Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to take note of an answer given by Senator Wong regarding the Green Loans Program. I want to remind the Senate that the Green Loans Program was announced by the Labor government last year. This was a big opportunity for people to borrow money at no interest in order to implement green initiatives, and this was a good idea. But the good idea has translated into a complete shambles under the so-called oversight of the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Mr Garrett. I think that it is time that the government found somebody in the department who can administer this with some degree of competence. I want to outline to the Senate what a complete shambles and mess this is in.

It was announced last year and meant to start in January this year. It did not start in January and was postponed until July, when it finally got under way. Since then, some 800 assessors have gone out and assessed 25,000 households—25,000 assessments have been done by 800 assessors. The contracts for those assessors say that they must be paid within 30 days for the work that they do, but what has happened? They have not been paid within 30 days. That is a breach of their contract. These, too, are members of working families; these, too, deserve to have their money within the 30 days specified in the contract.

But worse than all the talk from the government is the reality of these assessments on the ground. The assessments were made, but then the assessors tried to generate the reports from the assessment. The report is what you needed as a householder to take in your hand to the bank—to the provider of the loan—so that you could get the loan, and not one report has been issued. There have been 25,000 assessments and not one report. And why not? Because the government-designed software has failed—it has got mistakes in it and is generating inaccurate reports. The assessors cannot generate the reports because the software is wrong, and it is still not fixed.

I heard Senator Wong tell the Senate today that it was fixed in late August. Well, that is news to the people out there who are assessing these projects, because they have not been able to generate accurate reports. Minister Wong herself acknowledged that the reason people have not been paid is that the invoices are all wrong. What sort of a shambles is that? Add to that that there was supposed to be an online facility through which the assessors could book the various assessments, but it has failed; it has not happened. They are stuck with a call centre where they have to hang on the phone lines for up to half an hour, in the worst case scenario, in order to be able to register the booking that they are trying to make. Where is the online booking facility? Why has the call centre not got more people in it?

If the government have failed to deliver the online booking facility, they should at least give people the opportunity to get their bookings organised; the government should honour the 30-day contract—if they say they are going to pay, they should pay within 30 days; and, if the software is wrong, the government should get it right. The government promised that the reports would be issued within 10 days of an assessment being completed, and here we are, nearly three months down the track, and there are still no reports.

This matters very much, particularly to people who believed the government when it said that they would get their report in 10 days. After their assessment, expecting to receive their report in 10 days, some of them went and paid a deposit on equipment—on technology—so that, when the green loan came through, they actually had the money to pay for it. The green loans have not come through, and the result is that people have lost their deposits. That is plain wrong, and I am calling today on the government to go back and sort out the green loans. We desperately need them. People want to take this opportunity to borrow money and be able to put in energy-efficient technologies. They want to be able to do it, but this is a complete and utter shambles from the government, overseen by a minister who, clearly, has not taken the time out to get this right.

There has not been one green loan, and it is more than a year since this program was announced. It is time that the government got its act in order, supported the assessors, supported the community and reimbursed those deposits that people have lost. Let us get this program rolled out, make it efficient and, for goodness sake, get some accountability going, because—as it currently stands—this is one big shambles of a program.

Question agreed to.