The judicial enquiry into pink batts

[donnashuggy]

Is it right to politicize this?

There were also a lot of benefits to this scheme that nobody seems to talk about.

[donnashuggy]

Yes, Lakeland - he has caused me a lot of anxiety and I could die from it  It's not only his poor decision making when he was health minister.

There should be an enquiry into Abbott's waste of tax payers money, the rorts, the misuse of entitlements, his promise of stopping the waste is completely FALSE.

[***super_nova***]

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@lakeland27 wrote:

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i'ne examined that article, and nowhere is it asked 'why didn't you turn off the power'  i fail to see how rudd is responsible for that kind of stupidity, i know its stupid to leave the power on in a 'live' roof and i'm not a tradesman !  Rudd responsible for that level of idiocy ? it doesn't look that way to me .

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They do not turn off the power becuase they need to have a light to see what they are doing.  Torch is just not enough.

[monman12]

"to credit a PM with responsibility for this is a bit much"

I would agree if that was the case. It was actually a hasty government scheme which was thankfully closed down. My above comments were directed at what I regard as incorrect definitive statements apropos the rate of fires/100,000 pre and post  the batts scheme.

It might be my "bias",  but the pink:  Myopic  worn  differential posterers, seem to have had their research capabilities diminished by  myopia, or should that be Cycloptic posterers?

[lakeland27]

theres good lighting available that doesn't need mains power, they use it in lots of building, construction and for recreation. portable rechargable floodlights are what i use when i need to see up there.

[monman12]

LL, you are talking about something you  appear to  have  very little knowledge of,  one does not normally turn off a house domestic supply power when working in a roof cavity when either   using portable battery powered lighting, or even mains powered  portable extension lighting.

You also overlook the fact that if the  mains power was off  during installation once restored any electrical faults would still remain..

[lakeland27]

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@monman12 wrote:

LL, you are talking about something you  appear to  have  very little knowledge of,  one does not normally turn off a house domestic supply power when working in a roof cavity when either   using portable battery powered lighting, or even mains powered  portable extension lighting.

You also overlook the fact that if the  mains power was off  during installation once restored any electrical faults would still remain..

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  i have a victorian house with a crawl space and i use rechargable battery floods, the same as i use in the workshop. like a laptop, i can use mains or battery power. but yes, i know litttle about installation apart from my own efforts on a few houses over the years.

and yes of course faults would show up afterward.  i had to replace two ceilings, and was advised to use them., i would have thought it a no brainer really.

anyway, you and the others seem intent on blaming rudd so go ahead. he's gone anyway.

[i-need-a-martini]

Monman - I am not sure what report you are reading but a CSIRO 2011 report (which no longer appears on their website) states "The fire incident rate for HIP households is now below the comparable pre-HIP rate and continues to trend downwards."

The same thing os also noted in a government media release in 2011. http://www.climatechange.gov.au/ministers/hon-greg-combet-am-mp/media-release/home-insulation-safety...

The Australasian Fire and Emergency Services Authorities Council says  “No fire service in Australia is saying there has been a significant increase in house fires linked to the insulation program,”  http://www.thefifthestate.com.au/archives/9996/

And this recently from the SMH: "Officials in Garrett's department told a Senate committee hearing that the 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 for the four deaths of installers, one of them through heat exhaustion and another using foil insulation that Garrett had barred from the program months earlier, they are subject to coronial inquiries. The fact is, however, that the program introduced the first national training program for installers. Remember, this is a field in which foolhardy householders have a long DIY tradition and the insulation industry had been largely unregulated. Where was the concern about safety then?" http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/insulation-fire-risk-was-worse-before-rebat...

More articles saying the same thing:

http://inside.org.au/a-mess-a-shambles-a-disaster/

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2010/10/19/insulation-fire-risk-%E2%80%93-the-data-is-in/

I could find some other articles for you but they all say the same thing once all the stats were accumulated by 2011.

Some of those articles also talk about the fact that the scheme introduced training and regulation for the first time.

It should also be noted that staitsics  pre regulation was broad. So for example any accidents were lumped in with construction industry accidents whereas once the regulation came out, the stats were independent. Ditto with fires.

[lakeland27]

i searched around a bit martini and couldn;t find  the Pollytics article. i'm glad you did, i could not remember who published it.

all i could find were msm rubbish articles .