Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is again to the Prime Minister. What reasons did Minister Garrett give in his letter of 14 August for wanting increased compliance, increased inspections and a process of de-registering installers? I ask the Prime Minister further: did Minister Garrett at any point warn the Prime Minister of the safety issues associated with this disastrous program?

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I say in response to the Leader of the Opposition that, if you go through the list of correspondence I referred to in my earlier answer, many of them go to training requirements, many of them go to site inspections, and of course these are therefore related to safety and other concerns. The second point I would say is that, as I said to the House the previous time that these matters were debated, there is nothing before me which suggests that the minister did not act in response to the advice that he had received from his department at the time. That is the position I put to the House then; that is the position I put to the House now. Furthermore, I draw the Leader of the Opposition’s attention to the work which is currently being done by Dr Hawke in his review of the implementation of this scheme and to the statement which was delivered to the House yesterday by the minister responsible, Minister Combet, dealing with the wind-up of this scheme and guidelines for any replacement scheme.

I also say in response to the Leader of the Opposition that we intend to get on with the business of accepting responsibility for the problems which have arisen from the implementation of this scheme. Mr Combet has outlined the mechanism by which that will be undertaken. We will not shirk these responsibilities. We intend to get on the job. Given the fact that it is Thursday, I presume the censure motion is coming soon.