Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I go back to the motion. Prime Minister Rudd, in referring to cooperative federalism, no doubt had in mind the many forms of friendship that Australian Labor enjoys. Minister Conroy effectively gets his mate Mike Kaiser appointed to NBN Co. The friendships amongst the ranks of the Labor ‘many’ enjoy varied forms. They range from factional friendships to perhaps some ‘flirty’ friendships. It is pretty clear that Prime Minister Rudd does not have a factional friendship with Premier Keneally. Undoubtedly, he does not have a flirty friendship either. Either way, he has not delivered any results from that so-called cooperative federalism. Mateship and flirty friendships are all very well, but they do not have a place in Australian politics.

What does have a place in Australian politics is delivery of policies based not on mateship or on friendship but on merit. The Australian people and the South Australian people know that Rudd Labor and Rann Labor are based on mates, mates, mates, backs, backs, backs: ‘I’ll pat yours, you pat mine’—flirt, flirt, flirt—based on spin over substance. The Australian electorate is ready for some substance over the spin.

Look at some easy examples from the federal perspective. Look at the Home Insulation Program, look at the mismanagement of the National Broadband Network and look—much as my Labor colleagues might not like to do—at the mismanagement of the Murray-Darling basin. Round 1 of the plagued Home Insulation Program, as foretold by the independent risk assessment from Minter Ellison, was done in too much of a hurry, the program was given to a department that was ill equipped to deliver it and the scale of the task was new to the department. They are policy wonks, not program wonks.

Despite the foretelling of these risks, Rudd Labor ploughed ahead. Rudd Labor ploughed ahead announcing a program in February 2009 for implementation in July 2009. It was five months in gestation before its implementation. In that mismanaged program, there were no plans like, ‘Let us make sure we put the right insulation in the right places,’ and, ‘We install the insulation that is suited for the purpose: we make sure that in hotter climates we do not install the sorts of insulation that keep hothouses hot’—basically, makes them mini-incubators—and, ‘Let’s make sure that in colder climates we do not install insulation that stops the heat from coming in.’ No plans—so the reverse occurred.

The Senate inquiry into the Home Insulation Program heard from some independent expert witnesses who talked, for example, about the experiences of the wrong sort of insulation for the wrong places. Professor Richard Aynsley told the committee that in the tropics there is a strong preference for metal roofs, because tiled roofs cannot take much treatment from tropical cyclones. He said:

Metal roofs do very well. However, in a humid environment with a metal roof facing a sky, particularly when there are low cloud conditions, the temperature of metal roofs can fall to eight degrees below air temperature at night. This is typically at about three or four o’clock in the morning. The humidity at that time is going to be around about 80 or 90 per cent and the result of that cooling of the metal will be condensation both on the upper surface of the roof and on the inside of the roof.