Ok ok, I know what many would say about my postings. Many would say I’m biased in that I always bag the UMNO led Malaysian government and the opposition party in Australia, the Liberal party. What’s there not to bag…they’re a bunch of goons as far as I’m concerned. If they don’t know the difference between their bums and their head, you can’t blame me or anyone else for that matter for bagging them. Well today I’m going to show everyone that I’m “impartial” in that I’m going to rip into the Australian government, specifically their stimulus spending into the failed ‘Pink Bats’ scheme.
For those who don’t know the ‘Pink Bats’ scheme is a scheme concocted by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Environment Minister Peter Garret and their ‘brilliant’ advisers to insulate thousands of homes in Australia thus saving the environment but more specifically to create jobs for Australians. On the surface this seems like a noble idea but in reality it’s a terrible idea. Stimulus is a bad idea in the first place in that it’s not demand driven but supply driven by the government hence manipulating the market but this one is particularly disastrous in that it has now lost about 6000 jobs due to it being scrapped, so much for the ‘creating new jobs’ theory.
From the start this scheme was rushed in the hope that rolling it out as soon as possible would ‘create’ new jobs. Our brilliant treasurer Wayne Swan’s biggest nightmare is unemployment and to stave off the dire unemployment story all over the world which was knocking on Australia’s doorstep they decided to spend spend spend. How it was spent and where it was spent was immaterial just as long as it was spent! It’s easy to spend other people’s money right? Now comes the fact that taxes will have to be raised to pay for these largesse irks the hell out of me considering the amount of taxes I already pay in the form of income tax, land tax, water rates, council rates, GST etc. etc. etc…..the list is endless. The petrol that I buy with my after tax dollars is in itself taxed by the government!! I get taxed on my bank interest when the savings interest that is being taxed is the after taxed amount, the rest being taxed in the form of income tax or other forms of taxes before going to the bank in the form of savings. I’ve heard that for every one Australian income earned, more than 51% goes into taxes in one form or other but that’s a subject for another day and don’t get me started on that now otherwise this may take a few pages.
Anyway back to the ‘Pink Bats’ scheme. It was meant to be a $4 billion Energy Efficient Scheme that would give a rebate for installing insulation in the roof. The rebate was not to be given to the home owner but to the insulation company and amounted to $1,600. Many insulation companies were flogging off insulation for free. One pink bats supplier wrote on their website: “And, if you’re getting something worth up to $1,600 for free, why would you choose anything but the best?” The only problem with that was there were many companies created overnight that all of a sudden happened to be Insulation providers with no track record and no expertise to do the job well and safely. Some images captured on video showed kids on roofs helping with the installation! The result of all this was 4 unfortunate deaths and some 90 odd house fires attributed to dodgy installation. Apparently, the Environment Minister had several “warnings” but this was let to continue, as the bigger goal of spending our money needed to be fulfilled. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd defended his minister as “first class”. If that’s s first class minister then I don’t know what 2nd and 3rd class is. Maybe Tony Abbot can let us know. All he needs to do is turn around during question time and he won’t have to look far.
Peter Garret defended the scheme as a “good scheme” and blamed the specific installers and not the scheme for the deaths and dodgy installations. A couple of days later, he scrapped the scheme altogether without an ounce of prior warning and thousands were left jobless. Not only did he make one mistake, he corrected his first mistake by making another (bigger) mistake. Now you see why he too like the UMNO led Malaysian government and the opposition Liberal party deserve a bagging?
What’s going to happen now? Well as mentioned, thousands of installers are out of a job, not to mention the manufacturing that supports this industry, that’s a given. But further to this the government is going to need to do safety checks on the thousands of existing installations, rectify those that are dodgy which should be many considering the deaths and fires and send the inspectors back to verify that the job is done right this time…all at the taxpayers expense. So they’re going to spend more money now to rectify the “problems” and if spending is good for the economy, then I guess this too will ‘create’ jobs. Great job ministers!
For those who don’t know the ‘Pink Bats’ scheme is a scheme concocted by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Environment Minister Peter Garret and their ‘brilliant’ advisers to insulate thousands of homes in Australia thus saving the environment but more specifically to create jobs for Australians. On the surface this seems like a noble idea but in reality it’s a terrible idea. Stimulus is a bad idea in the first place in that it’s not demand driven but supply driven by the government hence manipulating the market but this one is particularly disastrous in that it has now lost about 6000 jobs due to it being scrapped, so much for the ‘creating new jobs’ theory.
From the start this scheme was rushed in the hope that rolling it out as soon as possible would ‘create’ new jobs. Our brilliant treasurer Wayne Swan’s biggest nightmare is unemployment and to stave off the dire unemployment story all over the world which was knocking on Australia’s doorstep they decided to spend spend spend. How it was spent and where it was spent was immaterial just as long as it was spent! It’s easy to spend other people’s money right? Now comes the fact that taxes will have to be raised to pay for these largesse irks the hell out of me considering the amount of taxes I already pay in the form of income tax, land tax, water rates, council rates, GST etc. etc. etc…..the list is endless. The petrol that I buy with my after tax dollars is in itself taxed by the government!! I get taxed on my bank interest when the savings interest that is being taxed is the after taxed amount, the rest being taxed in the form of income tax or other forms of taxes before going to the bank in the form of savings. I’ve heard that for every one Australian income earned, more than 51% goes into taxes in one form or other but that’s a subject for another day and don’t get me started on that now otherwise this may take a few pages.
Anyway back to the ‘Pink Bats’ scheme. It was meant to be a $4 billion Energy Efficient Scheme that would give a rebate for installing insulation in the roof. The rebate was not to be given to the home owner but to the insulation company and amounted to $1,600. Many insulation companies were flogging off insulation for free. One pink bats supplier wrote on their website: “And, if you’re getting something worth up to $1,600 for free, why would you choose anything but the best?” The only problem with that was there were many companies created overnight that all of a sudden happened to be Insulation providers with no track record and no expertise to do the job well and safely. Some images captured on video showed kids on roofs helping with the installation! The result of all this was 4 unfortunate deaths and some 90 odd house fires attributed to dodgy installation. Apparently, the Environment Minister had several “warnings” but this was let to continue, as the bigger goal of spending our money needed to be fulfilled. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd defended his minister as “first class”. If that’s s first class minister then I don’t know what 2nd and 3rd class is. Maybe Tony Abbot can let us know. All he needs to do is turn around during question time and he won’t have to look far.
Peter Garret defended the scheme as a “good scheme” and blamed the specific installers and not the scheme for the deaths and dodgy installations. A couple of days later, he scrapped the scheme altogether without an ounce of prior warning and thousands were left jobless. Not only did he make one mistake, he corrected his first mistake by making another (bigger) mistake. Now you see why he too like the UMNO led Malaysian government and the opposition Liberal party deserve a bagging?
What’s going to happen now? Well as mentioned, thousands of installers are out of a job, not to mention the manufacturing that supports this industry, that’s a given. But further to this the government is going to need to do safety checks on the thousands of existing installations, rectify those that are dodgy which should be many considering the deaths and fires and send the inspectors back to verify that the job is done right this time…all at the taxpayers expense. So they’re going to spend more money now to rectify the “problems” and if spending is good for the economy, then I guess this too will ‘create’ jobs. Great job ministers!
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