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Home Insulation Debacle

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Watching some of today's proceedings with Kevin Rudd in the box, I note the hinges on the doors at the back of the room require some oil.
 
Mr Rudd has lost none of his pomposity. I doubt that the Commission would have been taken in by his magnanimous acknowledgement that he had 'the ultimate responsibility', after he had spent most of his time blaming public servants and Mark Arbib.
What a total phony.
 


Julia, do you know if any of the public servants will be called to the stand?
 
No, noco, sorry. I have no idea. I hope they are given the opportunity to defend themselves, given the way all the Labor ex ministers have dumped on them.
 
Julia said:
No, noco, sorry. I have no idea. I hope they are given the opportunity to defend themselves, given the way all the Labor ex ministers have dumped on them.
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Especially in the light of Rudds reputation of telling everyone what to do and how to do it, isn't that why his own party chucked him out?
 
sptrawler said:
Rudds reputation of telling everyone what to do and how to do it
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A micro-manager + a project they know little or nothing about at the technical level.

Guaranteed recipe for disaster. Always.
 
There is plenty of blame to go around.The ultimate responsibility ,of course,lies with the employers of the deceased persons.
For Rudd and co. they should have been aware what irresponsible employers there are out there,and not relied on state governments OH and S to be vigilant.
The government did not understand the pitfalls or risks with a big project like this one.
 

Such a minor point Chiff for gods sake get on board the Abbott government needs all the diversions it can muster at the moment.

On a more serious note I do feel for the family of those killed as its not likely that they will be able to stay apart of the politics being played out here.
 
chiff said:
The government did not understand the pitfalls or risks with a big project like this one.
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To be fair, no politician is likely to know much about the details of any particular project they support unless it relates to their personal (pre-politics) working background.

Eg politicians decide to build a railway, road, dam or whatever. The smart ones then hand it to the relevant department to get on with it. If it takes 5 years to build well then it takes 5 years - the relevant department's job is to get on with it and keep the relevant Minister informed. The politician's job is to sell the message politically however they choose until its' completed, at which point they get to cut the ribbon and declare it open (which is usually after it actually started to be used).

But if you have politicians getting involved in things relating to delivery of the project well then that's where it goes horribly wrong in a big way.

In any big project there's basically a tradeoff between cost, quality and time. Assuming things are being done reasonably efficiently within whatever constraints are set then if you want to cut the time then your options involve some combination of increased cost and reduced quality. If the funding is fixed, well then reducing quality is the only real option available.

So you have a fixed amount of funding - OK so far. Then someone decides to cut the time to an unrealistic level. Your only real option now is to cut quality and that's what happened (noting that quality has a broad definition in this sense - eg using unsafe work practices is a form of quality reduction as is using cheap materials or simply not doing the job properly - all of which occurred in this case).

It's the same with any major project. Eg someone wants to construct a large building with an estimated cost of $200 million and taking 3 years to build based on the knowledge of those with relevant experience. Then someone comes along and insists that it be built for $100 million in 12 months and that the design can't be changed. End result - it's going to be a shoddy construction with all possible short cuts taken, safety included.

In principle I'm not opposed to the scheme. Insulating houses is a perfectly sensible thing to do in most parts of Australia from a practical, economic and environmental perspective. And if we're going to spend on a "make work" scheme well then insulating ceilings does create employment and it does bring some ongoing benefits once it's done. Where the problems arose was the rush - local manufacturers couldn't make the insulation quickly enough so a lot was imported thus reducing the economic benefit of what was supposed to be an economic stimulus. And of course the issues with the actual installation of it as well. Had it been done over, say, 5 or 10 years then it wouldn't have been a bad idea in my view.
 
Smurf1976 said:
To be fair, no politician is likely to know much about the details of any particular project they support unless it relates to their personal (pre-politics) working background.
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Fair comment smurf.

I wonder if it would have just been easier to pay householders to get the installation installed. The householders would then contact established companies to do the work. The increased demand would then require those companies to take on more staff. State building regulations would look after the OH&S requirements.

If the government wanted particular areas of likely unemployment targetted, they could restrict the scheme to payments to householders living in those areas. I think the Feds took on more than they were equipped to do.

You would have to ensure via random inspections that the householders didn't blow the money on something else and that the work was actually done.
 
Good idea, Rumpole. It's what the Qld government did some years ago with installation of home water tanks.
I can't remember the details now but $X was made available per household and it was up to the householder to get the work done.

You would have to ensure via random inspections that the householders didn't blow the money on something else and that the work was actually done.
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I think with the tanks the money was reimbursed once the completed job was inspected. A similar scheme was in place quite recently for rebate in having swimming pool pumps converted to the cheaper tariff.

The Rudd government put no safeguards in place from the point of view of keeping the workers safe or ensuring a proper level of training. It was totally sloppy and dangerous and they deserve all the opprobrium they have reaped.
 
Julia said:
and they deserve all the opprobrium they have reaped.
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For the execution of the plan yes. The intention was fine, ie to save energy and create employment. As smurf said if they didn't try to rush it things could have turned out a lot better.
 
Julia said:
I think with the tanks the money was reimbursed once the completed job was inspected. A similar scheme was in place quite recently for rebate in having swimming pool pumps converted to the cheaper tariff.
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The solar hot water rebate worked that way too. Buy a system from whoever, pay for it, have it installed, then complete the paperwork to claim the rebate. An added precaution is that the license number of the plumber and/or electrician who did the installation was required to be supplied without which they wouldn't pay the rebate.

Whilst installing insulation isn't a trade as such, it wouldn't have been hard to come up with an appropriate certification of competency. That would have greatly improved safety and enabled the scheme to be administered in the same way as solar hot water was.

As for the effectiveness, well I haven't heard of any solar hot water systems falling off roofs or anything like that. With license number on the paperwork, nobody in their right mind would do a dodgy job.
 
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