Baswell, you need to take the blinkers off occasionally.
It's alturistic statements like yours that got Labor into trouble in the first place.
Insulation cuts energy costs by a greater factor than it costs to install, there is no denying that.
SOME insulation, can reduce energy costs in SOME homes. As kids, we lived in a non-insulated, non-air conditioned home with several kids in each bedroom. Care to elaborate how insulation would have reduced our energy costs. What you and the government fail to realize is that every home is different.
The only thing that really matters is the ratio of installs to house fires.
Tell that to the families that lost homes..."Your home was expendable! Too bad, so sad!"
Why don't you put some facts out rather than rehashing
PR garbage from a Labor government trying desperately to keep the Greens onside?
...if you install enough insulation, some houses will catch fire.
is absolute BS!
If you have poorly trained people applying foam insulation too thickly because they're in a rush, and not in layers with stipulated set times between reapplication, THEN you'll get house fires. It's a matter of when, not if. (BTW, many foam insulation products are byproducts from the petroleum industry.) There is no need for accepting any house fires if the products are applied properly.
Additional insulation also requires additional investment in many homes. Often, the air conditioner has to be downsized to increase run times and reduce humidity, otherwise the homeowner will have mold issues in the future. Who pays for this and how often does this actually occur? Five years ago, insulation gurus were recommending to encapsulate the entire home. Mold issues developed quickly. Recommendations now are for adequate and appropriate venting. Tell that to the people who had insulation applied five years ago and still aren't aware that they might have mold growing steadily and aggressively.
It's critical that the roof doesn't leak with foam insulation. Is this checked? In the future, Australians are going to be paying dearly for poorly installed insulation. It has the possibility of creating so many problems that many houses will need to be renovated with a chainsaw. It's a good product if applied properly as per the directions and with an holistic energy use approach to the whole house. Rebates encouraged honest energy assessments and moral installations and weeded out all the scammers. (Written with a heavy dose of sarcasm.)
I saw rebates applied to solar attic fans in our area. The good ones that worked well were expensive. There was a $100 rebate applied to each attic fan. The rebate drove homeowners to the cheapest models that didn't work
and away from the models that did work well. Installers adjusted their product lines to suit demand. What a crock that turned out to be!
And under the scheme, which in many states for the first time regulated that industry, safety has actually been higher, much higher than before the scheme when you would just call any local cowboy to do it.
What was the reporting process prior to regulation?
But this is off the topic of aviation...