Page 672 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 24 February 2010
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was extraordinarily expensive and, in times of fiscal constraint, we were not prepared to make a commitment to that amount of money. So we decided that we would target that program at households that were in need. We targeted low income households and we targeted Housing properties. We put together the money we could, with the aim or the expectation that at some time when finances got better we may expand this program.
But my office and I did a lot of work on this. The very first thing we were told when we went to talk to the insulation installers about it was: “If you introduce a mass rollout like this, you have to be very careful because, first of all, there is not the workforce there to do it. There is not the quality stock of insulation to do it. And you would have to do it in a very careful and considered way so as not to affect the market and the industry in a way that would bring in unreliable contractors.” That is what reliable, reputable contractors in this town and other advisers told us.
What we actually proposed was very simple. Actually, some of my colleagues and some of my advisers criticised me for being a bit too in command and control about this because what we decided to do was to directly contract reputable people to go to a particular suburb and address the issues in that suburb and then move to the next suburb. The government would have some control, and some quality control about this, because it was innovative, it was out there and there were very high risks. And everything that my office and I and my advisers were told that could go wrong has gone wrong with the commonwealth program. Everything that we were told to anticipate—and, in anticipating it, we actually took steps to avoid it—has gone wrong.
Little old opposition spokesman on environment in the smallest parliament in the country could work this out after half a dozen conversations with people with a few brains and few experiences. But Peter Garrett and the Rudd government, who received—and it is quite clear—similar but more urgent information and advice on this matter either did not hear or ignored what they were told because the political imperative was there; they wanted to roll it out at any cost.
It is a strange, schizophrenic approach that you see with the Rudd government. They spend all their time—and you have seen Mr Rudd out there criticising public servants for not working hard enough and “don’t you complain about the pace of the work because it will just get worse and worse”—doing this and what you actually hear coming back to you from public servants is this frenzy of activity: “Quick, get a briefing to the minister,” and the minister sits on it for six months. We have to have ridiculous time lines with briefings to the minister, information to the minister, and then the minister does nothing about it. This is across portfolios. Every portfolio you want to talk about, you have this strange, schizophrenic paralysis followed by bursts of activity.
Unfortunately for the people of Australia, unfortunately for the implementation of good policy, we actually have had a burst of activity from Minister Garrett and his department and it has been a complete and unmitigated disaster—such a complete and unmitigated disaster that you have seen the diversity of groups represented in the Senate as recently as yesterday censuring the entire government, on the motion of Senator Brown, not just for their monumental failures in relation to the home
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