Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to enlarge on a statement I made in the parliament on my first day back this week. On 19 August, as part of a question on ceiling batt insulation, I tabled papers outlining 14 rorts and doubtful practices as conveyed to me freely by the office manager of AllSafe, Tai Cullum—a reputable franchisee installer in Bundaberg. On 16 September, three days after I left for duties in New York, the then Minister for Environment, Heritage and the Arts, knowing that I could not respond until well into this new year, in a very cowardly fashion tabled a letter from David Jordan, the franchisor of AllSafe—a letter that the minister had been sitting on for 3½ weeks, accusing me of misrepresenting the comments from AllSafe’s Bundaberg franchisee. It also accused me of ‘incorrect statements’, ‘political point-scoring’ and having hurt the stimulus factor of this package. But nowhere did the minister or his correspondent detail where I was incorrect or where I had misled.

These 14 items included things such as non-provision of quotes prior to fitting, forging of signatures, overstating of square metres in a roof, not insulating the whole roof of a house, poor insulation material and misrepresenting that they were from the government. Tai Cullum sent that letter to me, and, as I said, I tabled it in the House. Mr Jordan, in his letter to the minister, accused my staffer and my media officer, Kate Barwick, of getting this information under the ‘guise’ of seeking advice. That is not correct. She was clear, straightforward and direct, as she always is, in discussions with the company’s office manager and fully informed him that the information that she sought would be used in parliament. Indeed, I spoke to him as well and I found him a very polite and focused young man.

And there was nothing unusual in what we were doing, because the very same firm franchisee, on 13 August in the Bundaberg News Mail, had made similar warnings. The minister, instead of attacking me, should have taken these 14 points on board because they have proved to be not only accurate but also prophetic. And not only have they happened in Bundaberg and in the Wide Bay Burnett area of Bundaberg, they have happened all over Australia, to the point where the government has admitted it, the outgoing minister admitted it, the new minister yesterday in his statement admitted it and the department has admitted it—to the point where the minister is now going to refer matters to the Australian Federal Police and the Auditor-General.

The point I am making is this. In August last year, if the government had gone in and taken on the shoddies in the industry, there and then, instead of denigrating me—and I was the first one to raise these matters in a serious way—we possibly would not have had a number of these deaths, fires and dreadful things that have occurred since. It is ironic that the good firms, the reputable installers, would still be in business and doing good business. What do they have now? Because the whole system has been corrupted, these good installers, and I certainly include AllSafe, are now in a situation where they cannot operate properly.

In his letter to the minister, Mr Jordan said that they employed 12 people in Bundaberg, but I have an article from the Bundaberg News-Mail which says that since the minister closed the scheme down they are 14 employees down—so they have actually dropped two. Not only that, we have warehouses full of material, some good and some bad, all over this country. All I would say to the outgoing minister is: you treated me badly, you did not take my advice and we have suffered a woeful consequence because of it. (Time expired)