Government Green Loans Scheme on the Mat and Counting

One of the Rudd Government’s key climate change initiatives – the $70 Million Green Loans scheme – is close to collapse amid claims of widespread rorting and mismanagement. It will be lucky to survive past March. Similarities are already being drawn with the bungled $3.2 billion home insulation subsidy scheme, as a Senate inquiry probes accusations of malpractice, rorting and mismanagement. Tuck Thompson reports in the Courier Mail.

Tuck Thompson in the Courier Mail (30 January 2010):

ONE of the Rudd Government’s key climate change initiatives is close to collapse amid claims of widespread rorting and mismanagement.

Just six months after its launch, the $70 million Green Loans scheme to get Australians to install energy-efficient products will be lucky to survive past March without millions more in taxpayer funding.

Similarities are already being drawn between Green Loans and the Government’s bungled $3.2 billion home insulation subsidy scheme. A Senate inquiry into the insulation rebate scheme is probing accusations of malpractice, rorting and mismanagement.

The much-vaunted Green Loans program was supposed to run for three years but is being bled dry by a flurry of unregistered operators.

So far, there have been just 1000 subsidised loans approved for solar power and water-saving and energy-efficient products.

Now thousands of people who paid $3000 each to become Green Loans assessors will be thrown on the unemployment scrapheap if the scheme collapses.

Instead of using only registered training organisations, unregistered groups were allowed to conduct audit training courses, with one earning $300,000 in one weekend by packing 200 people in a class at $1500 a head.

The Opposition’s environment spokesman, Greg Hunt, yesterday called for a “full-scale investigation”, claiming the program had been a fiasco.

But the Federal Government yesterday defended the scheme, with a spokesman for Environment Minister Peter Garrett saying it had “stimulated significant growth in the market for household sustainability assessors”.

He said the scheme’s future would be considered “in the context of Budget deliberations”.

Brisbane’s Gillian Steele said she thought the project had “a lot of merit” when she paid $3000 for herself and her daughter to be trained as Green Loans assessors.

“I’m frustrated and disappointed,” she said yesterday.

Source: www.news.com.au