Kevin Rudd has finally responded to the panic amongst his backbenchers and demoted - but not sacked - environment minister Peter Garrett.
The job will pass to Greg Combet and Garrett will remain a junior minister, taking care of minor matters from his past portfolio such as art and heritage.
The removal of Garrett had to come. The sheer scale of the insulation disaster was enough to bring down the government. Not only were billions of taxpayer dollars wasted but sheer negligence led to four deaths and nearly a hundred house fires.
It would be a good time to ask how this happened !
Our system of democracy sends us to the polls to elect those we wish to represent us in parliament. Unfortunately being a politician does not mean that the candidate for our vote necessarily has the skills to carry out the job allocated.
Peter Garrett was well known in the music scene because he was the lead singer of a very popular band. That band employed agents and managers to take care of the business end of making money, and as a result Garrett was not exactly a paragon of business acumen.
Couple that with the tendency of socialists to be starry eyed people with a rather naive approach to business - and you have all the ingredients of a minister who failed to see the dangers of rapidly expanding a service - and who failed to even read the warnings received by his department.
Another casualty has been prime minister Kevin Rudd. The start of this fiasco escaped Rudd's notice, and as a result his pre election image of " Kevin-07. The wonder boy " has been seriously damaged.
Perhaps the blame for the insulation debacle should really be delivered to the door of the bureaucracy. Politicians are supported by a huge and costly array of Mandarins who are supposed to advise them and make sure disasters do not happen.
In this case, both the minister and the Mandarins were asleep at the wheel !
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