Share this:
Tags: ALP, asylum seekers, election 2013, kevin rudd, Labor Party, pink batts
Tag Archives: pink batts
Still Losing Money On Pink Batts Rorts
17 FebNow it’s official.
Some 445 “companies” have succeeded in ripping off the government – that is, taxpayers – to the tune of nearly $14 million.
How?
Simply by shutting down while still owing debts to the government under the GFC “stimulus” pink batts home insulation scheme:
THE Government has written off nearly $14 million owed by companies believed to have wrongly claimed subsidies under the failed home insulation program, a senate estimates hearing has heard.
And it has decided to reverse $10.2 million in “potential debt”, deciding it may have been owed the money but it would have difficulty proving and collecting it.
The botched scheme was plagued by dodgey practices and was linked to the deaths of four installers and 224 house fires.
Climate Change and Energy Efficiency Department deputy secretary Subho Banerjee told the hearing that 671 debts from 516 installers totalling $6.69 million was still owed to it, but even that might not be recovered.
“The experience in these debt recovery operations across the Commonwealth is that the expected recovery rates are generally very low,” Dr Banerjee said.
“That’s our advice in this case as well.”
He said $1.89 million had been recovered.
But the hearing heard $13.77 million of debts were written off – seven because companies were declared bankrupt, one because of death, 445 because the companies ceased operating and 35 deemed “uneconomical to pursue”.
Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham asked what lengths the Government had gone to to chase down those 445 cases.
“Or was it just the case that people managed to set up companies, fleece the taxpayer of $13.7 million and then close down their companies and get away with it?” he said.
Remember this, should you ever have the tax man breathing down your neck for a miserable few hundred or thousand bucks.
IMF Gives Goose His Cue To Lay Their Golden Egg
16 DecIt’s not that Wayne needs much convincing to create more debt.
One need only look at the epic, world-beating rise in Australia’s public debt under The Goose, using the GFC as the excuse.
Now, just when he might be beginning to run out of excuses, here comes the IMF with the cue Wayne needs:
IMF boss says no country in the world is immune from the crisis and all must take steps to boost growth, with risks of inaction including ‘isolation and other elements reminiscent of the 1930s depression’.
Regular readers know that the IMF has decades of ‘form’.
It will always call for nations to “stimulate” growth. Why? The deeper in debt, the sooner the IMF is called in to “bail out”.
Taking the nation’s infrastructure (airports, highways, ports, railways, telecomms, electricity grids, etc) as collateral.
And, the nation’s sovereignty.
Wayne is just the Goose to lay the IMF’s golden egg.
QLD Government’s “Green” Showerhead Scam In NSW Too
21 Nov(h/t Andrew Bolt’s blog)
Funny isn’t it.
How the mainstream media begin to highlight the direct connection between “green energy” scams and carbon credits, only after the Green-Labor government has rammed its carbon derivatives scam legislation through the Parliament.
It is almost amusing that this story concerning a NSW Government “showerheads” scam, has come out just 6 days after this blog’s popular and widely-read exposé of the Queensland Government’s “ClimateSmart” scam. A scam which includes flogging (amongst other eco-gimmicks) low-quality “energy saving” showerheads to the public without clearly revealing that the Federal Government was accruing carbon credits for them, and without clearly revealing to the customer that they were signing over all rights and entitlements to any carbon credits accruing from “or related to” energy savings in their household.
Here’s the story of the NSW scam, from The Sunday Telegraph (emphasis added):
Dodgy door-to-door salesmen cash in on yet another green scheme
DODGY door-to-door salesmen have cashed in on yet another green scheme in a replica rort to the Federal Government’s bungled pink batts scandal.
In a secret report obtained by The Sunday Telegraph, the state’s independent power regulator has demanded the multimillion dollar scheme be shut down immediately. The NSW Government yesterday also promised to investigate suspected widespread abuse.
The little-known scheme has proven a bonanza for operaters selling showerheads to households in return for up to $30 million in tradeable energy certificates which have also driven up the state’s power bills.
The Sunday Telegraph can reveal that the sale of showerheads has exploded since the Federal Government ended the pink batts scheme.
“We suspect many of the same operators who were involved in the sale of pink batts were involved in the sale of showerheads,” one industry source said. “When pinks batts was suspended, there was a big jump in the production of energy savings certificates from showerhead sales.”
The supension of the pink batts scheme in February last year saw a surge in the number of energy-saving certificates produced by selling showerheads from 37,032 in 2009 to a staggering 406,755 in 2010.
More than than half the certificates created by the scheme are now generated from the sale of water- and energy-saving showerheads.
The Department of Fair Trading has also been flooded with complaints about dodgy showerhead installations.
These include door-to-door salesmen encouraging customers to buy two showerheads, others encouraged to sign forms to state their showerhead had been replaced when it hadn’t, as well as numerous complaints about dodgy installations which led to water leaks.
A yet-to-be released Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal report on the Energy Saving Scheme, obtained by The Sunday Telegraph, found the issuing of energy-saving certificates from the sale of showerheads was open to manipulation, and threatened the integrity of the entire scheme.
The regulator said it was concerned about the potential for “inaccurate, and possibly purposefully manipulated” certificates. “We are also concerned that the new showerheads are mostly replacing previously installed low-flow showerheads.”
Under the scheme launched in 2009, a market is created in tradable energy efficiency certificates which must be purchased by the state’s energy operators as part of a government push to reduce energy consumption.
The report shows the scheme cost more than $20 million last year — $10 million of it just for showerheads — which had to be paid for by households in their quarterly power bills.
The certificates cost more than $30 million this year because their value increased. [TBI: how? why? as per the guaranteed-to-rise carbon price, right?!]
The Government is likely to move quickly to wind up the showerhead component of the scheme. Energy Minister Chris Hartcher said: “The NSW Government is extremely concerned by yet another botched Labor scheme and will be giving serious consideration to IPART’s recommendations.”
[Note to News Ltd: for crying out loud, get a sub-editor who can spell … or at least use a spell-checker!]
The print version of The Sunday Telegraph also featured these extra inset pieces:
Enact Energy Suspended
> Enact Energy earned zero certificates in 2009 and 274,899 in 2010
> Earned more than $5m from trading certificates
> Suspended from Energy Saving Scheme in June this year after an audit uncovered allegedly questionable bookkeeping
And…
In hot water over showerheads
Western Sydney business partners Mustafa Ali Khan and Kamran Mirza were set to make $1.5 million from the shower head replacement scheme.
However, the directors of Regents Park firm Combined Force have been barred from further participation after an auditor questioned their records.
Mr Khan and Mr Mirza, who set up their business to take part in the pink batts insulation scheme, claim they have been unfairly done by.
“There are some companies making lots of money,” Mr Khan said. “We have been operating honestly. We are a small company and we are suffering. I am not happy.”
…
Mr Khan and Mr Mirza claim they had generated 13,500 certificates, qualifying the business to create a further 50,000, which they estimate would have been worth about $1.5 million.
However, an IPART-appointed auditor claimed Combined Force had improperly created certificates.
The company has now stopped installing showerheads in NSW, while it remains in dispute with IPART. It continues to sell rof insulation, solar hot water systems and energy efficient lighting.
Combined Force owners deny any wrongdoing.
“We don’t criticise the scheme, it is a good scheme, but the audit system is wrong,” Mr Mirza said.
“We did the right thing.”
And…
HOW IT WORKS
> Get accredited to earn energy-saving certificates
> Use door-to-door salesmen to persuade families [TBI: and especially old folk, no doubt!] to let you fit showerheads for them, for ‘free’
> Each showerhead earns you ‘certificates’: 1.5 for a gas water system, more than three for electric hot water systems
> Certificates worth about $30 and are traded to power companies
> Power companies use the certificates to offset their energy use
Observant readers will notice the vital inconsistency in the above articles, all on the same page of the same newspaper! I have underlined them for emphasis. On the one hand, it is said that the companies cashing on on this scheme qualify to “create” energy-saving certificates. But in an adjacent piece, it says they get accredited to “earn” the certificates.
This slack, lazy reporting pisses your humble blogger right off.
Because this very inconsistency actually points to the root of the fraud. Any half-decent journalist (or Editor) should notice this inconsistency, question “What is the truth here?”, and investigate.
Whereupon they would eventually discover what barnabyisright.com readers have known for a long time.
Only governments can “create” the green religion’s new form of electronic “money”.
So it is governments – not dodgy salesmen – who should be the focus of these stories.
Let us be clear, dear reader.
This “showerhead scam” is not the work of dodgy door-to-door salesmen.
It is a government-mandated program.
It began with the government forcing state energy suppliers to buy “energy efficiency certificates”.
Sound familiar?
Sounds exactly like the much bigger, much grander, Federal Government Clean Energy Future carbon derivatives scam to me.
The basic operating principle, is exactly the same.
By bankster-financed government decree, Company A is forced to buy some form of “green” energy “certificate” / carbon “credit”, from Government Z.
As a result, Company A looks for ways to reduce (not their energy usage but) the number/cost of those “credits” they have to buy … while making extra profits at the same time.
Voila!
A very slick “ClimateSmart” scam in Queensland.
A not so slick Energy Saving Scheme scam in NSW.
In the case of the Federal Clean Energy Future scam, Company A looks for ways to reduce (not their “emissions” but) the number/cost of carbon “units” they have to buy, in the following ways:
1. Conveniently underestimate (‘misreport’) their emissions, in their annual self-reporting to the government;
2. Buy much cheaper international carbon “credits” from shonky offshore sellers;
3. “Hedge” their carbon credit liability, by “investing” (ie, betting) in all manner of speculative carbon derivative financial “products”, designed by the bankstering industry.
By the way, on these showerhead scams.
It is worth noting something else too.
In these examples of state-based green rorts, the “Company A” that is being “forced” to aid and abet the government-mandated “green energy” scam … just happens to be a government-owned company.
The electricity generators in NSW and Queensland are mostly state government-owned.
And in the case of the Queensland “ClimateSmart” scam, it is run by a Pty Ltd company owned by the Queensland Treasury Corporation.
So let us not be too angry with those chaps featured in The Sunday Telegraph.
Unlike most of us, they were bright and cunning enough to have an eye out for the main chance.
The real culprit in all these green schemes scams, is the originator.
International finance.
Bankers.
The creators of computerised “money” (debt).
The creators of the concept of computerised carbon “credits” (debt).
The financiers of everything … including the Great Global Warming Hoax.
Aided and abetted by our self-serving, clueless, sell-my-mother-for-votes-or-just-a-better-portfolio politicians.
Except Senator Joyce.
Barnaby Joyce has long described trading in carbon permits as “The Greatest Scam On Earth”.
Barnaby is right.
Joyce: Rudd ‘A Deadly Risk’
28 FebBarnaby Joyce has returned fire at Kevin Rudd on Saturday, after the PM suggested that Barnaby should be sacked:
“Surely Mr Rudd must see the paradox of his statement,” Senator Joyce told AAP.
“The person who has now admitted responsibility for a program that has burnt down 100 houses, killed four people, electrified 1000 houses and created fatal death traps and is going to cost $100 million just to fix, is stating that I may appear a risk.
“Quite evidently he is absolutely a risk, a deadly risk.”
Earlier on Saturday, PM Rudd had again tried to discredit Barnaby over his warnings late last year concerning the possibility of the USA defaulting on its massive debts:
“It’s now, I think, 87 days since Mr Abbott took the reckless decision, the risky decision, of making Barnaby Joyce the alternative finance minister of Australia,” Mr Rudd told reporters in Adelaide.
“In just 87 days he said that America could default on its sovereign debt, he said that the Australian states could or would default on their sovereign debt, he has said that the Australian government could or would default on its sovereign debt.
Kevin Rudd is a liar. Barnaby Joyce never said that Australia could or would “default”. Instead, he questioned whether we could repay our debt, if the Government continues on its present rapidly-rising trajectory of wasteful (and deadly) spending with borrowed money –
Kevin Rudd is oblivious to the warnings of many acclaimed international economists who share Barnaby’s concerns.
Kevin Rudd also appears ignorant of the deep concerns about US sovereign debt that were expressed by none other than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just three days ago. She warned that the US deficit is a risk to national security:
“We have to address this deficit and the debt of the United States as a matter of national security not only as a matter of economics,” Clinton said. “I do not like to be in a position where the United States is a debtor nation to the extent that we are.”
Having to rely on foreign creditors hit “our ability to protect our security, to manage difficult problems and to show the leadership that we deserve,” she said.
“The moment of reckoning cannot be put off forever,” she said. “I really honestly wish I could turn the clock back.”
Kevin Rudd is a proven liar, an economic imbecile, and an arrogant, financially reckless fool.
Barnaby is right.
UPDATE: Abbott backs Joyce, happy with performance
UPDATE 2: ‘Fix the stuff ups’, Joyce Tells Rudd –
‘I am flattered that Mr Rudd would come out on Saturday to go after little old me but I really thought he had other things to do and if he has spare time my humble suggestion is to concentrate on fixing up your stuff ups.
‘If he wants me to make suggestions for his little notebook I will forward my mobile number later.’
Barnaby Is Right 
Comments