GARRETT FOILED AGAIN
 
Hinch’s Law:  Any man who says three times ‘I will not resign’…will. Who’s keeping score for Peter Garrett? I’ll tell you why the beleaguered Environment Minister should quit and that’s apart from the four tragic deaths and 87 fire-gutted houses caused by the cobbled together, and too-hastily introduced, Green Your Home For Free insulation program. If that’s not enough.

Before the announcement of the Government’s $1200 rebate for batt installers there were 250 registered installation businesses in Australia. Now there are 7000.
 
How did a notoriously slow public service register more than six and a half thousand new installers in a few months? Who checked their bona fides?
 
And this doesn’t include all the cowboys and telemarketers who have been hitting the phones and door-knocking home owners –especially susceptible older people.
 
(My father-in-law had three telemarketers, probably calling from Mumbai, in two weeks. And he lives in a 22-storey apartment building.  Talk about batts in the belfry).
 
One emailer told me he quit a bodgie installation firm. His boss boasted he was making $80,000 a week.
 
Our Canberra correspondent Latika Bourke revealed yesterday that Garrett was told at a meeting in October that foil batts were dangerous, difficult to install safely and should be banned.
 
Instead he banned metal clips. The foil ban came nearly four months and four deaths later. Of course, the first of at least 14 warnings came a year ago.
 
And yet Mr. Garrett keeps telling everyone that he’s ‘putting safety first’. And Small Business Minister, Craig Emerson, kept insisting on the SKY Agenda program today that Garrett was ‘pro-active’.
 
How? Yesterday he went bushwalking in New South Wales to launch a new $10 million nature survey program instead of attending a Canberra meeting between government officials and electrical contractors.
 
Garrett said: ‘I don’t go to technical experts’ meetings in the normal course of events’.  These are not normal events Chromedome. Four people are dead.
 
If I were Minister I would have insisted on going to the meeting. Try to stop me. Maybe to ask a few questions of my own and get some answers that have been sadly and fatally lacking so far.
 
Imagine what the old Peter Garrett would have said while burning the Midnight Oil.
 
Footnote:  The Australian newspaper’s editorial today sums it up: ‘…the Environment Minister claims he can hardly be held responsible if installers ignore the wiring and clearance distances set out in clause 4.5.2.3 and figure 4.7 of the Australian and New Zealand safety standards AS/NZS 3000:2007. That, in a nutshell, is the minister's defence.’
 
Tuesday, February 16, 2010

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2010