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Environment Minister Peter Garrett has come under fire for his roofing foil insulation scheme, which has had a quick A$50m injected into it for home safety inspections to occur after a series of safety issues, including the death of four insulation installers.
The political and media sharks are circling:
The Australian
The Oz editorial: The Rudd government’s green image takes a hit
That’s embarrassing, but the real damage to Mr Garrett and the government is the way the issue will play out with average Australians. It’s the kind of snafu voters never forget, along the lines of “if these blokes can’t even insulate a roof, how can they run the country?” That the program has imploded over safety fears compounds the image problem.
The Age
Katharine Murphy and Tom Arup: Fading star
Garrett’s political challenge would be difficult enough on its own, but it comes at a time when the politics of climate change has shifted on terms negative for federal Labor. The imbroglios amplify the sensation that the government has lost its political mojo on climate change.
Daily Telegraph
Mark Mann, Mark Mann blog, Garrett giving green a bad name
Peter Garrett’s Department of Environment is giving green a bad name. Three major Federal Government green programs being run by the Department of Environment have now descended into farce or tragedy.
The Courier-Mail
Dennis Atkins: It’s time to wind back the spin on insulation scheme
It was Garrett, however, who had difficulty seeing the outcome as his explanation was lost in a torrent of verbal sludge about meetings, consultative groups, reassessments, forms, guidelines and standards.
Elsewhere
Crikey’s Bernard Keane, The Stump, The pursuit of Peter peters out… but more berating of Barnaby to come:
There was more than a trace of blood in the water around Garrett as he called a press conference right before Question Time today. Several journalists wondered whether he was going to resign, although given the lack of pressure from the Opposition, it didn’t quite scan that Garrett was either going to offer his head or was going to be pushed by Rudd
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The grilling consisted of three questions on the administration of his portfolio, which Garrett handled nervously but relatively well, taking his time on his third answer to explain in detail the process for assessing assessors under the Green Loans program. The depth of detail into which Garrett went seemed to suck the life from the Opposition, because after that they turned their fire on, of all people, Lindsay Tanner.
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It was not the sign of an Opposition in hot pursuit of a wounded Minister. There was none of the bite or tension that usually gives away that even Government MPs know they’re in trouble.
The Opposition never came back to Garrett, who must have been unable to believe his luck. …Garrett now only has one more Question Time to survive before Parliament rises.
Mark Bahnisch, Larvatus Prodeo blog: Should Peter Garrett resign?
Yet none of this goes to the question of whether Garrett *should* resign.
Central, here, I think is the fact that his department was alerted to the possible adverse consequences on several occasions before the scheme went ahead, by both the NECA and state bureaucrats.
It’s also taking the government’s environmental focus away from climate change.
ABC
Jonathan Holmes: Journalists weather the changing climate
The science needed selling. But where were the salespeople? Who is there, arguing passionately and compellingly that climate change is real, and urgent? … Peter Garrett has been sidelined.
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22 Comments
…from Jonathan Holmes:
“…There’s no denying that the climate change deniers, or sceptics, (the term you prefer depends which side you’re on) have succeeded, to a degree that orthodox climate scientists find baffling…”
Of course, that’s it. Blame the Boogeyman.
Doesn’t say much for the “overwhelming body of evidence” and the robust “scientific consensus” if half a dozen ‘crackpot’ “sceptics” and journalists can bring down the hundreds of thousands of carpetbaggers and rentseekers burrowed deep within the Klimate Khange Industrial Komplex.
Beyond the wailing, it sounds more like the great unravelling.
Has someone checked “the models”? Maybe the data needs rigging again.
Phil? Where are you Phil? It might be time to crank up the shriek-o-meter again…the research funds are running low.
But check with Al first about doing another PowerPoint preso; he seems to have gone missing.
Garrett is as good a politician as Joyce is a Finance Minister.
If he ever was.
After being humiliatingly stripped of his ‘natural’ mandate as Herr Climate for Rudd, Garrett has stumbled from political train wreck to train wreck.
Green Loans, Pink Batts and now Foil Batts.
Three strikes, Peter - and I’m generously overlooking his other ministerial failures.
You’re out!
Not even Future PM, Barrenness Gillard’s tacit endorsement will save his bacon.
well does that mean that everything the government puts money in to and things are not perfect is the governments fault.
If they had to think along those lines with all the institutions that get government funding nothing would happen.
We cannot expect life to be perfect, these programs had a huge amount of people working in them the same as most big projects.
Re roads rail construction and a lot of gov funded infrastructure.
Its just the liberals finding something to go for.
Every thing that happens at the end of the line is not the ministers fault he cannot be in every roof .
remember awb, weapons of mass destruction , the dogs on the wharf.
people have such short memories its really up to people like crickey to remind people
be cause the press want. But then i never buy their papers any more cannot find anything to read. Thats why the Internet will take over because we can choose what we read,
Peter Garrett is qucikly learning that in Politics there is ‘No Time For Games’!
What game he is playing here is anybody’s guess.
When you consider the size and scale of the insulation program rollout, it would be common sense to ensure that there are sufficient numbers of adequately trained personnel on the ground capable of performing the work before introducing the program.
Garrett, being the minister responsible, should have been aware of this.
Furthermore, when he was alerted to the safety concerns, why wasn’t the program temporarily halted until these concerns were addressed?
Me thinks Garrett is simply out of his depth. Blaming the installers is a cop out.
“after a series of safety issues, including the death of four electricians.”
It was insulation installer’s who died, not electricians.
Being electrocuted does not turn you into an electrician.
Sorry to point out the obvious but some has to do it.
Also, not all the deaths were from electrocution. One died from heatstroke.
It is sloppy standards that killed these poor guys. Sloppy standards at Crikey are fortunately not so lethal - just a pain in the neck.
David, you are absolutely right, that has been updated. When I wrote it, I remember thinking “must check if they actually were electricians or just involved”, but obviously didn’t. Cheers.
Even by your own dubious standards Mama, that sobriquet you applied to Gillard was low…
Best to ignore MPM no matter how tempting it is to respond to her provocations. Responding to a troll only feeds her peculiar psychological needs.
@David Sanderson
“…Best to ignore MPM…”
And with hilarious irony you seem to post this yawning missive on each thread.
Is it a directive to others or part of your rehabilitation process?
merlot64,
Very low and not very funny. I’d’ve called her the red barren.
But then again i’m not a wingnut troll like MPM
MPM posts would be far more entertaining if they weren’t all the same:
@Gareth Perkins
“…I’d’ve called her the red barren…”
Too obvious.
And besides ‘Sancho’ would have accused me of invoking Godwin’s Law, seeing as he’s all so smart an’ shiat.
I love the trivia media in this country. Something monumental happened yesterday in our federal courts and it went barely reported.
AWB admitted they knew they were paying Saddam Hussein. Which ladies and jelly beans means that the whole bloody lot of them should be charged with that crime but the keystone kops couldn’t manage to do so before Keelty quit.
They have now admitted they all committed perjury to the stacked Cole Inquiry and at least three former ministers should really be in deep shit.
But hey, let’s go after Peter Garrett for something he could not control. Like a program far too successful.
Over 2,000 people die in industrial accidents last year and the year before.
What other ministers have been abused like Garrett has been?
The problem is fools can’t get over the younger version of Garrett as a rock star and refuse to see that he is a lawyer and politician.
Something else went unnoticed. Newlstd. decided to call John Saub an asylum seeker demanding compensation for losing his daughter on the immigration boat the Malu Sara.
It took several emails to AAP for them to understand that the headline in Newsltd was wrong, John Saub is an Australian Torres Strait Islander and the DIC’s have been found to have caused 5 deaths.
Where is the outrage? Because they are only black Aussies it appears they matter less than trying to score points off Garrett for a few lousy contractors.
Which are Gillard’s department by the way, not Garretts.
No, I don’t do Godwin’s Law, because sometimes Nazi comparisons are apt, though not in Gareth Perkins’ case.
Surely you’re not under the impression that it requires smarts to destroy your arguments, MPM. I just keep asking you to back up your own statements until your ignorance stands proudly on its own.
So where are all the Tories now with their claims of nanny-state and self-responsibility and stop regulating business? Who were the contractors and why aren’t they responsible for not complying with Federal and State regulations? If the contractors had done their job properly nothing would have happened.
@Dingbat
“…Who were the contractors and why aren’t they responsible for not complying with Federal and State regulations?…”
Union contracts. Dance to the beat of their own drum.
Says it all really.
You should have seen how much they ‘quoted’ per installation.
How much, MPM? Show us what you know.
Garrett is not only foiled but is also in the process of soiling his reputation.
Why on earth he went to a major party is beyond me which just goes to prove, his song lyrics are just song lyrics with not much meaning.
I put the bats in my own house in 2005. Howard warned me about nothing. Garret brings in a safety system and gets hung out to dry.
Tony Abbott should resign because it was his God who killed those men. Abbott will tell you, ‘God’s way is god’s way’. Or has Tony been praying something like this would happen to increase his chance at putting bibles in every classroom?
Blame…
What we do know is that Abbott is responsible for politicising death. The monk needs to resign now. (watch the video in the ABD radio and he can’t even look Garrett in the eye - weak tony weak, at least believe in your lies).
But again, the parasites target Garrett, when the great man’s finger nail clippings have done more for this country than the careers of these mudslinging leeches.
(And Joke Hockey should resign for being a termite lapdog).
Still waiting on quote data from MPM. Or was it an uninformed assertion with no factual basis?
@shepherdmarilyn the number of workplace death for the last two years is closer to 300 (Safework Australia). Perhaps you meant killed and injured although I’d guess that would be a much bigger figure. You are right to draw attention to the other stories and I’m at a loss as to why our national media seem to be drifting towards some kind of NT News standard of what gets on the front page and what gets buried.