Batt debacle's real culprits are spared

THE Auditor-General's report into the Federal Government's home insulation program is utterly damning, but it leaves unmentioned the real source of the catastrophe - Kevin Rudd.

Although it details the abject failure of the Department of Environment to manage the program, leading to the problems of fraud and safety which have been linked to four deaths and more than 20 house fires, it doesn't sheet home the blame to the politicians who should have taken responsibility for the disastrous project.It should have made perfectly clear that the scheme was the initiative of Julia Gillard, then a member of prime minister Rudd's kitchen cabinet - but the driver of the $2.7 billion project was none other than Rudd, although it ought to have been Peter Garrett, the environment minister. Rudd took it upon himself and he used his department to drive the pink batts scheme; indeed, he took up Gillard's initial proposal with such gusto that he personally delivered the first government speech about the program, which was part of the economic stimulus package released in the mini-Budget on February 3, 2009. He promised that 2.2 million homes would get free ceiling insulation, saving families $200 a year on energy bills, in a program that would put low-skilled people to work and provide a lasting environmental benefit equivalent to removing more than a million cars from the roads each year. It failed in every aspect. An initial audit has revealed that almost a third of the insulation work in 14,000 homes surveyed had quality or safety problems. The number of jobs created was fewer than promised and they didn't last as long as promised (though this was partially due to the program being axed). The environmental benefits weren't there either, as so much of the installation was faulty. Given the Rudd government's track record of failure with FuelWatch, GroceryWatch and its ludicrous 2020 Summit, someone from the kitchen cabinet, which included Gillard, treasurer Wayne Swan and finance minister Lindsay Tanner, should have had the temerity to stand up to the autocratic leader and say, "In your dreams, Kevin". Instead, Rudd drove his office to demand that Garrett push his department to rush the program into effect, with the result that, according to the Auditor-General's report, 1.1 million homes were "insulated" at a cost of $1.45 billion, but as more than a third of the work was found to be deficient, the initial clean-up cost alone will be in excess of $424 million, with the expectation that the final bill will exceed half a billion dollars.Even today, the full extent of the rorting of the program cannot be detailed, but the report estimates there are at least 4000 cases of suspected fraud. Perhaps the most appalling nature of this failure is that all the risks concerning fraud, the quality of installation and fire and safety aspects were identified before the program began, but no steps were taken to ensure compliance."The full extent of the fraud is still unknown and the conclusion of cases under investigation is likely to take many more months to complete," the report says. The Auditor-General found the department was under-resourced and ill-equipped to run the program and that the emphasis on speed of delivery ensured it would end in disaster. That undue haste was a result of demands on the department from Rudd's office. Garrett was merely a patsy, kept in the dark by his department, but Rudd had no qualms about throwing him to the wolves when the enormity of the debacle became known. In a book, The Party Thieves, by ABC journalist Barrie Cassidy, released yesterday, the Labor frontbencher Gary Gray attacks the decision to dump Garrett. He says it was "disgraceful, weak, sneaky, unprincipled and just plain wrong" to sack the former pop singer, as Garrett had raised objections and concerns as the program fell apart. "The shape and execution of the program was certainly designed by the prime minister's office, if not by the prime minister himself," Gray says. Be that as it may, and there is no evidence to suggest otherwise, but the fact remains that the initiator of the scheme was Gillard.The pink batts fiasco was not a stand-alone effort though. It has to be viewed along with the Building the Education Revolution, which was also part of the economic stimulus package. However, each home insulation job the package supported cost taxpayers, on current estimates, in excess of $330,000 and the cost of the remedial work, yet to be done and creating a nightmare for home owners, is a ballooning unknown.It is not enough for Gillard to shrug off responsibility for this failure, nor for the Climate Change Minister, Greg Combet, to avoid questioning and leave it to Parliamentary Secretary Mark Dreyfus to attempt to gloss over the Rudd-Gillard regime's failure. "The Government has learnt the lessons," Dreyfus said on Friday afternoon. "These shortcomings are unacceptable to the Government and we will continue our work to ensure they are addressed and not repeated." "Safety has at all times been the Government's first priority in the wrap-up of the program and the rollout of household inspections."Such a failure to put safety first, except in hindsight, underscores the basic incompetence marking new Labor's approach to government. Its lack of transparency on the rollout of the $43 billion-plus national broadband project, its ideological approach to the problems facing water users in the Murray-Darling Basin, its lack of economic understanding of the mining industry, all demonstrate its gross inadequacies. All the empirical evidence indicates Labor will deliver an even bleaker future if it foists more grand plans on the nation.