The Rudd Government has given Australians further reason to question whether it believes in anything by axing a promised rewards card it never managed to deliver under its bungled Green Loans program, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Action Simon Birmingham said today.
“The cancellation of the mythical $50 Green Rewards Card represents a broken promise and ends a long-running fib perpetrated by the Rudd Government,” Senator Birmingham said today.
From July 2009, households receiving a home sustainability assessment under the failed program received a letter from Peter Garrett saying that
“to help you get started, my Department will shortly be sending you a $50 Green Reward Card which you can redeem at selected retail outlets to purchase eligible energy or water saving devices”.
With Penny Wong having assumed responsibility for the Green Loans program with no loans, two months ago she confessed:
“no Green Rewards Cards have been distributed to households to date. I have asked my department to provide further detail on how this might be addressed quickly, and will consider this matter further when I receive that advice.”
Two months later, Senator Wong’s ‘quick’ way of addressing this failure has been to abolish it altogether, as confirmed on Page 120 of Budget Paper 2:
“… the Green Rewards Card will no longer be available to households receiving assessments after 11 May 2010.”
“Despite starting home sustainability assessments last July, the Rudd Government has been unable to deliver a single one of these $50 shopping vouchers to any of the eligible homes.
“The cancellation of this $50 voucher before any were delivered just highlights this Government’s stunning ability to fail on even the simplest aspects of administration. As always, Kevin Rudd has over promised and under delivered.
“Having come this far, Senator Wong might like to explain why her Government apparently still plans to retrospectively send as many as 300,000 shopping vouchers close to a year late in many cases rather than just saving taxpayers $15 million and apologising for their stuff up.”