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Senate Estimates Committees - Labor’s Waste and Mismanagement Friday, 19 October 2012 19:50

A week of Senate Estimates has exposed even more waste and mismanagement from this Labor

Government adding to the Billions of Dollars that Labor has wasted on failed schemes, botched plans

and wasteful spending of taxpayers’ money.

As Australia struggles to keep its head above water, Labor is drowning the Nation in debt.

Here are just some examples of Labor's waste and mismanagement, uncovered by the Coalition this

week during Senate Estimates.

From $100,000 splurged on fake kitchens for a Carbon Tax advertising campaign that didn’t mention

the Carbon Tax to $20,000 spent on coffee machines, $21,000 spent on a single dinner for bureaucrats

and $50,000 Ambulance trips. $700,000 spent engaging 17 lawyers to work on the Slipper/Ashby Case,

not to mention $30,000 for a portrait of the disgraced Speaker and over $1,000,000 spent on

accommodation for the Ambassador to Rome.

This is just the tip of the iceberg!

Asylum seeker numbers & costs explode

More than 7,200 asylum seekers arrived by boat in the first three months of this financial year - five

times as many as Wayne Swan estimated when framing his Budget. The budget estimate of $1.1

billion was based on an average of 450 arrivals per month but actual arrivals are running at an average

of 2,400 per month.

While departmental officials refused to be drawn on the cost of the Budget blow-out we do know that

in 2011/12 every boat that arrived cost taxpayers $12.8 million, or more than $172,700 for every

person on board.

Pink batts frauds repeated for solar panels

The Clean Energy Regulator is investigating more than 60 cases of alleged fraud relating to the Small-scale Technology Certificates (STC) program.

Under the program people who install solar panels to generate power for their hot water systems and

heat pumps are able to claim Government discounts for each megawatt hour of electricity produced.

The investigations relate to fraudulent claims that solar panels have been installed when, in fact, they

have not been installed.

The 60 cases under investigation look like being just the tip of the iceberg, with the Regulator

admitting that most STC frauds relate to multiple households.

These frauds bear all the hallmarks of the infamous ‘pink batts’ affair, where installers fraudulently

claimed rebates for installations that were never made.

Indigenous Boarding Schools Not Built

Five years on, Indigenous communities are still waiting for two out of the three promised Indigenous

boarding facilities promised by Labor in the 2007 election.

While Wadeye has been completed, construction at the other two facilities - at East Arnhem and the

Walpiri Triangle - has not even begun, and the Government has no idea when work will commence.

Former Speaker’s $30,000 portrait

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