Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to put on the record just some of the many complaints I have had from constituents in my electorate of Maranoa about both the disaster that was the insulation rebate scheme and the Labor government’s Green Loans Program. Unfortunately, my time is limited, so I will not have enough time to detail all the different situations in which my constituents have found themselves, including being the victims of dodgy installers—but some other installers are reputable, legitimate businesses who now find themselves with an oversupply of stock because the scheme was abruptly cancelled. Some constituents have been waiting months for the Labor government to pay them their rebate, and some are veterans, war widows or pensioners who have had to cancel their requests for insulation because without the rebate they cannot afford it.

On top of the insulation disaster there is the green loans debacle. There have been a number of calls to my office about this, and it is no secret that this program is just like the insulation rebate: poorly managed, poorly implemented and poorly designed by an incompetent Labor government. As I said, my time is limited, so I have chosen just one example of feedback that I have received. A constituent of mine had a green loans assessment of his house undertaken last November because he wanted to install solar panels to reduce his household’s reliance on the town’s power grid and completely generate their own electricity. He was advised that they would receive the sustainability report within two to three weeks. That was last November. Three months later, in February this year, they finally received their report, and now I will go through a brief list of what that report recommended.

There were recommendations that they install water tanks, that they convert to solar hot water, and that they install ceiling fans. These may sound like sensible recommendations except for the fact that they already have two rainwater tanks with a storage capacity of 70,000 litres. Also, if they installed a solar hot water system they would save $106, or so the report said—yet their yearly hot water cost last year was only $84. And ceiling fans would be a great idea if they did not already have them in each room of the house. Finally, nowhere in the report did it recommend the installation of solar panels for electricity. It was a complete and utter waste of time for this particular constituent and obviously just another example of how ludicrously bad this scheme has been managed. That is why I am glad that the Senate is going to look into this scheme and I am certainly encouraging my constituents who have been impacted by this ridiculous farce of a scheme to make a submission to the inquiry. It is just another example of the fact that Labor cannot manage even a giveaway scheme and they cannot manage the economy. (Time expired)