Just as an aside at this point, I'd like to ask if anyone in the Cobbleition has any idea to get Britain back into surplus? Dave? Nick? No? Er... Ed and Ed? No, you've already tried spending even more, remember?
Anyway, among other things Treasurer Wayne Swan has said he's done is to achieve a budget which is free of rorts - 'rort' being Australian for spunking taxpayers' money up the wall unnecessarily, generally in such a way as to let a bunch of chancers cash in and run off with most of it. The word may not be familiar to readers in Britain or other parts of the English speaking world but I'm pretty sure the concept will be. The fact that Australians have a special word for it is probably a testament either to their inventiveness when it comes to language or the incompetence of the country's politicians, perhaps both. The last really big rort was one I blogged on just over a year ago - the home insulation program in which home owners were offered government grants to have roof insulation batts, typically pink for some reason, installed in their lofts. This was such a good example example of government intervention going catastrophically wrong on many levels that you can practically make a politician flinch simply by saying the words "pink batts".
The government men indeed came to help with 'handouts', and when they were finished 'helping' cowboy fitters had pockets full of taxpayer's cash, hundreds of thousands of Australian homes ended up with substandard, badly fitted or simply unneeded loft insulation, more than a hundred houses were damaged by fire, thousands of jobs were put at risk and four deaths had been linked to the programme.This was all horrifyingly embarrassing for the government at the time, which despite an election and a change of faces at the top is still more or less the same government we have now, and which is therefore promising that there won't be anything like that happening with this budget. Oh, no, nothing like that at all. Well... apart from this:
[...]
Under the Home Insulation Program the assistance is paid directly to the insulation installer, on behalf of the Householder, and $1,600 is expected to cover the cost of insulating an average home, so for most people there should be no more to pay.The first thing that should have been expected from this is that many smaller jobs would now come in at around $1,600 regardless of size. The second is that having created an artificial boom in the supply and fitting of insulation it's natural that new companies would jump in to try and grab a share of all the taxpayer's money being hosed around. This is fine if the demand created by a subsidy becomes self sustaining, and I'm sure the wonks in Canberra hoped that this would happen, but if that doesn't occur by the time a subsidy scheme ends then suddenly, almost overnight really, the market is oversupplied.
[...]
[The third and most serious problem is] that whenever the government gets out its chequebook almost inevitably cowboys and fraudsters are attracted in the hope that the government is too busy giving away taxpayers' money to look too carefully at the work it was supposed to pay for. Sure enough the Home Insulation Programme, despite supposed safeguards such as a government approved list of companies, saw everything. There was the merely deceitful, such as falsely telling people that insulation batts need to be replaced periodically. There was the fraudulent, such as submitting claims to the government for non-existent work. And there was the downright dangerous: fires blamed on ceiling downlights igniting the insulation and even whole roofs becoming electrified because of badly installed foil insulation.
COMMUNICATIONS Minister Stephen Conroy has defended the massive cost of installing television set top boxes in the homes of pensioners.No, Stephen, the country will be down the $308 million you and Wayne Swan have budgeted, because you can be damned sure that there are people out there planning to grab every last cent. Just think: one in the morning, one in the afternoon, $700 for a day's work installing - and having been the proud owner of a couple of set top boxes I'd say the word 'installing' for sorting out up to six but possibly as few as just one cable and plugging the bloody thing into the main is seriously gilding the lily [corrected thanks to commenter Dave pointing out that lilies do not in fact glide - AE] - two set tops boxes bought by the federal government for twice the going rate. If you can keep that up for 8 months you're looking at the thick end of a hundred thousand dollars of taxpayers' hard earned filling up your pockets. It'd be nice for someone to tell me this scenario is way off base but unfortunately we really don't know because the politicians refuse to tell us the specifics.
He admitted it would cost taxpayers $350 per installation and that each box would cost just $50-$60, double the cheapest available in electronics stores.
"We make no apologies for helping pensioners through this difficult transition," he told Sydney radio 2GB this morning.
Mr Conroy said the whole country would benefit when the analog television spectrum was switched off and sold off.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy's office said yesterday the package cost about $350 per person, but his spokesman declined to provide a breakdown of labour, equipment and administrative costs, saying it was "commercial in confidence".However, they are promising that it won't be pink batts all over again, mainly because the Opposition are saying it will be just like pink batts all over again.
"I will never apologise, never apologise for supporting our pensioners," he said of the program, to install $30 set top boxes at a cost of $400 each.Oh, accredited people, the answer to everything. Except of course it's no answer at all to the question of why it's necessary for the government to do it at all, let alone spend as much as $400 per person on what would probably come in for well under half that even if people paid someone to install the box and far less if they simply read the instruction book that comes with the box. The way I see it is that it's not a government function to go buy our electronic goods for us, and if it thinks it can afford to do so then it's clearly taken more than it needed in taxes and should simply give the money back for people to do with as they will.
[...]
Mr Swan said the scheme had already been rolled out to 38,000 pensioners and was running well.
"There's a tender process that is gone through. There are accredited people who not only provide the box, but set it up and work with the household to make sure it works," he said.
However, in fairness to the Labor government I feel I should defend them against the Opposition's charge that this is just like the pink batts rort because there's an important difference. It's not likely that any deaths will end up being blamed on this, not even if the specially accredited installers leave a box turned on to a special 2 hour long edition of Million Dollar Drop.
Logging you in...
nisakiman · 724 weeks ago
Where do I sign?
Angry_Exile 90p · 724 weeks ago
billsticker 51p · 724 weeks ago
Angry_Exile 90p · 724 weeks ago
Dave · 724 weeks ago
A little typo "gilding" not "gliding".
The pink batts do degrade over time and also depending on how much dust gets into the ceiling cavity so the rate of degradation would vary. In my ceiling they had compressed to about 20mm from the original 70mm or maybe 100mm. Opening the ceiling cavity in older homes, which are the ones most likely to receive new insulation would be like opening Pandora's box. In most cases the electrical wiring would not be up to present standards and quite possibly already in a dangerous state and in need of rewiring. The government thought may well have been to ignore any other problems and just slip the insulation in. Perhaps they considered that if a couple of houses burned down it would still be cheaper than rewiring the house anyway that's what the householder's insurance is for. The minimum should have been the fitting of an earth leakage circuit breaker but this might also indicate that the existing wiring is unsafe.
One of the things that pisses me off about the scheme is that no one has considered it might be a good idea to relate the change in energy use (hopefully savings) with the cost of the insulation (either the real cost or the government inflated cost). It would be nice to know if these activities are really cost efficient.
On the set top boxes, and I relieved the government of one but I'm disappointed I didn't get an aerial as well, I think the government programme is to sell the frequencies by a fixed date, if they haven't already done so, and the boxes and installation are a bit of lubricant to ensure everything progresses at the right rate and without too many complaints. Regional areas have been targeted first as there are fewer people who will qualify. The cities are left till last in the hope that by the time changeover is due to be completed most people will have already made the change thus saving the government as much as possible. They can hardly discriminate against the city pensioners.
At the time, I was considering buying a box until I determined that I would qualify for the government's scheme. I believe that I have been done over by the government on a number of occasions and if I can have a small win I'll take it with both hands. This might not be a noble attitude but today's crop of politicians is hardly inspiring.
That's my rant for the day. Hope there aren't too many typos.
Angry_Exile 90p · 724 weeks ago
A little typo "gilding" not "gliding".
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH :o Good spot. I's one of those ones the spellchecker can't catch too. Worse, a quick glance and you just see two vertical lines and don't notice they're the wrong way round.
The pink batts do degrade over time...
Per the article linked back then:
"UNSCRUPULOUS insulation installers duped up to 400,000 households into falsely believing they needed new insulation in an attempt to profit from the $2.5 billion insulation program.
The figure, revealed in a survey by the Australia Institute, suggests taxpayers could have paid for insulation in many homes unnecessarily.
The survey of 1158 people who live in houses showed 16.1 per cent had been told by insulation businesses that ceiling batts needed to be replaced regularly, which is false."
This is line with my own experience (DIY it must be said, but with a family friend who was a tradie) of loft insulation in the UK which is you stick it up there and assuming you did it right in the first place you can more or less forget about it, maybe buy some top up rolls 15-20 years down the line. Mind you, Aussie roofs look terribly under-insulated to pommie eyes. You don't buy batts but bloody great rolls of the stuff, which unlike your experience with batts starts off at 70mm and expands to twice that as you roll it out. And you keep going until it's a foot deep up there. And if the house wasn't built with cavity wall insulation you may have someone come and blow a load of insulating filler such as polystyrene beads down the cavities first - you lose a lot of the benefit to an insulated roof if the heat just goes out the walls instead. Unfortunately doesn't seem to be an option here as most houses don't seem to have wall cavities, so roof insulation is all there is. Perhaps there's something different about the pink batts that require them to be replaced and The Aussie got that wrong. I've never looked at one myself.
Opening the ceiling cavity in older homes, which are the ones most likely to receive new insulation would be like opening Pandora's box. ... The government thought may well have been to ignore any other problems and just slip the insulation in. Perhaps they considered that if a couple of houses burned down it would still be cheaper than rewiring the house anyway that's what the householder's insurance is for.
I doubt they thought anything at all beyond getting more homes insulated and letting a pop star politician oversee things because he's particularly vocal about this sort of thing. The first bit is laudable, though as heating bills rise more and more people would start doing it anyway, especially if the government had simply reduced taxes by about $1600 per household with a big fanfare and suggested that maybe spending it on insulation would be quite a good idea. The second bit, giving Peter Garrett responsibility for it... perhaps not so much. <span class="idc-smiley"><span style="background-position: -36px 0pt;"><span> ;) </span></span></span>
It would be nice to know if these activities are really cost efficient.
Agreed. As I said, I'm not certain that single skinned Aussie homes won't simply lose heat out of the walls when you insulate the roof. It seems like putting the lid of an Esky on a cardboard box and expecting it to keep beer cool (except of course we're trying to keep heat out rather than in). Better than nothing, sure, but worth the money? You're right, nobody seems even to be looking at that.
On the set top boxes, and I relieved the government of one ... At the time, I was considering buying a box until I determined that I would qualify for the government's scheme. I believe that I have been done over by the government on a number of occasions and if I can have a small win I'll take it with both hands.
Don't blame you in the slightest. Again, agreed. You've paid your taxes, and with the inefficiencies normal for big governments in all likelihood you've had to pay out more than you got back in value. I'd do exactly the same thing. But I bet we'd both rather have $400 and a note of apology from the government for having so clearly taken more than it needed, and then we could go get a cheap $30 box and stick the rest in the bank - or maybe pay someone $100 or so to come and plug it in for us - or upgrade to a PVR box with twin tuners, or even simply buy a new digital TV and not have the box at all. It's the "We know best how to spend your money for you" attitude that infuriates me. Oh, and that for that $400 worth of value the government's probably taken about half as much again in bloody tax to pay for it.
Hope there aren't too many typos.
Wasn't looking, Dave, but I didn't see any. <span class="idc-smiley"><span style="background-position: 0pt 0pt;"><span> :) </span></span></span> Thanks for commenting.