Declaring that he “got it” about the government suspending the insulation program that directly affected their jobs, business and livelihoods, he also said the reason he was there was to work out a transition from the suspension of the old scheme to the start of the new one to make sure they were properly looked after.
After meeting the concerned people outside parliament, Rudd went into question time and said: “One of the other key concerns raised with me by the owners of the companies whom I met earlier today in front of Parliament House was the continuation of the Renewable Energy Bonus Scheme in the future.” Then he told parliament and some workers in the public gallery: “The government has indicated that we would have it up and running by June 1, in the case of certain firms it may be possible to do so earlier.”
Saying how important it was to “hear from them first-hand their experiences”, Rudd undertook, in shirt sleeves and in a suit, to restart the home insulation scheme by June 1. The initial $2.45bn scheme was being suspended, with $1bn still to be spent on cleaning up the mess and the resumption of the subsidy scheme, with a lower subsidy of $1000, from June 1.
Pretty straightforward, a clear-cut image of providing help and an expectation of a longer-term revival of a government subsidy plan to boost an industry brought to its knees. An expectation that also had the effect of killing off roofing insulation business in the four months to June as people waited for a subsidy to resurface.
Yesterday the image became an empty stunt and the expectations completely unfulfilled.
Just like its parent program, the envisaged new scheme to help create jobs was dumped. Instead of $1bn being spent on insulating about 800,000 more houses the money, or at least most of it, will be spent fixing the mistakes involved in spending the previous $1.5bn.
In the words of former departmental head and diplomat Allan Hawke, who was assigned the task of examining the formation of the original plan: “Early indications of the compliance work are that significantly more houses may require inspection and potential rectification. These demands may leave little available funding for the Renewable Energy Bonus Scheme”.
Hawke’s report is scathing of the way the original scheme was established and sheets home the blame, while trying not to be too brutal, to the Department of Environment and to the Office of the Co-ordinator-General, based in Rudd’s own department.
Hawke suggests that while Peter Garrett and his department clearly didn’t do enough, there were mechanisms in place that kept Mark Arbib, as Minister assisting the Prime Minister, and the Co-ordinator General aware of continuing risks, and they were too reactive.
While citing the positive side of having 1.1 million homes insulated under the scheme, Hawke queried the real benefits of job creation, cutting power costs and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and left little room for a renewed scheme.
From the moment Hawke’s report was delivered the government had no choice but to dump the prospective scheme.
Given the original roofing insulation scheme had already been abandoned, Garrett’s ministerial duties had been stripped, 240,000 houses had unsafe or faulty insulation, 1000 had been electrified, and four deaths and 120 fires had been linked to the insulation, it may seem like a logical assumption to cancel this one as well.
It would seem the politics of this debacle could hardly get worse or damage the government’s credibility any further. But the issue now is back to whether Rudd’s promises will be kept, how efficiently he can govern and how many expectations he can disappoint without suffering terminal political damage.
Since the end of last year the government has failed to deliver on its promise of an emissions trading scheme, which was the answer to the greatest moral challenge of our time.
The roofing insulation scheme, designed to create jobs, cut power bills to low-income earners and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, has ended ignominiously with the final achievements in doubt and at least $1bn wasted.
This was a successful program run by a first-class minister, according to Rudd.
The $16.2bn school buildings program, the largest single component of the $42bn economic stimulus package, is now the subject of a taskforce inquiry to chase down waste and a lack of value for money for taxpayers.
The social housing program for the homeless lost $2bn to the school building program because schools’ demand outran its initial budget. The Prime Minister has set a target of halving homelessness in Australia by 2020.
After more than 100 illegal boat arrivals filled the Christmas Island detention centre to overflowing the government suspended refugee applications from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan and has announced the reopening of the Curtin detention centre hellhole. Labor had promised to do away with the inhumane approach of the Howard government to asylum-seekers.
Yesterday, as poor old Greg Combet batted away nasty questions on a junior minister’s pay, another junior minister, Kate Ellis, dumped Rudd’s pre-election promise to do away with the “double drop-off” for parents at child care by killing off plans to build 222 childcare centres, which have been Labor policy since 2006.
All of this is against a background of a health and hospital reform package that becomes increasingly complex and less like the “federally funded, locally run” system Rudd has championed as part of his plans to co-opt one-third of the states’ GST funds.
And if you think the past couple of weeks has been hair-raising, just watch the next two in the lead-up to the May 11 budget.
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