Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to 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 today, relating to the Home Insulation Program.

If it were not for the tragic elements of the Home Insulation Program, it would be fit for a skit by Monty Python. Here we have a government that announced a program to spend billions on pink batts and foil in people’s ceilings. It was warned about the program from day one from this side of the chamber. It was warned by experts, by businesses in the field and by the people who did this work at the time. It was warned that the dramatic expansion of the program by simply showering an industry sector with money would lead to shonks, would lead to homes being ill-fitted and would be dangerous.

For several weeks the government has gone to extraordinary lengths to deny that it was warned about the dangers of this program. People lost their lives and houses were burned down, and we do not know what will happen in the coming weeks and months, but at no point has the Prime Minister or any of his ministers stood up and apologised to those families for the harm that this policy has caused. This government sought to expand an industry by a factor of more than 20 in a matter of weeks. I was on the Senate committee that inquired into the stimulus package, and this issue was covered—the issue that you cannot pump $2 billion into a sector in a matter of weeks hoping that a dramatic uptake of inexperienced and unskilled labour will perform this task safety and efficiently.

This government has achieved something that I do not know of any other government in the history of this country having achieved—the creation and destruction of an industry in an 18-month period. Hundreds of businesses have been put out of business. Many of them were legitimate businesses which saw the government pouring money into home installation and decided to tap into it, but at the same time there were a number of shonks. We do not know how many there were, and we may never find out. The government is now promising to try to chase them up, but if that attempt turns out to be anything like the government’s home insulation scheme we know we will never find out.

This government cancelled the scheme after these tragedies occurred, despite having had warnings beforehand, and threw hundreds of people out of work. Not only that but the shonks in this industry have now unnecessarily caused grave concern to thousands of Australian families as a result of this government’s flawed policy. I ask the government: if you had had foil installed in your roof in the last 12 months, how would you feel right now? The government is not even promising to investigate every single home that has had foil installation installed. The problems may not be limited to foil; we do not know yet because there has been absolutely no oversight of this program.

Today, I asked Senator Wong: if these homes get checked what is going to happen to the enormous amount of foil that there will be after this insulation is removed? The minister could not say. Is it going to landfill? There is another cost there. We do not know when these homes are going to be checked, we do not know the cost and we do not know the implications. What we do know is that hundreds of millions of dollars—billions of dollars, potentially—have been wasted on a policy which this government is now trying to run away from in spite of the fact, and the opposition will not let the government forget this, that it was warned about this from day one.

The government justified this policy on the basis of both stimulus and environmental sustainability. Are we going to hear that the hundred million-odd dollars that it is going to take to fix this bungled policy is somehow part of another stimulus package? Nothing from this government would surprise me. Earlier today, the Treasurer, Mr Swan, outlined how fixing the bungled policy that started with the waste of money will lead to budget cuts in other programs. So are we to expect another private health insurance rebate reduction bill based on the ‘saving-a-home-from-Labor’s-insulation-scheme program’? Is that what we are to expect in this place?

Finally, I comment that there was an interesting article in today’s Australian, with experts in the field punching a hole in this government’s claims about how this program was meant to save energy and reduce the carbon footprint of homes. This policy is undoubtedly the worst that this country has seen. It is probably up there with various things undertaken by Gough Whitlam and Jim Cairns.

Annette Hurley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is an extraordinary situation here. I rise to take note of answers given by Minister Wong. As my very good colleague Senator Ryan referred to in his opening remarks, if it was not so very serious, it would be like a Monty Python skit. And it absolutely is. The government is like the Black Knight, acting with an air of confidence when everyone can see what a pathetic condition the government is in. This is just the most extraordinary situation that the government has got itself in: 100 house fires linked to the scheme and the government is going to have to pay for 50,000 homes with foil insulation to have it removed or have a safety switch installed. I note the minister said before that the government would be picking up the tab. It is taxpayers’ money. It is not the government’s money; it is the Australian people who are going to have to pick up the tab of what looks to be millions and millions of dollars for this bungled program.

It is very interesting that the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, has said on ABC’s AM that the government does not know what the full cost will be and adjustments may be needed in the budget. He said, ‘Well, it will certainly be quite expensive, there’s no doubt about that.’ Well done, Einstein. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out the cost to the Australian people from this bungle from the government. This government is completely inept. Twenty-one warnings this government got about the problems associated with this program. The Prime Minister confirmed on 21 January that they had indeed received 21 warnings. What sort of a government ignores 21 warnings for something like this, for a program for the Australian people? It is absolutely irresponsible of the government to act in that way when we are looking at a program like this that is being rolled out to millions of houses across the country. It is sort of like an episode of Lost in Space: ‘Warning, Will Robinson. Warning, Will Robinson.’ And they just did not listen.

It is simply an example of the systematic failure that we are seeing from this government to be able to deliver properly any kind of delivery for the people across this country. The spin over substance is unbelievable. You can almost see the Prime Minister when they were talking about this saying: ‘We have to get this rushed out. We have to get everything out there into the community straightaway. Don’t worry about the 21 warnings, we’ve got to get this out into these homes because we’re going to look really good when we do that.’ Well, they do not look very good now, because the Australian people have been watching this so closely, and what they are doing now is asking the question: how can the Rudd Labor government have got this so very wrong? As my good colleague Senator Ryan said, they are not even going to inspect all the homes. We have families in their homes now looking up at their ceilings that have had this insulation put in wondering if they are safe. The absolute primary responsibility of this government is to ensure that Australians are safe. To have rolled out a program like this, ignoring the warnings, is absolutely appalling.

What is very interesting to note is when all the heat was on and we saw, especially in the House of Representatives, questions being fired at the minister and fired at the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister ended up under a lot of pressure over this, and he still is. He was under a lot of pressure, and what did he do? ‘Oh, I’ll just whip out my new announcement for our health policy, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll pull that out of the back pocket and try and get the people of Australia to focus on something else.’ A bit of a weapon of mass distraction. But the people have not bought that distraction. They know how inept this government has been in this. What is occurring to them is that, if the government can get it so wrong on this program, if the government can be so inept in their delivery of this program, why on earth should they trust that they will be able to do anything else with any level of confidence at all? If they are so inept that they can end up with this result from this program affecting thousands of people right across the country, then how on earth, those people in Australia are saying, can we trust this government to get it right on anything else. They obviously simply cannot get it right. It is all spin, no substance; all talk, no action, and the Australian people are waking up to it.

Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The first point I need to make is that for the opposition senators to stand up and say the warnings were ignored is patently untrue. Systematically the minister, as problems came to light and were reported to him, made changes to the Home Insulation Program as those problems were brought to light. That has been demonstrated now in the forum of Senate estimates committees and the forum of inquiries repeatedly in the parliament by Minister Garrett and Minister Wong. So to stand up and say that is genuinely misleading on the facts as they have now been established.

I am not saying that the opposition cannot come in here and purport all sorts of things, but the difference between the government and the opposition is that, for us, actions speak louder than words. In stark contrast to the conduct of the former government, we have acted quickly, whenever information has been made available, to resolve the problem. The culture of the Labor government is to do exactly that. When we know of a problem, we move to fix it. There is no skulking or hiding or thwarting inquiry. It is about putting it out there and being upfront about fixing the problem, and that is what you have seen from Prime Minister Rudd right through the front bench and right through to committee members of the Labor government in resolving this problem.

I am really proud of the way the government is dealing with this. I come from the building industry. I am extremely sensitive to the challenges and difficulties in trying to uphold occupational health and safety laws in the building and construction industry, and I think there is no tougher problem to solve than making sure that those laws are enforced. We know, as Minister Combet, the Minister Assisting the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, has made very clear, that at least a proportion of the problems here occurred because the right thing had not been done by several of the businesses engaged with the government program. I think it is critical to make that point. I remember many, many years of campaigning from the other side of the chamber in opposition about the impact on occupational health and safety laws of the former government’s Work Choices, so I find it quite galling that suddenly the opposition are purer than the whitest snow in arguing for the protection and safety of households and workers. I wish they had felt so strongly about these issues when it mattered—when the laws were being changed, under the Howard government, to undermine the capacity of unions and workers to represent their members on occupational health and safety issues.

As I said, actions speak louder than words; and a series of actions that the Labor government has now put in place to resolve these problems do speak for themselves. Our first priority is, appropriately, safety. Given the safety advice received by the government, we have agreed that all houses that have had foil insulation installed under the Home Insulation Program will be inspected and given the chance to have that foil removed or to have a safety switch installed. As I am sure has been said many a time, there will be more statements about how this will proceed, but the bottom line is that if people want an inspection, they will be able to ring and organise that. If they have foil insulation, they can organise an inspection right now by contacting a licensed electrician.

So, I challenge Senator Nash very specifically on this point of fact: she said that people would not be able to get inspections. That is not true. If they are concerned, there is a course of action they can take to allay their fears. I take objection to the almost gleeful fearmongering that is occurring across the chamber. I have said before that I find it quite galling. Those opposite do not even have the wherewithal or the political gumption to acknowledge that action has been taken. By all means hold the government to account on how that action proceeds, but do not come into this chamber and mislead and fearmonger about us not being committed to resolving these problems and putting householder safety up front as the priority.

I will say a couple more words about fraud. As a government, we are disgusted at the reports of alleged fraud under the program. I know this issue was touched on by Senator Ryan in his question, and I will conclude by quoting Minister Combet in this regard:

For the hardships caused, for the loss of value of legitimate businesses, for the extent of safety and fire hazards and for the loss of consumer confidence, the failure of duties of care and regulatory compliance, the government attributes a burden of responsibility to the minority of companies involved in the program that cut corners to achieve a quick buck.

(Time expired)

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to 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.