Honestly Mr Abbot, give it up.
The government has tried to do the right thing in providing much needed insulation to people to help lower their heating and cooling bills, as a once-off deployment of taxpayer resources, so that our climate related carbon costs can be combatted. In regards to the knowledge that certain types of insulation should be checked up on due to potential hazards, I offer these points.
1) Potential hazard DOES NOT EQUAL DEFINITE HAZARD!
Example. A toothbrush is a potential hazard. You might stick it down your throat accidentally when someone surprises you by walking into the bathroom one morning, causing you to choke and die.
Are you planning on banning, suing and causing toothbrush makers, toothbrush retailers and associates to lose their jobs? I don't think so.
2) Limit of liability stops at the home owner.
If you are going to get insulation done on YOUR home, how is the government responsible for your choice of contractor? In my neighbourhood, after we had insulation installed, we've had multitudes of people asking if we have had it installed, because they were wanting to install and cash in on this scheme.
Half of them, I wouldn't even let in my home, let alone my roof. A white pickup van with hasty printed stick-on signage of "Free Insulation!" does not inspire me with any great confidence at the quality of service you are about to receive. This brings me to point 3).
3) Recommendations to ensure followups on installation. Yes, in an ideal world, this would be the best thing to do. In an ideal world, you'd only also allow accredited companies with experience to install the insulation. Feasible? No. The amount of cost the government would then have to pay to have all the homes inspected would balloon immensely. Limiting the people who can do the installation then means that the weath going to the trade is limited to those who are accreditted, which, mind you, probably isn't such a bad thing, but those smaller, accreditted companies are probably not going to be able to get as many jobs as those who have well known reputable names.
Here is an example of the foil problem, from my opinionated perspective.
Young electrician gets electrocuted on foil insulation. It was conductive. The question is, why did he die? Besides the obvious that he got electrocuted, it isn't that it was because the insulation was foil insulation, it was because the foil was electrically live. The question then is, why was it live? It was live because the retards that installed it made it so. Now, then lets step back. Is the foil dangerous? No. What killed the young man? Electricity. How? Retards made the foil live.
Ok, so, you might say, it's the same thing, if there was no foil insulation, he would have been safe. Well, there was an example of this retardedness on the news, where this woman had foil insulation installed, and when she got it checked after the news about these deaths happened, it was discovered her foil insulation too was live, and after investigation, the dumbtards that installed it had driven one of those U shaped nails through the foil and THROUGH LIVE WIRING UNDERNEATH. So, had it been installed properly by people who KNOW what they are doing, it would have never become live in the first place.
Stepping sidways on this situation. You could say, if it was regular insulation, it'd be fine, right? Wrong. There is the same risk but this time, it is fire. Insulation burns. It might be fire retarded, but it will still burn given enough heat and the right conditions. Above my head is Earth Batts, a natural fibre insulation. My roof gets over 50C in summer for sure. If there was an electrical fault causing resistance, I'm pretty sure there is a good chance it would burst into flame. What does this mean? Dodgey home wiring in old houses, trades people who install insulation who accidentally damage wiring. Roof wiring isn't always the neatest or best done job, because it's assumed people don't go into the crawl space regularly. It isn't that hard to kick it around, step on it, and depending on how they secure the batts down either, to do the same thing as to the foil, i.e., damage wiring to cause electrical faults.
Then, draw current through the wiring, generate some heat, get some heat trapped in the insulation, poof, fire.
So, really, at the end of the day, the blame doesn't lie with some minister, or that he was given a report about potential hazards, it comes down really to two points in my opinion. The homeowner who allowed someone who looks like they belong in highschool (some of them coming to my door look just like that) operating out of a dodgey van (many of them did) to install the insulation not checking on the quality of work, and the tradespeople who did the bad job in the first place.
So, give it up and go back to learning how to iron shirts Mr Abbot.
/steps off soapbox
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