HIP Royal Commission submission (7): How the LNP/MSM lied about pink batts
The Royal Commission report into the so-called insulation program ‘disaster’ is expected today. Yet already it has generated headlines damaging for the Labor Party. According to Alan Austin, who presented a sworn statement of evidence to the Commission, media coverage of the Home Insulation Program (HIP) was characterised by distortion, omission and outright lies right from the outset.
This is the seventh and final part of Alan's submission (edited only slightly for format).
Naming the HIP ‘bungle’, ‘debacle’ and ‘disaster’
The Rudd Government was warned by (risk assessment consultants)
Minter Ellison at the outset about possible political attacks. It was
advised that ‘a variety of failures in the process, system, project
deliverables etc may have significant indirect political/public
confidence impact’.
It was told to expect:
‘... excessive media attention on non-compliance.'
The Government could hardly have anticipated the ferocity and the
mendacity of the media campaign unleashed by its opponents from the
outset.
Campaigns in Australia to denigrate, misreport and misrepresent
initiatives of the Rudd/Gillard governments have all been highly
successful — but none more so than the campaign against the HIP.
The campaign led by the Murdoch media appears to have had five main lines of attack.
First, to depict the scheme as an investment enterprise requiring cost savings rather than a rapid expenditure exercise, then to attack the government for high outlays.
Examples:
‘Insulation budget facing big blowout’ ~ The Australian, 22 August 2009
‘Education funds found from savings in insulation, housing schemes’ ~ news.com.au, 28 August 2009
Second, to depict the inevitable negative events which the scheme had
anticipated as abnormal, unexpected, unforeseen and the fault of the
incompetent federal government.
Examples:
‘Warning on rip-offs by dodgy pink batt installers’ ~ The Australian, 16 March 2009
‘Insulation subsidy scheme rorted’ ~ The Australian, 20 June 2009
‘Insulation batts blamed for several fires across NSW’ ~ The Daily Telegraph, 21 September 2009
‘Homeowners warned to check for shonky ceiling insulation’ ~ The Courier-Mail, 09 October 2009
None of this hostile anti-Government rhetoric was inspired by grief
at any fatality. These were all published before the first death in
October 2009.
The third line of attack was to highlight all the warnings of safety
risks the government received but ignore the responses to those
warnings. This strategy has been highly effective.
Official correspondence between government ministers shows many letters were exchanged in order to resolve safety issues.
That process usually had five stages:
- Safety risk advice was transmitted by letter to a public servant or a minister or the PM.
- A letter was sent in reply with responses to the advice, authorising action as required.
- Remedial action was assigned to those responsible.
- Remedial action was taken, and
- Safety outcomes were then delivered — with an overall dramatic decline in adverse incidents from levels recorded prior to the HIP.
however, is report the first of these five stages, ignoring the
following four.
A particularly destructive campaign was conducted by [then]
opposition shadow minister for the environment Greg Hunt who accessed
the declassified correspondence between minister Peter Garrett and Prime
Minister Kevin Rudd.
On Mr Hunt’s website in 2013 were placed four letters from Mr Garrett
advising the PM of serious risks and urging immediate action. Omitted
from the website, however, were the prompt replies from the PM which
revealed his awareness of minister Garrett’s concerns and which
authorised appropriate responses.
The correspondence between the ministers was professional, timely and
appropriate. But by revealing one side only and suppressing the other,
the impression was conveyed to great effect that the hapless, impotent
minister was being completely ignored by an arrogant, disengaged PM.
The letters are no longer on Mr Hunt’s website, but a trace remains in a media release on the Pandora archive website, dated Saturday 6 July 2013, headed:
‘MR RUDD MUST EXPLAIN WHY HE WON’T RELEASE HOME INSULATION WARNINGS’. [32]
In that media release, Mr Hunt asserts:
If Mr Rudd’s belated apology is to have real meaning, he must now
release all 10 warnings that he personally received – and any others
which may exist but to date we are not aware of, and most importantly
the four letters directly from minister Garrett:
- 14 August 2009, letter from Mr Garrett
- 27 August 2009, letter from Mr Garrett …
- 28 October 2009, letter from Mr Garrett
- 30 October 2009, letter from Mr Garrett …
In fact, correspondence between Mr Garrett and Mr Rudd had been
declassified more than three years earlier on 27 May 2010 and has been
on the public record ever since. [33]
Mr Garrett’s letters on 20 and 28 August 2009 were replied to on 4 September 2009.
The letter from Mr Garrett on 28 October 2009 was replied to on 29 October 2009.
The letter from Mr Garrett on 30 October 2009 was replied to on 2 November 2009.
The full correspondence is available here.
Media examples of that strategy of suppressing one side of readily available two-way correspondence include:
‘Garrett Got Insulation Warning’ ~ The West Australian, 11 February 2010
‘Deadly Alarm Raised Often’ ~ Herald-Sun, 12 February 2010
‘New Garrett Shame: Insulation Boss Reveals: I Told minister of Poison Batts Threat’ ~ Herald Sun, 13 February 2010
‘Rudd Insulated from Warnings’ ~ The Australian, 19 February 2101
‘Letters reveal risk known’ ~ The Sydney Morning Herald, 28 May 2010
Both the Fairfax media group and ABC News appear to have joined the Murdoch campaign of deceptive reporting in about March 2010.
The fourth line of attack was simply to suppress references to context, history and success.
There was seldom mention of the reality that accidents and fatalities
are entrenched features of building activity throughout the world.
There was no reference to the dramatic decline in industrial accidents
generally and electrocutions particularly through 2009. There were few,
if any, references to the other 212 industrial fatalities in 2009-10.
Nor reference to the fact that this was a 28% decline from the 300
workers killed in 2006–07.
And, of course, no reference to the program’s remarkable triumph in averting recession – almost certainly the world’s most successful – and preventing some hundreds of deaths.
The effectiveness of this anti-government campaign is seen in
continuing references to the HIP across virtually all mainstream media
with pejorative terminology.
Examples include:
‘Home insulation bungle to hit budget bottom line’ ~ ABC PM, 11 March 2010
‘Govt requests probe of failed home insulation scheme’ ~ ABC PM, 4 March 2010
‘Insulation debacle shows a party unfit for government’ ~ ABC News, 11 August 2010
‘Tony Abbott promises judicial inquiry into botched home insulation scheme’ ~ ABC News, 9 Aug 2013
After the first fatality in October 2009, this campaign of
misrepresentation escalated to a frenzy in which the four deceased were
exploited shamelessly.
According to the University of Sydney’s Professor Rodney Tiffen:
The Coalition’s rhetoric was extreme and unqualified. It climaxed
with Tony Abbott’s claim that if Mr Garrett were a company director in
New South Wales ‘he would be charged with industrial manslaughter.’
Abbott called the scheme ‘the most monumentally bungled government
program in Australia’s history’ and claimed that the government was in
‘electrocution denial.’ His Coalition colleagues joined the attack, with
South Australian senator Simon Birmingham claiming that the ‘greatest
threat to the safety of many Australian families over the last twelve
months has been the home insulation program’. [8]
The final strategy was to blame the Government for the scheme’s
premature truncation – which clearly cost many businesses dearly and
curtailed the potential environmental benefits – rather than the
hysterical anti-HIP campaign by the government’s opponents.
Media examples:
‘Garrett denies scrapping of insulation program a disaster’ ~ ABC PM, 19 February 2010
‘Disaster leaves Garrett hanging’ ~ Herald Sun, 20 February 2010
As an additional insult, some formal inquiries claimed
that the government had caused ‘reputational damage’ to the insulation
industry — but without noting the campaigns of misrepresentation and
distortion by opponents of the program. [34]
In contrast, much sound reporting was provided by the alternative online media.
Excellent reports include the analysis by Scott Steel in Crikey referred to earlier [in Part Five], Professor Tiffen’s analysis, referred to above, and these:
‘What the Auditor couldn't see’ ~ New Matilda, 25 Oct 2010, and
‘Pink batts: not a scandal, but not as good as claimed’ ~ The Conversation, 30 October 2012
These, however, were overwhelmed by the mendacious and
politically-motivated attacks on the HIP in mainstream daily newspapers,
radio and television.
Families and friends of the deceased – and the wider community – have
been told repeatedly to believe that the national enterprise to which
the young men were contributing was a ‘scandal’, a ‘disaster’ and a
‘debacle’.
According to objective analysis, however, the HIP was a remarkable success.
It should have been the occasion of national pride and celebration –
along with construction of the magnificent Sydney Harbour Bridge in the
1920s (which cost 16 lives) and the Snowy River hydro-electric facility in the 1950s and 60s (which cost 121 lives).
Australia’s great mining enterprises take between five and 15 lives
each year. Manufacturing in Australia costs more than 17 lives each
year. General aviation takes more than 25 lives a year. Australia’s
farms and forests claim more than 50 lives a year. [35]
Despite the seemingly unavoidable tragedies — all of these important initiatives are making Australia a better place.
References:
8. http://inside.org.au/a-mess-a-shambles-a-disaster/#sthash.Dgfr8rM1.dpuf
32. http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/44910/20130909-0344/greghunt.com.au/Portals/0/13-07-06%20Rudd%20Must%20Explain%20Why%20He%20Will%20Not%20Release%20Home%20Insulation%20Warnings.pdf
33.http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/special_eds/20100426/insulation/docs/ministers_letters.pdf
34. http://www.anao.gov.au/Publications/Audit-Reports/2010-2011/Home-Insulation-Program/Audit-brochure
35. http://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/sites/swa/about/publications/pages/work-related-traumatic-injury-fatalities-australia-2012-
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