E&EO
RAY HADLEY Now we go to the Shadow Environment Minister who made the running on all of this with us from around August September last year, Greg Hunt. Well Greg, here we come to chapter 382 in the fiasco that was the insulation scheme.
GREG HUNT Well, what we’ve got Ray is now the practice of phantom insulation. Overnight, we’ve had reports as well, and I’d be very keen to get the list of reports that you’ve got so we can force the government to take action. But I’ve written to Greg Combet this morning and what I said is we want a full federal police investigation of the phantom insulation fiasco, as you say its chapter 382 of the debacle. And, we also want a full statement to the Parliament by the Prime Minister next Tuesday on criminality under the home insulation program. And the fraud which we identified and talked about and used as a basis to call for an Auditor General’s inquiry on your program in August has continued. It was never stopped by the government and much more importantly, it now appears to have been deeply systemic. Some newspapers have reported allegations of organised crime – I wrote to Greg Combet about organised crime earlier this week. And right now, it’s still way out of hand, they’re not doing anything to investigate and they’ve got to account the PM no less, before the Parliament on Tuesday about systemic fraud, organised crime and the scope of warnings that were ignored by the Government.
RAY HADLEY Well, what I’ll be asking Greg Combet when I talk to him early next week, is one of my correspondents Cheryl, who I spoke to a short time ago from out in south-western Sydney is complaint number 381,833. She says, “I can only presume this means that there have been 381,832 other complaints before mine”.
GREG HUNT I heard Cheryl and the number terrifies in one way but doesn’t surprise in another. I don’t know whether there’s been that many, I do know that the evidence before the Senate Inquiry from the Government’s own Environment secretary was that there are likely to be 80,000 dangerous installations and 160,000 dodgy installations. And that doesn’t even take into account phantom installations…
RAY HADLEY Where none was done…and we’ve got three out of four cases where that happened today! None was put in.
GREG HUNT The best example we’ve heard of that is about two kilometres from the PM’s own electorate office in the seat of Griffith in Brisbane. A woman got a docket for a house which she had owned which had been demolished.*
RAY HADLEY A vacant block of land.
GREG HUNT It was a vacant block of land. The house had been demolished to make way for a bus route. And the installation was meant to have occurred after the house was demolished.
RAY HADLEY Unbelievable and no hope of getting the money back, particularly from organised crime – the $1,600 or $1,200 as the case may be. And if people are predisposed of being thieves, and do this in the way they’ve done it to our listeners, then what hope have you of finding them – good luck.
GREG HUNT The real problem here is that this wasn’t under the radar, you know the Government is trying to imply “we never knew”. Right through August and September and October on your program and through work that we were doing, this was being broadcast and trumpeted around the country that we have a major issue of fraud, of fire, of risk, not to mention the human tragedies. These were not, you know, little mistakes in the department somewhere, these were major national issues on which the Government just buried their head in the sand.
RAY HADLEY OK Greg, thanks for your time, talk soon.
GREG HUNT Take care
RAY HADLEY Shadow Environment Minister federally Greg Hunt and of course the most important part of this debate, four young men died. Four young men died, apart from the cost to the community and the taxpayer.
Ends