Alby Schultz (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak about the insulation installer debacle, or the home insulation rebate scheme. I rise because this issue has been raised a number of times in this House. In the last week or two, I have been getting a significant number of calls from constituents who are concerned about a number of so-called legitimate installers who visit residences offering to provide a quote to insulate a home. They then arrange an installation date to return to the job. Upon return, the job done always comes up short with the installer never having enough insulation product for the whole job, and in some cases it is only after the installer has left that the homeowner discovers that the job has not been completed.

In one case in the city of Goulburn, after the initial quote was given by one company a different installation company arrived to do the installation. The installer spent no time at all and said that the job was complete and could the owner of the home complete the paperwork. There would be no need to pay any money as the installation company would claim the government rebate direct, which would pay for the whole job. It was only the diligence of the homeowner, who checked the job before signing, who saw that the company had covered less than half the roof cavity. He then demanded that the job be properly finished before he would sign.

In another case, again in the city of Goulburn, a quote was given and an installer arrived to do the job with only nine installation batts for a roof cavity of 100 square metres. This time the installer said that he was told that it was only a top-up. In this case the resident was elderly and the installers refused to leave before having the government rebate forms signed. I could go on. Other cases include companies just looking in the roof cavity of a home, reporting to the residents that their home was fine and did not need insulation, but could they please sign the forms so that the government would know that their home had been inspected, and they could, of course, get the $1,600 rebate kickback.

The reason for my raising this matter is that it is a shocking misuse of a scheme that has been very badly planned and has not been able to foresee the fraudulent practices that are right throughout the country on this particular taxpayer-funded initiative by the current government. It also shows the lengths that illegitimate companies and fraudsters will go to. I have reported it to the minister. I have supplied the information to the minister, including the documentation which identifies the companies, and I have said to the minister—because it is a blatant rip-off of the Australian taxpayers’ dollars—that he really should stop sitting on his hands and do something constructive about either charging these people or doing something to remove their government accreditation. On every piece of documentation that has come through my office, these bodgie, dodgy individuals and firms have been accredited by the government. That is simply not good enough. It is a misuse of taxpayers’ resources and it is a classic illustration of the lack of control this government has had when it is putting these schemes together. All it is doing is making all the dodgy operators in this country rich at the expense of the exercise that it is supposed to have achieved, and that is the insulation of homes making a significant contribution to energy consumption in this country.