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

I rise to take note of the report on the administration and effectiveness of the Green Loans Program. As chair of the committee I want to recognise the work put into that report by the secretariat, in particular Stephen Palethorpe and Nina Boughey. I also want to take this opportunity to recognise the contribution to the inquiry made by some of the many Australians whose lives have been affected by the Green Loans Program, and in most cases affected in a negative way. In particular I want to recognise the contribution of a number of assessors or would-be assessors who were attracted to the industry by the government’s implementation of this program and who came before the inquiry to tell their stories.

Unfortunately, the Green Loans Program is the latest in what is becoming a line of bungled government programs. It follows on the heels of the Home Insulation Program and the Building the Education Revolution program, which sadly is still ongoing. Like the Home Insulation Program, the Green Loans Program has left a wreckage in its wake. For example there is a wreckage of people who trained to be Green Loans assessors and bought equipment to do so. Some of them found themselves with a whole lot of training and no job to do. Others found themselves with a whole lot of training with jobs they did, but for which they could not get payment from the government.

The report found, amongst other things, that the Green Loans Program suffered from poor preparation and poor process in its implementation. It suffered from a government enforcing its attempts to get assessors into people’s homes and to get money out of the door. In short it suffered as a government imposed program of haste forced upon a department that was ill equipped and ill resourced to cope with the task of the scale and complexity put before it. Does that sound familiar? Yes, it sounds similar to, for example, the bungled and now scrapped Home Insulation Program.

The government senators in their dissenting report suggested that the Green Loans Program is in the process of being refashioned into the Green Start program. Government senators really should realise that refashioning the program will only refashion the problems—refashioning Green Loans into Green Start will only refashion the problems.

The majority report of the committee recommends a range of things. It recommends that the Commonwealth Ombudsman, by an own motion, instigate a review of the department that carried out the implementation of this program, its people, its systems and its processes, because something was very crook in Tallarook. The report also recommends that the Green Loans program not proceed, because there is no evidence that the government has learnt the errors of its ways. Firstly, there is no evidence that the government has learnt to assess these ‘sound good’ programs to ensure that they will ‘do good’ in the way the government wants to implement them. Secondly, the government must task a job to a department that is equipped to deliver. Thirdly, the government must not impose upon a department tasks which the department is incapable—through no fault of its own—of delivering upon. Fourthly, the government must set up a monitoring and evaluation process that checks that requirements are met and that the program achieves its aims. The government has not learnt the error of its ways, so the report recommends that the Green Start program not proceed.

The report also contains a range of recommendations for the government to try to make some good to individuals who were damaged by the program—not that making some good will get those individuals ahead of the game. At best, it might help them to return to a level playing field or to where they were before they made the—for many of them—unfortunate decision to attempt to do the government’s bidding by being spear carriers to implement the Green Loans program.

The final recommendation in the report is the one that suggests that this government in particular, before it implements any environmental program, conduct an evaluation of that program to ensure that it will deliver a net environmental benefit and/or come at a cost that represents value for money for taxpayers. Just because these environmental things sound good does not mean that they will do good. The government needs to prove that it has done the preparation and that it has in place the processes to ensure that its ‘sound good’ and ‘feel good’ policies will actually do some good. The government owes that to the Australian people. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.