorate will get less from a Liberal government than a Rann Labor government! Hardly. They could hardly stand to get any less than they have got from Rann Labor.

The National Broadband Network is mismanagement supreme: $43 billion of taxpayers’ money in a gamble that has been described by industry leaders such as John Linton of Exetel as a ‘surprise’. But does anyone want a $43 billion surprise? A $43 billion surprise—and these are my words, not his—is hardly a well-managed program.