"Clueless" is the word that springs to mind regarding any comprehension by the Rudd Government of the environmental impacts of their $42 billion economic stimulus package.
Free ceiling insulation for 2.7 million homes? The Prime Minister is claiming this will reduce the average energy bill by $200 and cut Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by around 49.4 million tonnes by 2020, but there’s no explanation as to how these dubious figures have been calculated. And how will this Rudd-batt give-away affect the various state rebate schemes for installing insulation?
As for extravagant claims about free ceiling insulation reducing the nation’s greenhouse gas by the equivalent of “taking a million cars off the road’’, that’s political twaddle-speak. Yes, ceiling insulation can potentially keep homes cooler in summer and warmer in winter, but its effectiveness depends on the choice of material, the height of the ceiling cavity, whether it’s properly installed, and the overall house design. Any gaps, or compaction, will reduce its thermal impact effectiveness by around 50 per cent and ceiling insulation won’t be effective in houses that aren’t well ventilated or with large expanses of areas of unshaded windows.
The Greens have called the insulation scheme “tinkering around the edges’’ of climate change mitigation and Greenpeace have dismissed it as “window dressing.’’ The peak body for environment industries, Environment Business Australia, has suggested the government needs to roll out a national energy efficiency strategy, a gross feed-in tariff for renewable energy, better public transport systems and “green cities where all buildings operate at high energy efficiency standards.’’ They’ve also called for an investment in solar, geothermal and wave energy infrastructure and a national carbon biosesquestration program using soils, crops and native vegetation that would assist farmers and regional communities.
That’s more like it, but what we’ve got instead is painfully unimaginative compared to the “bold and swift action’’ of the Obama administration’s $US819 economic stimulus package. The Rudd Government seems determined to plod on with shoring up ultimately unsustainable consumption levels, rather than – to quote the head of General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt - looking to “build back better in order to avoid much worse.’’ A wad of free pink bats to stick in the ceiling plus a wad of cash in our tax returns won’t recession-proof the nation. This is an economic emergency that requires creative, progressive thinking in shaping a new economy, not a grab-bag of short-term goodies geared to a grasshopper mentality.
Property developers and the construction industry are among the most generous donors to the Labor party, so its no surprise they’ve had a windfall with $6.6 billion to be spent by the government on building 20,000 homes for public housing by 2010, $400 million to upgrade 2500 vacant public housing stock and $252 million to build 802 Defence houses.
We’ve already had parliamentary inquiries into affordable housing and sustainable housing, but this building boom seems unlikely to factor in the recommendations of either inquiry. Australia currently has a skills shortage of experienced urban planners and builders, so the Rudd Government needs to explain how this short-term frenzy of building activity will create jobs at home as opposed to an upsurge of 457 visa applications to import workers from overseas.
Don’t we need a debate on population growth before we try to build our way out of recession? If there’s a national housing crisis, it’s being driven by population growth, so do we want to build bigger or better for the future? And why should farmers be fined for clearing trees when property developers can rev up the dozers and cut a swathe through remnant yellow box woodlands to create yet more urban sprawl with limited public transport infrastructure and therefore more cars on the road and more greenhouse emissions?
The recent Senate inquiry into housing affordability warned the cost of using a home is also a component of its affordability. Urban sprawl is not the answer. The inquiry also flagged the nature of public housing had changed from being “a low-cost affordable rent market’’ to a response to various social crises (homelessness, domestic violence, drug addiction, mental health issues) without examining the implications of the shift or the dynamics driving it.
The Rudd Government’s economic stimulus package doesn’t appear to have been crafted with a low-carbon footprint in mind, or with an eye to investing in daring infrastructure projects that would create green jobs. Bankrolling a couple of big regional solar projects would boost regional economies, provide on-the-job training for apprentices looking to move into green-build technologies and ultimately cut more greenhouse emissions than ceiling batts. But those big builds would probably be in safe Nationals party seats, so we can’t have that!
At a time when the Australian public is crying out for an articulate, engaged voice in the Rudd Government to champion green technologies, we’re getting frustratingly blinkered thinking on the issue.
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