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The Forum > Article Comments > Lest we forget? The home insulation scheme ... > Comments

Lest we forget? The home insulation scheme ... : Comments

By Chris Lewis, published 16/7/2010

The Labor Government’s home insulation scheme beggars belief in terms of wastage of resources and lack of regard for safety warnings.

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nairbe,

Regardless of known discrepancies with specifications and contravention of 'Standards' the home owner has no right whatsoever to require compliance with specifications nor to require the builder to remedy work that contravenes the Standards.

After paying in full for practical completion - otherwise the home owner breaches the contract - the home owner can then try to get deficiencies corrected. However the home owner is foolish to do that before final payment in full and key handover, for fear that the builder will retaliate by claiming any of a zillion reasons including purported breach of contract by the home owner and delay final completion by months. The builder doesn't worry, he has front-loaded the contract anyway and loses nothing.

Now comes the gritty bit, the home owner can waste $30,000 minimum on a contract lawyer to resolve cheaper substitutions and cosmetic faults. Where there are known serious faults, inspected by suitable professionals and photographed during construction, the home owner is nonetheless obliged to wait for evidence of deterioration and will have to pay for more professional reports to back that up, unless he can get the diplomats in the BSA to act (takes months).

How can this be fixed? Easy peasy, by BSA or independent (BSA certified) inspection at established stages of construction against formal Standards (ie force of law). Any home owner would gladly pay for the inspections.

Benefits? The good builders and trades get plenty of work and all year long, they can afford to keep their gangs of preferred trades and the cowboys get out of the industry.
Posted by Cornflower, Friday, 16 July 2010 9:58:46 PM
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“you so passionately take up cudgels against big business citing strings of safety infractions from decades past”

I guess 2004 would be ‘decades past’ for the dyslexic SM. Even 2009 where in a nine month period, seven workers were killed at BHP/B sites, would be history or perhaps hilarious given your mentality.

A corrupt market and recurring mortalities are trivial for in-bred bigots in political damage control. Keep swaggering SM - that's what radicalised ideologues do best.
Posted by Protagoras, Friday, 16 July 2010 11:42:14 PM
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Protagoras,

You really should take your medication before posting, as you appear to be arguing my point.

Lets see BHP with 10s of thousands of employees and contractors working in one of the most dangerous professions in the world has a spate of fatalities, following which they spend hundreds of millions upgrading their safety systems.

Garrett ignores industry safety warnings to put in a dodgy scheme which amongst a few 1000 young employees (who have undergone a rigorous 1 day training course) kills 4 of them in a few months.

Their action is to cover up until too late, then cancel the scheme and do almost nothing to re mediate their stuff up.

Yet you foam at the mouth in the first instance, and make excuses in the second. I can see where your loyalties lie, and it certainly isn't with the truth.
Posted by Shadow Minister, Saturday, 17 July 2010 7:23:16 AM
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Cornflower.
Yes this is pretty well right, but the point i made to you still stands. The problem is one of law not the building codes.
I would imagine that the greater majority of people out there sign there building contracts without reading them properly. If they did they would either not sign or they work on the theory of "she'll be right". It never is.
You are quite within your rights to employ an independent building surveyor to oversee the job but you must negotiate it into the contract. As with all things this would require a lawyer to negotiate the contract, a building surveyor to be retained all leading to much more expense. This is the reality of such costs and why commercial buildings are so much more expensive.
Any attempt to change the current legal position of contracts would require legislative change and with lawyers running the country you have no chance. I can only repeat, your complaints are valid the industry suffers badly from cowboys and it makes it difficult for the good tradesman but the problem is in law not in the required standards. The standards are enforceable by law but the law is an ass requiring all sorts of evidence that is expensive to establish despite what can sometime appear to be the obvious.
I have worked with some builders who have gone back 5 and 6 years latter to fix cosmetic problems to protect their reputation. It is amazing when you work in the country and one bad job can destroy you business for years, how much more careful you are.
Posted by nairbe, Saturday, 17 July 2010 8:06:36 AM
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how much more careful you are.
nairbe,
40 years ago I finished my apprenticeship. Since then I have mainly worked in maintenance which didn't so much involve actual maintaining the facilities & machinery but rather fixing poor workmanship & design. Many years ago I had to get a card, then another, then another & yet more cards either to prove to some moron bureaucrat or more to the truth, to provide revenue to the Government by paying for every card. Many of those "qualified" people whose shonkey work I had to rectify are in fact many times more "qualified" than I yet, it was I who always sorts out the problems.
What's that got to do with the Home Insulation Fiasco ? Well, why were these people permitted to do this work in the first place when they obviously had no practical training & even less experience ? Ever since the clever bureaucrats of the past have done away with on the job training & pushed half-baked tutors into TAFE who in turn aren't allowed to fail anyone thus issuing certificates to people who have no idea about the work they're getting the certificate for. Anyone remember Bob Hawke's "by 1992 no child shall live in poverty" & "we must become the clever country" ! Can anyone shed light on what has happened ?
Posted by individual, Saturday, 17 July 2010 8:58:20 AM
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From a marketing perspective this scheme and so many other similar schemes from this government, were always destined to end in tears. It serves no purpose to blame various industries, rorters, trades people, government departments or regulators. Particularly since this blame game simply apportions blame based upon individual political perspectives by either defending or attacking the various players.

Each of these players is probably responsible in some way or other however, this misses the point. Any interference in the function of a market will “skew” that market. It will create both opportunists and victims.

All markets are a finely balanced combination of inputs, resources, regulation and customers. Tipping a bucket load of free “anything” into this mix will cause problems. Pink bats is one good example, it tipped money (new revenue streams) into the front end and caused a massive expansion in the back end (customer demand).

As a direct consequence, the opportunism by trades to rapidly expand their businesses was done at the expense of regulatory compliance; they went beyond their capacity to resource and regulate their expansion. Regulatory bodies and government agencies were also exposed through both weak regulation and the capacity constraints of their own resources.

The same dynamics came into play with school computers; demand was suddenly increased by this scheme, the installing and supporting these computers in schools was missed by the scheme. The costs of set up, network connection, system administration and applications fell back to the schools that naturally went back for more funds to cover these costs.

The BER is another classic example of market skew. The free money brought out the worst in all the players and is probably the worst in every respect.

It’s a diversion to blame the opportunists, victims and regulators. Many have taken advantage of these schemes or been exposed by them, but they are just the players. The real causes are deliberate market skewing through ill-conceived political schemes.

Government amateurism is further compounded, not only do these schemes violently skew the various markets; they do so with three other market aberrations, Tokenism, Ideology and Populism.
Posted by spindoc, Saturday, 17 July 2010 10:00:03 AM
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