Christian Biggins Design, Technology, SEO, General Ramblings. Something for everybody.

That damn insulation scheme!

For the non Aussie readers (heh, see how I used a plural?) our Government (namely Peter Garret) introduced a scheme last year to pay for people's houses to be insulated.

This had multiple benefits;

1. People weren't cold... Or hot. So less Air Con and Heating used.
2. Industry stimulus. More work
3. Made the government look good

This also had a few drawbacks;

1. Shonky traders
2. Poorly trained workers

Now, one of the options for insulation is foil. Basically, this giant roll of foil sheeting gets rolled out over your ceiling in the roof cavity. Its the cheapest form of insulation and this worked well for the shonky traders as it meant they could install cheap crap and bill the government for whatever they wanted.

Now, my family got the insulation from the government. We opted for green insulation which is biodegradable and non flammable. We got this because we were asked what kind of insulation we wanted. We had a nice guy to deal with. Unfortunately the people who didn't care what insulation they got and had not-so-nice guys to deal with were given the foil insulation.

The government was advised this and they took actions towards training and education of the installers but apparently it was not enough. If you lay foil over a live electrical wire (supplying a light, for instance) and then staple through the live wire, the foil becomes a conductor and anything touching it (say, an untrained teenage installers arm) becomes live. Or, electrocuted.

4 people died, a few of them were teenagers within this insulation scheme's lifetime. A few houses have also since burned down.

Now, the opposition and the unions and multiple other people, associations and pets, have called for Peter Garrets resignation over the 'foiled' scheme as he knew about the risks and was advised against the scheme and several other reasons. Apparently its all his fault.

I want to know, given the inflated industry at the time, how many (trained or not) people have died as a result of foil insulation in the past, prior to the scheme? The media doesn't report on these figures. Also, I want to know, how many of these traders would opt to use the cheapest insulation when they were trying to sell their products? What tradie would say 'nah, don't use the expensive, heavily marked up product, go with the cheapie that I don't make as much money on' ? Yeah not many I reckon. So, likely, prior to the scheme, less foil was used and fewer untrained installers died installing the stuff.

With all this in mind, how can anybody with any brains conclude that the deaths are the sole responsibility of our Environment Minister, Peter Garret? I simple cannot comprehend why he needs to take the fall for greedy tradies in a bloated industry? These were kids that died, not union members or life long industry people, these were 15 - 22 year old kids. Kids preyed on by insulation folk to be paid a minimum wage to do a mediocre job so the boss can bill the government while drinking his VB (beer) beside his pool.

What a joke. What an absolute sham. As usual, I blame the media as much as anybody else. They created so much unnecessary hype from this bullshit.

Please also read John Watson's article 'Insulation fire risk was worse before rebate'.