Yes,Prime Minister

[Terror Australis]

The following story is like something from the british tv comedy series Yes Minister only it is happening now with the policies of the current government of Australia.We are afflicted with the worst government Australia has ever seen,both in the scope of its incompetence and the number of broken promises to the voters.The worst policy among  many is the failure of the home insulation program.This was dreamt up as a way to help cut the cost of energy and to save 'carbon emissions' as a result of less electricity use.

To date at least 4 people have died in house fires attributed to this scheme and many house fires have been caused by poorly installed insulation.The scheme was announced to much fanfare and then what happened was a complete lack of oversight.Every dodgy operator in the country turned into insulation installers.They were completely untrained and would put insulation on top of downlights causing fires,also stapling foil to electrical wires making whole house roofs electrified,injuring many homeowners.All in a mad dash to earn the $1500 or so insulation rebate from the federal government.

This caused a huge spike in business for insulation companies and they started ordering insulation batts and hiring extra people.The problem is they would order cheap insulation from overseas that is useless for insulation,because they could keep more of the rebate each time they insulated a house.We had teams of people going to every house strongarming homeowners to get insulation installed.

Once the  failure became a national scandal they pulled the plug on the rebate,killing thousands of insulation companies who had invested in stock and had to sack workers and go out of business.

The way the government fixed this was to hire thousands of inspectors to comb the country inspecting roofs of those who had insulation installed.This created a new problem where the dodgy operators who knew which houses they had been to would turn up and simply write dodgy inspection tickets for their own work.Now it turns out that the government is refusing to pay the properly trained insulation inspectors ,a lot of whom are forced to check houses without knowing they will be paid.In the end they have spent over 1 billion dollars and honest tradesmen are going broke  because they cant get the government to pay its bills.The dodgy operators have gone back to the indian call centres from which they came and houses are still burning to the ground.


Do you still think your  government will be able to fix an oil spill?

[AOD_Horseman]

Still? Hell, I never thought they would.

Thanks, by the way, for the updates from "down unda." I hope things improve or you escape soon.

[BobRobertson]

Long ago, my Mom told me that Australia seemed to be a place where the government had "gotten it right".

That was then, now she agrees that it's all gone to shit.

[Terror Australis]

Long ago, my Mom told me that Australia seemed to be a place where the government had "gotten it right".

That was then, now she agrees that it's all gone to shit.

shit has a purpose.