Reports create climate headache for PM

The federal government's climate change credentials have taken another blow with the
release of two damning reports into a botched $300 million scheme to green up
households.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard is preparing to next week release fresh climate
policies in a bid to win back voters disappointed by the government's performance.
As the election approaches, climate change is a difficult issue for Labor, already
under pressure for delaying the ETS and bungling the home insulation scheme.
That pressure will intensify with findings of widespread mismanagement and money
wasting on the Green Loans program, which was supposed to grant low-interest $10,000
loans for low-emissions measures for up to 200,000 homes.
The $300 million scheme was a major 2007 election promise which was gutted earlier
this year.
An independent report by former Victorian bureaucrat Patricia Faulkner, issued on
Thursday, found environment bureaucrats took "short cuts", and there was a
"widespread lack of compliance".
Costs came in at up to 19 times the money budgeted, and bureaucrats did not seek
permission before increasing the subsidies they paid to banks. There was
insufficient competition for tenders.
A second independent report, by Resolution Consulting Services, found there was a
culture of "working around financial controls".
The Green Loans were administered by Environment Minister Peter Garrett and
departmental bureaucrats - who were also in charge of the home insulation scheme.
The scheme's loans have been axed although home assessments are continuing, with the
government promising extra help for low-income households.
Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, who is now overseeing both schemes, said the
reports "show there were significant problems".
But that was not enough for opposition parties, who seized on the reports to claim
the government was incompetent on the environment.
Opposition climate spokesman Greg Hunt said the reports found "a litany of more
failings" which were similar to the home insulation bungles.
"On the very day when the prime minister was finalising her new climate change
policy, we get another reminder of the appalling mismanagement of environmental
programs by this government," Mr Hunt said in a statement.
Australian Greens' climate spokeswoman Christine Milne said there had been
"extraordinary mismanagement" of the program.
Ms Gillard is hoping to draw a line under Labor's troubled record on climate change
as she prepares her new policies. She set the stage on Wednesday night, emphatically
ruling out any kind of carbon price before 2013.
She held to Labor's decision to delay the ETS until at least 2013 and said there
would be no carbon price - so no carbon tax or interim carbon levy - beforehand.
"The announcements of the former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd about the Carbon
Pollution Reduction Scheme stand," Ms Gillard said.
Conservation groups and the Greens were disappointed, with Greens leader Bob Brown
pledging to fight on for a carbon price.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott talked up his alternative climate policy - no carbon
price, but instead a fund for the government to directly pay for emissions
reductions.
It's an approach Ms Gillard may have to emulate next week, as it appears she is
leaning towards direct government spending on renewable energy to cut emissions.