The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

It’s that time of the year again when both the state and federal governments put the final touches to their plotting and planning and preparations for the ritual of the dreaded annual Budget.
Of course the purse is always empty due to the appalling incompetence of the previous administration and drastic measures will have to be taken. There’s always talk of sacrifice, belt tightening and the usual predictable nonsense.

The Federal government has finally noticed that the big fat baby boomer bulge has now started moving to the retirement phase. So they are running around like headless chooks telling us that the sky is falling down. It didn’t seem to bother them back in 2003 to 2007 when they made massive tax cuts to the top end of the tax brackets and brought in a $5,000 baby bonus as if the good times were going to go on forever. Not once did they tweek the ridiculous 30% marginal rate on any dollar earned over $22,500 as if they believed that no one actually earned so little money. Of course the lower down the tax band that you change the rates the more it costs because everyone gets it. The Liberals under Howard did finally notice the ‘working poor’ and throw them a few crumbs in 2006 but by then it was far too late and they finally found themselves in the dustbin of history.
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Izzie has been pigging out on what is possibly a last online seed buying binge.

As of Monday 1st July courtesy of the state government, there are now new fees for home gardeners who buy seeds from overseas or even interstate
Not one or two dollars per order but a ridiculous $56. It's supposedly for the quarantine mob to keep out all the evil nasties so often found in all those ghastly heirloom and organically grown seeds.

They got this little trick in under the radar. The permaculture people and other tree hugging greenies had started a media campaign and were getting good coverage when suddenly a certain drama in Canberra wiped the story right off the map. Ever so convenient for our little Emperor sitting in his ivory tower on the hill

The government made no effort at all to inform anyone about these new charges. In fact they went out of their way to keep them most secret indeed. And this in the very same week that they let Monsanto increase its share in Intergrain which used to be a government owned grain research organization.
Letting The AgriBeast in was just about the first thing the present state government did when it first got into office back in September 2008. Despite the warnings from organic growers, greenies and others that this would risk Western Australia losing its clean and green food producing reputation. Here we are with the natural advantage of distance from most pests and diseases and these goblins go and throw it all away for less than 30 pieces of silver. But they are still happy to use the excuse of quarantine to slug home gardeners with these outrageous charges

It’s not that difficult to show up this big fat new carbon tax as the revenue grabbing scam that it really is. Garden Guru Trevor Cochrane has blown some serious holes in the sad and pathetic concern for protection of our precious biosecurity.

The serpent’s supplier of choice is for the moment absorbing the cost. But here is guessing such good will towards their customers in the wild west will not last longer than a month or two.
And the 8 packets of free seeds that Diggers members get per year will soon be a thing of the past over here in the wild west.

Izzie doesn't want to buy the dodgy seeds in the big barns and supermarkets. Even most of those come from the United Kingdom. Not to mention one is never quite sure of the parent companies and there are less and less of those these days

If the goblins really think they will make a killing on these new fees, then they are in for a big big surprise. Never ever piss off the greenies.
The folks who don’t get all sneaky (and there’s huge fines for seed ‘smuggling’ to discourage them) will find other ways to get even

If there ever was a time to get organizing local seed saving exchanges, this is it.

Izzie's been a lazy lazy serpent. Been doing not much all week, not even posting in journal land. The last few nights, just when getting in the squiggling mood, the phone rings and that's the end of that. One minor disadvantage to making up with Petunia after 4 weeks of breaking off diplomatic relations

It's been a week now since the latest act of government stupidity. These idiots just make up stuff as they go along and seem totally incapable of learning from their mistakes. If they were a business, they'd have gone bankrupt within a year

Bringing in rebates for installing house insulation seems like a good idea - for creating jobs and saving energy - especially in a place like Dursleyville where today's weather forecast is a stinking 42 celsius. It was the high 30s yesterday with more of the same predicted for the next few days. So that's the reason why Izzie is slinking around the Lair rather than going on coffee crawls and picnics in lunatic asylums

But like everything this government does, it throws around money first, makes grand announcements and then only when the inevitable stuff ups pile up does it stop and react and start putting out fires instead of preventing them in the first place

The scheme started last February with the federal government announcing a $$1,600 rebate to be paid for home insulation. For the first 3 months householders could get the stuff installed and then claim the rebate but from the start of July, they would not have to be out of pocket at all as the government would pay the money directly to the installers

It soon became apparent just how many wasps were attracted to this huge government honey pot
Izzie had been procrastinating for a very long time concerning insulation. It would have been pretty painful to have had the stuff installed only to discover that a few months later the government would pay the full cost
Procrastination also paid in getting to know which companies had been around a long time and were reputable and which were dodgy wasps coming out of the woodwork

Bradford was one of the reputable ones. They had been around a long time and their yellow glass wool batts were made in Australia.
Their guy came out and looked up in the attic and declared that as there was already old insulation up there, the Izzie did not qualify for the new rebate
It was totally new to Izzie or any of the other occupants that there was any insulation at all since the house is as hot as hell in summer and fairly cold in winter. In other words, anything up there which must be at least 15 years old was well past its use by date and so damned ineffective that we did not know it even existed. Oh but no - it was there and so under the rules we did not qualify

The real reason would be something like that any of the more reputable companies were snowed under with queues of potential customers and all jobs would be bringing in $$1,600 even though the average house could be insulated for more like $$1,200
So they wanted to cherry pick the lowest hanging fruit - single storey homes with no added extras like removing old useless insulation
Having old insulation wouldn't bother the shonkers - they'd probably reuse it for some one else. But Izzie was not that desparate and would keep watching and waiting
Soon enough, stories started coming out that people in country towns were finding it increasingly difficult to get any roof insulation done at all except by Dodgy brothers and co

And they were popping up everywhere. Soon mailboxes were full of "Free insulation' fliers, shopping centres had stalls full of these dodgy mob and every other phone call would be from some Indian spammer claiming to be from the Federal Government offering free insulation

Izzie was not interested. And then the stupid went on steroids. Installers were putting in foil insulation using staple guns to put it in place. They were too cheap and nasty to train people properly. Three installers were electrocuted and died doing this. Still the government did nothing
They had brought in this scheme with no thought whatsoever to monitoring safety standards especially as the industry was now filled with sub sub sub contractors - each getting cheaper and nastier down the line
One 19 year old installer in Sydney came out from a roof top and two hours later had died of heat stroke. He would have been working for hours and hours in hot and humid cramped ceiling spaces in temperatures of over 50 celsius. If a healthy 19 year old can die in such cirucmstances, they must be truly horrific
The demand had gotten so high and the safety and quality controls were so lax that soon companies were importing very cheap and very nasty mainland Chinese batts full of formaldehyde, asbestos and most likely melamine infested milk powder and any other toxic waste that the Chinese could find - a bit like how abbatoir waste gets put in pretty tins with pictures of happy cats on the label and titles like Gourmet chicken and leek dinner

The government did reduce the rebate to $$1,200 which it should have been in the first place but it was too late. The industry was so infested with cowboys and shonkies

Then the house fires started. Installers were putting batts over halogen downlights and it's likely that many of those batts totally failed any fire safety standards

Izzie had pretty much given up at this stage. There was one local company left - from before the batts bonanza called AGI. They used rock wool rather than glass. Would try them maybe
That was until two weeks ago when the cheap and nasty neighbour had a bunch of AGI batts lying around in the front courtyard. The gate was open so this nosey serpent went to peek. We wants to know where this Proudly Australian Company source their batts from. (most of them are smart enough to lie on the phone and once they've got your custom, it's too late then)
Most definitely not Oz. It was Thailand where they were made. So that was the end of that

So last Friday, after all these deaths and housefires, the government finally pulled the plug. They did it with no warning at all. So all installers are affected and suddenly go from piles and piles of jobs waiting to absolutely nothing at all.
The good, the bad and the ugly are all being treated just the same.

They will bring back a modified version of the scheme with the rebate down to $%1,000 but payable up front like it was for the first 3 months of the original scheme

They did the same sort of shit last year with the solar panel rebates. The previous government's $$8,000 rebate scheme was due to end on 30th June. With no warning, they pulled the plug on 8th June leaving many people's plans totally stuffed up
You'd have to be nuts to be involved in any kind of environmental or alternative energy business here in Oz with fickle capricious idiots like that running the joint
And they simply refuse to learn from their mistakes. New Zealand already had a government subsidized home insulation program in place but they refused to find out how theirs worked just like they refused to see that the best way for government to encourage increased usage of solar panels was not to fart around with upfront rebates (which one again encourage sharks and shonks)but to have a gross feed in tariff for electricity generated. This gives certainty and the ability to plan and to be able to get outside finance

Izzie was lucky - got our panels before they started farting around with phantom renewable energy certificates. Got the full $$8,000 from one of the old and reliable companies
It was exactly two years ago on Tuesday and the total kilowatts up to that day was 2450.

Here's hoping that two years from now that the Izzie will also have decent insulation and that the government - if they don't get tossed out this year - that they will finally get their act together and do a bit of real green thinking instead of just spinning