Scrutiny denied: Govt blocks Royal Commission into insulation debacle

Scrutiny denied: Govt blocks Royal Commission into insulation debacle

 Media Release – Greg Hunt MP  

Today the Government has blocked proper scrutiny of the disastrous home insulation scheme.

My Private Member’s Bill to set up a Royal Commission was voted down in the House of Representatives.

There has arguably been no Government program since World War II which has failed so comprehensively.  The $2.45 billion insulation scheme was a massive waste of taxpayers’ money, and was linked to 200 house fires, 1500 electrified roofs, and four tragedies.

To date no minister has been held to account or subject to proper scrutiny.  This culture of denial is unacceptable.

We continue to hear of fresh evidence of the problems caused by the insulation scheme. Last week we learnt that insulation installers had claimed the Government rebate for 86 dwellings in a Sydney apartment block – but no tenant had insulation installed, or was aware of the claims.  Many of the apartments did not have an appropriate ceiling cavity for insulation.

The Government must not walk away from this debacle, and must now agree to our call for an extra 50,000 random inspections of insulated homes, paid for from within the existing unexpended funds set aside for the clean-up.

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  • Insulationlies

    as an installer scrutinised recently under the scheme I can tell you one thing that is definate, the govt is trying to alledge that we did something inconspicouous or malicious whereas the truth of the matter is we did not, the government made the scheme available to absolutely every man and his dog so contractors working for myself and other companies were stealing, lying, had their own businesses setup and were benefiting from the marketing or businesses such as mine, even when we told the dept during the debcale they were completely ignorant of it, granted that it was difficult to operate and things didnt always go to plan but you can take this to the bank : the dept itself should have scrutinised contractors, businesses were left to clean up the mess and lies left by contractors at both a financial and mental price and then have to deal with the dept making accusations of non compliance, fraud etc, I am in installer who has been scrutinised and caused great distress where I did nothing different to the rest of the installers in the program, the mess is the result of a program that enticed all contractors to lie, the dept knew this but avoiding the GFC was more important, when in the history of Australia was there ever 9500 insulation businesses,  the govt knew this they have the stats 10% of this number were existent before the program started if that, thed govt wasnt ignorant they were deliberate and now they have been even more deliberate in their attempts to pass the responsibilty onto installers for problems THAT AROSE BECAUSE WE FOLLOWED THE GUIDELINES