MichaelB wrote:Hi Karen,
It certainly was a curious turn of phrase and interpretation of the situation from the government.
There's been so much upheaval in the industry over the last couple of days, we're still all catching our breath and I haven't spoken at length to EM management about it all to get our official comment on the situation for an article; but I hope to publish something next week. I'll try to get some figures together as well.
We may be able to provide some feedback to the government via the article; so if anyone is happy to have their comments quoted, please indicate that in further comments below. I can't promise we'll get them all into one article, but enough to generally represent the views of some of the people affected who really want the Green Loans program to continue. We have quite a few politicians who follow our news stories and some may even follow this thread.
Michael,
Feel free to quote etc, and further to my post the other day :-
(BTW, I wouldn't really expect anyone to be able to come up with comparative statistics for Loans and Assessment reports issued or assessments carried out but not yet reported. One wonders, sometimes, whether DEWHA can count anything at all
) Anyway ..." the discontinuation of the less popular loans component next month to provide for the significant boost to assessment availability;"
Some person or group with some clout needs to explain to the author of the above statement that there are some problems with the premise on which it is based ...
1. The Loans component would be a helluva lot more popular if people who had had their houses assessed were actually in receipt of their Assessment Reports!!! You can't apply for a loan till you have your report, and there are plenty of anecdotes in this and other fora of people who were assessed in October, and who are still don't have their report! DEWHA needs to get assessments processed much quicker than they have to date!
2. It's probably far too late for this one, but the software which spits out the reports needs serious revision - there is a crazy statement somewhere on the "Eligible Items Certificate" (I think??) which says something to the effect that this assessment is a personalised one, tailored to 'your home', which is patent twaddle!!!
As long as the certificates permit you to do things which you have already done, or things which are impossible, then people are going to be at best bemused, and more likely angry or p%%%ed off, and they are less likely to apply for a loan.
(As an example, I have a recommendation to connect to natural gas all my cooking, hot water heating and space heating. I already HAVE a gas stove and gas space heating, and a fully functional heat pump HWS. There is also a recommendation that I change my HWS to a gas-boosted solar one. (min 25 RECS) I'm afraid that 25 RECS is not sufficient incentive for me to change my heat pump HWS to anything - there are no other incentives from either state or c'wlth to do so, and I see no point anyway, when in many other places they are trying to ENCOURAGE people to install heat pumps!!! The only cooking I do other than with natural gas is in the microwave; I have yet to find someone selling a gas-fired microwave oven
) There are others who have the "connect to natural gas" recommendation, who live in the bush, some hundreds of kms from the nearest piped gas supply!)3. For those who have been lucky enough to get one of these edifying documents, there have often been frustrating dealings with financial institutions. Many FIs don't seem to know how the scheme was supposed to work, and there are tales of people being told that they should get whatever work done, and present the invoices to the financial institution for payment; others have been told that the FI must approve what work is done, and similar idiocies! No wonder the "loans component" is allegedly less popular!!!
In general, credit unions seem to be better than most banks at dealing with Green Loans, and while some are reported to be exemplary, there are others which aren't necessarily good, just less bad!
4. And what strange thinking lead the author of the press release to think that increasing assessments without the loans is going to do anything other than employ a bundle of assessors????? While many assessors desperately need some employment, and providing that in a more orderly fashion than seems to have been the case to date is an excellent outcome, I was under the (mis?)apprehension that the scheme was actually devised to encourage people to green their houses, or decrease their energy use, or live more sustainably etc etc.
Having someone go through his house and tell Joe McMansion-dweller what he can do to be greener, and then have an internally inconsistent and/or inapplicable list of suggestions sent to him, is unlikely to make anything useful happen at all. He's probably flat out trying to work out whether his new insulation is going to burn his house down, and working out how he can pay for the 77 Isolites he needs to deal with his downlights, and for someone to install them and fix the rest of the dodgy stuff in his roof!!
I think the decision to discontinue the Green Loans is precipitous, ill-founded, and another example of the crazy knee-jerk reactions that the bureaucrats in DEWHA seem to be produce every time the tabloid press starts yelping. If some of the bureaucrats got cracking and processed assessment reports and sent them out, and wrote and distributed some clear guidelines for financial institutions, we would all be better served. If they're stumbling under the pressure of the high speed Rudd-mobile, they should be asking for more staff, not less work!!!
