I attended an in-law gathering of over 200 people on Saturday night.

These are primarily made up of 'Howard's battlers' who love a yack and I was interested to hear how much damage the Government might have sustained over the insulation saga.

The response was not quite what I had expected.

Most of those I spoke to seemed to be aware of the facts coming to light regarding house fires during the roll out being proportionally many times safer than before the scheme was implemented.

There was a (admittedly grudging) sense of feeling sorry for Garrett and of Rudd being a chicken for not supporting him.

A number work in the building industry and know as I do how cowboyish a fair proportion of the insulation crowd were before the scheme and how little chance a building inspector would ever check the ceiling. At least here they had to be registered and each job inspected.

It was also recognised that there are a million households who will now save two to three hundred dollars a year on energy costs.

Their biggest gripe on the insulation scheme was cold calling by “those Indians”.

The comment was made that under this government's responses to the GFC have been ones of placing dollars to trickle up from us and schools to business while in other countries money was heaped on the banks and other financial institutions where fat bonuses were taken from taxpayers funds. 'Wouldn't have happened like this under the Lib's' was the sentiment.

On the whole they were surprisingly more generous toward Garrett and far more scathing of Rudd than I initially was.

There seemed very little vitriol being directed toward Abbot and the Libs instead it was Mr Murdock himself who copped the biggest serve for what was considered a beatup. This is from a crowd that will admit that the Sun Herald is their primary source of written news. Certainly a stronger response than my 'leftish' friends would ever exhibit.

For this group their estimation of Rudd had obviously diminished but not for the reasons I had imagined.

csteele
I have heard similar. Some sympathy for Garrett with Rudd copping most of the flak for wanting to rush the insulation program through. Garrett made a good decision in continuing with his participation on Q&A despite wide media criticism.

There was a letter in the CT from an ex-insulation worker who said it was laughable to blame the government when this industry has been rife with crooks and rorters for years. I don't agree with this view, as it is government's job to ensure any program is delivered well particularly if a particular industry is prone to rorting.

The roofing industry seems to be the same. We had a number of quotes a few years ago from roofing businesses and with only one exception, they all came around and were very heavy on the sell, bagging all the other roofers in town as crooks, even going so far as wanting to see the written quotes of competitors. One fellow received an SMS message warning him about safety standards and he would be reported. I don't know if it was because he hadn't included it in the cost or if the other company was out to get rid of the competition. They even told us about the guys previous criminal record. We didn't care as he seemed like a nice guy. In the end he pulled out anyway.

We went for the one that behaved professionally and who isolated themselves from this sort of carry on.

Must be something about roofing.

I reckon if a government wants to encourage spending tax cuts would be easier and cost less money to 'implement'. Subsidies are too industry-specific. With tax cuts, people can spend the money widely benefitting a number of industries rather than just one sector.

csteel; >>It was also recognised that there are a million households who will now save two to three hundred dollars a year on energy costs.

This should be seen as a 'potential to save', rather than a saving as many have to break their habbits, like; don't use the aircon. Time will tell.

>>The comment was made that under this government's responses to the GFC have been ones of placing dollars to trickle up from us and schools to business

This was because the dollars were there to spend and our banks didn't need the help that other's did. Without banks lending money, everything collapses, so it would make sense to prop up your banks if they needed it.

Now as for big bonusses to bankers, well this is yet more evidence of 'incompitent governments', not dotting the 'I's' and crossing the 'T's', we are not alone there!

>>On the whole they were surprisingly more generous toward Garrett

Garrett is just a 'pawn' in the scheme of things, sought of a 'fall guy'.

Now to judge Rudd's crew fairly, one must look at the whole picture, insulation, education, fuel watch, grocery watch, solar and now possibbly health.

There is simply little doubt that if these 'monumental stuff-ups' had been in the private sector, heads would be on the chopping block, stock prices would have tumbled and CEO's may well be defending criminal negligence cases.

The Australian has a report of an email from a public servant who
signed the email, that there was a problem in reporting to Garret or
Nabib, Rudd directing one way and their minister the other way.

Anyway the directive was it is a stimulus package not an energy package
so get it out there.
Makes interesting reading.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/rudds-thirst-for-a-headline-produces-hasty-and-deadly-policy/story-e6frg6zo-1225837966534

That will need patching.

Bazz your link and the email reflects the feelings of many public servants in Canberra. Many feel like they are living in a fool's paradise of late and some whom I used to work with are changing their vote to Liberal next election despite having some reservations. Many are traditional Labor voters or swinging voters.

I doubt this can be held up as a litmus test for the election but there is a lot of anger in the public service over increased bullying (naturally to rise under pressure and the tendency to scapegoat), lack of planning, cuts to staff without a corresponding cut to services expected by minister's/MPs and resources required to deliver programs.

Howard was certainly a better housekeeper.

Dear pelican,

I can fully sympathise with you about roofers. I was on a job last year when it started raining hard. The two guys working above us just kept going on a very slippery surface without scaffolding yelping every five minutes when they received an electrical shock from the drills they were using. Just stupid. But they were subcontractors in , at least until recently, a very unregulated part of the building industry. I don’t let anyone doing a job for me keep working in the rain even though I have them use cordless drills and have good safety protocols in place.

It has only been in the last few years in Victoria that yellow cards along with Job Safety sheets have become ‘almost’ mandatory when working on new homes.

As for insulators there are some good and some very average. In the past we have all seen the old Commodore pull up with a trailer load of insulation and a couple of guys jump out don the most basic of paper face masks, throw the stuff in in record time and then screech off down the street. Notoriously hard to get on time, it was often left to the plasterer to put the stuff in instead. I will admit to help do a couple myself.

It is the same with building inspectors who have been privatised down here. Some are good but for many it is just a cursory inspection. We still get asked to do jobs in our field outside of regulations in order for the builder to save some money. When you explain that the inspector is unlikely to pass it the reply is it has all ‘been sorted‘. We don’t touch them but others do because we see them finished with owners installed.

This is why this scheme had a better handle on things. To have trained insulator inspectors checking every job was something that was far and above anything that had occurred in the past and I would have loved them to have continued doing those inspections.

Dear rehctub,

That is just it, while I might have at first I’m not sure I still see the insulation scheme as a ‘monumental stuffup’.

Don’t get me started on the school funding debacle which I think was an atrociously missed opportunity to lift the more disadvantage schools instead of funding $3 million dollar equestrian centres for top end private schools.

But I am coming around to the notion that Murdoch, with his loyal servants like Glenn Milne, is doing his Machiavellian best to give the Government a kicking to bring them to heel.

And it is something I’m starting to get quite resentful about since my local rag is Murdoch owned and my view of the insulation roll out had been coloured by its coverage and strident opinion pieces. But I think people, certainly the ones I have been talking to, are starting to wake up and see things for what they really are not for what he would have us believe.

I think this former Australian has a degree of power that we should all be aware of and it could be time someone told him to just ‘piss off!’. It won’t be Rudd because he has just rolled over.

This Guardian piece makes for interesting reading,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/02/rupert-murdoch-tory-media-policy

Watch out the ABC.

Unless I see new evidence to the contrary I think we have all been led by the nose on this one.

Dear rehctub,

Just to follow on a little I was being a little conservative on the $2-300 dollar energy saving per household. The figures I had related to Canberra where the amount was claimed to be $344/yr.

I quote;

“Insulation continues to deliver ongoing savings for home owners for the life of the building and it provides other benefits that are hard to quantify such as reduced health costs and enhanced comfort. The average yearly benefit in the ACT is estimated at $344 per house from energy savings alone. This estimate has been tested by a number of advanced modelling tests.”

Further;

“The study found that building insulation was the cheapest form of energy efficiency, delivering greenhouse gas reduction for the greatest possible return on investment”

And:

“It is primarily an environmental initiative aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Additional benefits include reduction in the energy consumption and reduction in the cost of running individual households.”

Plus;

“It will be a major source of new, green jobs in the ACT. We estimate that when fully operational, the scheme would provide a number of new jobs, ranging from lower skilled installer positions to higher skilled assessor positions.”

Finally on health;

“The evidence from the insulation experiment in New Zealand shows that home insulation resulted in adults taking fewer days off work and children having fewer days off school. After the insulation rollout, there was a significant decrease in residents reporting dampness and mould. There was also a reduction in energy use during this study, with 3899 kWh equivalent consumed by insulated households compared to 4941 kWh of energy consumption in the control group.”

All this sounded pretty good to me.

csteele
You are missing my point.

Just becasue someone has insulation fitted to their home, does not mean they won't use the air con.

Likewise, many complain about rising power bills, yet they still leave lights on.

My point is that insulation alone will not save this much unless the homeowner/occupier takes advantage of its potential to save money.

csteele,
Government announced today that 50,000 houses would have the foil taken out or have safety switches fittted.

With 4 workers dead, 105 houses burned and a reported 30% of batts 'totally useless', I would call that a complete stuff up.

The taxpayers will be footing the bill and you can bet the insurers will put rates up to cover their losses.

Next the 'totally useless' batts will have to be identified and replaced, again at taxpayers expense.

Buying overseas insulation, when it was supposed to stimulate our economy.

Yep, a monumental stuff up.

I woul;d not let the government off the hook at next election.

According to the Age a senate enquiry was told by officials;

“pre-program rate of installations was 65,000 to 70,000 a year, with 80 to 85 insulation-related fires a year. Roughly 30 per cent were linked to new installations, on industry estimates. The program insulated more than 1.1 million homes. If 94 fires have been linked to this, the implication is that the fire risk was roughly four times lower than before, even as the number of installations rose 15-fold.”

As yet I haven't seen any evidence to contradict these figure so it has been the safest roll out of insulation by far in our history primarily because of the safeguards put in place including the registering of installers and the inspections.

Talk to a few 'tradies' about what has gone on in the past and most will say the clean-up of the industry was well overdue.

One of those electrocuted was installing foil insulation that had been banned from the program by Garrett month earlier. As I indicated earlier there have been concerted efforts by the work safety organisations around the country to clean up the domestic building game since it was lagging well behind the industrial and commercial fields. It has made me lift my game and since last year I certainly will not put anyone on domestic site now who has not been yellow carded.

But cavalier attitudes still exist so to have four deaths, one through heat exhaustion, although extremely distressing for families and workmates, I didn't think was extraordinary over 1.1 million homes. We have lost three workers to industrial accidents in the last six months within our small shire.

The quotes I delivered in my previous post were from the Liberal Party platform for the Canberra elections.
http://www.canberraliberals.org.au/files/L8E2AX68GO/Home%20Insulation.pdf

To tell you the truth I liked their scheme better than the Government's with its focus on the poor and state housing (would have seen this ethic in the schools funding) but there is nothing about regulating the insulation industry, something that was recognised very early by Garrett.

Sorry Banjo I neglected to address your “reported 30% of batts 'totally useless'” remark. You will have to point me to where that assertion has been made, preferably somewhere other than a Murdoch paper if you can for obvious reasons but if you can't I will even take it from that source.

I see that the govt is going to have the foil removed or leakage circuit breakers fitted.
Thats nice, then if the foil is live and you get up into the roof and
happen to touch the live foil as well as a water pipe or some other earthed surface,
you will only get a shock for some milliseconds until the breaker opens.
Then a wide area of live conductor sits there for the next fifty years
waiting for something to happen.
That is a solution ?
Mr Fix it Combe is following in the same pair of shoes.

Then for years the foil sits up there working like an antenna spreading
all the noise on the mains around and making worse your radio & TV reception.

Just a bit extra that I learnt the other day.
The foil is normally used between the tiles and the roof framing.
I noticed a roof being built locally and that was where the foil was installed.
It is not normally laid over the ceiling joists.

It looks like this whole problem of the insulation should be taken out
of the hands of the government.
They obviously cannot manage the repair either.

bazz:"The foil is normally used between the tiles and the roof framing."

No, that's sarking, which serves two purposes - it insulates and also adds a secondary water resistant membrane under the tiles, helping to protect against water ingress due to wind-driven rain or cracked tiles and pointing.

The insulation was of a couple of different types. A felt-backed foil, almost like a thin batt that could be rolled out, but with foil on one side was common. i lost one of my casual employees to a firm around the corner who were making this stuff to order, using wool felt and a heavy-gauge foil.

Another type is a "pop-up" type, consisting of two layers of foil held apart by strips of foil a few centimeters wide. It's supplied flat on a roll and then opened up once installed. I suspect it's this type that has caused the most problems, since it needs to be secured against wind movement and also so it can be opened up. The felt-backed type should be fine laid in like batts, although obviously if it sat on a live conductor there would be problems.

Thanks antiseptic,
I was not close enough to see the detail, but I was
told that the insulating foil could be used under the tiles like sarking.
Is that possible ?
Anyway its a mess.
Theoretically it could be safe laid onto the rafters as wiring
should not be crossing over the rafters but under.
At least thats how it is in my roof, 50 years old.
It will be a really difficult thing to test, no wonder they want to install breakers instead.
Just a few minutes work at the switchbox
and a great big bill for the dopey government !

Dear antiseptic and Bazz,

You may find this website answering a few of your questions.

http://www.solartex.com.au/view_article.asp?id=1&cat=7

I was aware that aluminium foil as a ceiling batt was more popular in Queensland because it stopped the rotting issues associated with fibre batts in humid climates.

As this article makes clear it is the underside of the foil batt surface which is the critical one as the top side would have issues with dust collection.

It also claims a minimum of 50mm airspace between the ceiling and the batt surface to get the proper rating.

I know the firm in question is selling the product but they do other forms of insulation as well.

To me the roll out highlights a couple of things.

The first is the inadequacy of the marketplace alone to solve these problems, one gets the feeling if the thing had been entirely government instigated and operated then we would not have seen the plethora of shoddy practices experienced with this one.

The second has to do with people feeling that something they are getting for free is someone else's money and so it doesn't require the due diligence they might have applied normally when purchasing goods or services worth $1600.

Now I'm getting a confused.

The government scheme installed foil insulation in 48,000 houses in Queensland and northern most NSW.

For the reasons stated above this is the best type of installation for these areas and has been used for years as a standard for this type of climate.

Therefore if the problems were so obvious why hadn't it been picked up before or where all those installations done correctly?

Thank god it would seem, that this was a Federal government initative because the states and the private sector have not picked up on any of these problems before now.

I don't see anyone calling for ALL the houses with foil installed whether under this scheme or not to be checked. Certainly not Abbott but if he was truely concerned about house and worker safety then this is exactly what needs to happen for him to be consistant.

I will not be holding my breath.

I am firming in my conviction that this is a Murdoch beatup and most of us have swallowed their line including the government.