Page 671 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 24 February 2010
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documents together so that we can see what did the ACT government departments know, what did the ministers know, what kinds of warnings were given, what was the internal discussion, what were the warnings given to the federal government, what consideration was given to broader warnings for the community. That is what we are seeking.
We are also seeking a public information program on behalf of the ACT government. They might turn around and say the federal government is doing certain things. I would say a couple of things on that. We are very happy for them to work with the federal government—and the federal government has a moral responsibility to be funding these issues—but there will be a role, a very important role, for territory authorities, on behalf of their constituents, on behalf of the community in Canberra, to be making them aware of what is available, to be making them aware, if they need an inspection, of how they go about getting that. That is something that we believe to be reasonable.
The second point I would make on that is: given how monumentally Peter Garrett and his department and the federal government have stuffed this up, I would not have a lot of confidence in their ability to actually deal with the aftermath, to deal with the checks and other things. We would want to see some oversight of that at a local level. Clearly, the communication at some point between state and territory and federal governments was not good enough on this. There were warnings back and forth but no-one, in the end, said: “Don’t go ahead with this. If you go ahead with this, we will tell the public the dangers of it.” No-one, it seems, did that. Certainly, the warnings here were not strong enough.
I have almost run out of time. These are serious issues. We look forward to the minister responding to them. We look forward to him receiving them in good faith, releasing these documents and giving a full account of everything that he knows on this issue and everything the department knows on this issue and what the government is going to do from here.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (7.55): I would like to congratulate and thank Mr Seselja for bringing forward this important motion. I think he has touched on all of the important issues here. I would like to give some insight into the development of this policy from the Canberra Liberals’ perspective and the disappointment that we feel because what has been good policy has been trashed by the maladministration of the Rudd government. As members would know, before the last election the Canberra Liberals brought forward a policy which was called home insulation for those who need it.
Mr Corbell: Catchy.
MRS DUNNE: Yes, it was. It actually had previous name. It did originally—and I think it is no secret now—have a different name and was a much less-targeted program. We originally had a working title of “house warming”, which I thought was pretty catchy. I congratulate the staff member who came up with that. We actually looked at and costed a program that would be a street-by-street, suburb-by-suburb rollout of insulation in un-insulated Canberra houses. But we actually realised that it
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