Page 682 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 24 February 2010
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Obviously, the territory is continuing to promote the use of our HEAT program. That has already been extended in terms of its promotion through the new ACTSmart program that I have talked about in this place on a number of occasions. The government will not be supporting this motion today, nor will we be supporting the amendments proposed by Mr Rattenbury.
The fact is that ACT regulatory authorities did their job. They did their job appropriately and they did their job in the way that they would do so in relation to any other potential risk occurring in the household environment. I have every confidence that they did it well and I do not believe that this misguided and lazy motion from the Liberal Party has any merit.
MR COE (Ginninderra) (8.33): What we have just seen from Mr Corbell is really adding more fuel to the fire of incompetence. It is absolutely amazing, I think, that here you have a minister that is obviously in the middle of some pretty serious problems, yet he does not have the courage to be able to say: “Yes, there are some problems. Yes, we might have stuffed up and we are looking into it.” Instead, there is complete denial.
Mr Seselja’s motion is a motion that seeks to get to the bottom of what is a shocking example of Labor Party incompetence and cover-up. There is no doubt that the Rudd Labor government has completely and catastrophically failed to properly implement the home insulation program.
This is how the Leader of the Opposition described Mr Garrett:
We have seen him squirming, twisting and turning and doing anything to try to save his political hide rather than addressing the serious problems that now absolutely manifest in the programs that he has been administering.
And administering badly, I add. It is pretty interesting, but I think those exact words could probably be used to describe the ACT Attorney-General as well.
The federal minister for the environment, Peter Garrett, has overseen a program where 160,000 insulations did not comply with product standards, 80,000 insulations did not comply with safety standards, 1,000 houses were electrified, 93 houses caught fire and there were four deaths. It is an absolute tragedy. There were 21 warnings about the program that Minister Garrett failed to take note of.
Finally last week the federal minister cancelled the program along with other poorly performing programs that he was not administering properly. It is too late, of course, for all those people who are now living in unsafe houses or perhaps those who have lost loved ones.
One thing that I think is interesting about the way that Simon Corbell has approached this whole issue was shown in an answer that he gave on 11 February. In answer to a question in question time a couple of Thursdays back, he thought he would have a bit of a fun time trying to have a go at the opposition. When asked when the
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