The death of four young men and insulation fires in 94 houses have focused attention on the competence of Peter Garrett to be a federal minister. But leaving aside his maladministration, the truth is the insulation program should never have been set up in the first place. Someone a lot more senior and a lot more sensible than Garrett should have stopped it.
Once you announce there is $2.7 billion of free insulation to be distributed, you can hardly be surprised when contractors materialise from thin air to take up the business. If the government's plan is to shovel out money as fast as possible, then safety and training is not going to be their priority.
Nor was it a priority for the government when it announced the scheme on February 3 last year. The government declared: "The insulation program is expected to create a significant number of new Australian jobs. These jobs require limited retraining and so the benefits to the community can be realised quickly."
What a tragic miscalculation that proved to be. The retraining was so "limited", four young men tragically lost their lives and thousands of homes are now at risk. So where did the idea to insulate houses come from?
In the dying days of the Howard government, the environment department prepared a list of measures designed to reduce carbon emissions. One was to insulate houses. Back in those days, home insulation was dressed up as a climate-change policy.
I was against it. I couldn't see why those taxpayers who had paid to insulate their own homes should subsidise insulation for those who hadn't. The subsidy would only increase the value of a private asset - the private home.
Secondly, I could not see how the Commonwealth could hope to manage a scheme to insulate millions of homes with thousands of private contractors when it had no staff with experience to design and supervise such a scheme.
After some robust debate, the government decided against it. The taxpayers saved $2.5 billion. The then environment minister, Malcolm Turnbull, would have done a better job than Garrett, but he was saved from a potential disaster.
Then the government changed hands. Early last year, Kevin Rudd was determined to spend money as fast as possible to stimulate the economy. The Prime Minister asked the public service to think up spending proposals. The departments dusted off proposals previously rejected.
The insulation proposal - originally a climate change policy - was rebadged as a stimulus policy. The inexperienced government grasped it with open arms. It was a spending program that had been rejected when the budget was in surplus. It was given lavish financing once the budget was deep in deficit.
If all you want to do is to stimulate the economy, it doesn't matter whether you pay people to go around installing insulation batts or pay people to go around and take them out. You are still creating work. But it might be better to have something to show for $2.7 billion of taxpayers' money - something more than fires and casualties.
The fiasco has ended Garrett's credibility. He is now the Environment Minister with little environment policy to administer. He is on life support from the Labor machine. And it can switch it off at any time.
The old Garrett was great at lecturing on public morality: "How can you sleep when the beds are burning?" The old Garrett would have excoriated the present Garrett for behaviour like this.
But let us draw an additional lesson from this sorry episode. Both sides of politics are now flirting with the idea that the Commonwealth should take over and run public hospitals.
Bear this in mind. The Federal Government could not run a home insulation program. Do you think it can run every hospital and hospital department in the country?
They will say: "We will recruit people who have experience in hospital management. They will run the services properly." Which people? The people now running the health system for state governments. The same people running the same hospitals will report to Canberra rather than the state capitals.
Do you think this will make the hospitals run better? Do you think the federal minister will take responsibility for any failures in the health system? About as much responsibility as Garrett takes for the insulation scheme. Someone senior and sensible should think about this. And stop it before it begins.
Peter Costello is a former federal treasurer.
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