Labor Waste

Media Release – Senator Simon Birmingham

Taxpayers are still owed millions of dollars from Labor’s disastrous $2.5 billion Home Insulation Program, linked to at least four deaths and more than 200 house fires.

The mounting losses have been revealed by the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency (DCCEE) today in response to questioning from Senator Simon Birmingham in a Senate Supplementary Budget Estimates hearing.

DCCEE officials today gave evidence that:

• around 2000 invoices were issued around May this year seeking to recoup $17 million from non-compliant insulation installers
• only around $700,000 has been paid, while $1 million of invoices have been cancelled
• the rest remains outstanding, leaving taxpayers firmly out of pocket (in the order of $15 million)
• most of the owed amounts outstanding appear likely to be written off unless aggressive steps to recover these funds are taken; and
• to date, 35 warrants relating to activities under the program have been executed by the Australian Federal Police, while just one incident has been put in the hands of Commonwealth prosecutors

“The Home Insulation Program was clearly an unmitigated disaster with the Government having ignored countless warnings,” Senator Birmingham said today.

“While this Program was belatedly abandoned by the Government long ago, unfortunately for taxpayers it seems they continue to bear the costs of Labor’s recklessness.

“Australians will rightly wonder if there is no end to the waste they have to endure as a result of this program.”

Do you have your own story of Labor's waste, inefficiency and mismanagement of taxpayer's money? Hold them to account and tell us on the Tip-Off page.