Email exchanges between the 1 and 8 May PCG meetings

8.5.1 On 4 May 2009, Mr Hughes emailed Ms McEwen (along with DEWHA officers including Mr Keeffe) providing revised installer competency content.The email read:

Aidan and I have changed wording slightly to cover some issues. The item raised was that around barriers to entry for unemployed or supervised employees. We don’t think this is too much of an issue after thinking it through. Obviously all individuals who install insulation should have OH&S and an insulation installation competency. If they take on an apprentice or a new employee then the first installer still has the required competency and the new employee will gain the competency either through 2 years of work or through undertaking one of the training courses available. Your thoughts would be appreciated.41

8.5.2 Before 8 May, Mr Keeffe said everything was progressing posited on the fact that every installer would receive training.42 _{He said this was changed when Mr Hoffman raised as}

a proposal that there should be no ‘blockages’ for people coming into work and that this proposal was too slow to be effective, that it would have slowed down the uptake and the opportunity for employment for low skilled workers.43 _{This theme—that there be low}

barriers to entry and that small players and new entrants be permitted to participate—is a theme which emerged regularly in the evidence as being something for which the OCG contended at every opportunity. I have already referred to it when discussing the adoption of the OCG/PM&C business delivery model.

8.5.3 One further example is Ms McEwen’s evidence. She observed that Mr Hoffman and Mr Downsborough from the OCG raised ‘concepts’ about the extent of training and whether it was going to be a barrier to people participating in the Program. She considered PM&C to have a higher appetite for risk than her:

… I was coming from the training perspective, my natural instinct was to say to be more cautious about those training aspects while PM&C had views about making sure that it was all going to happen.44

8.5.4 Ms McEwen did say in her oral evidence that DEWHA seemed to have a similar disposition to PM&C.45 _{I reject that for two reasons: first, she made no mention of that in}

her statement; and secondly, she does not appear to be in as good a position as others (especially Mr Keeffe) to know the ultimate source of these matters. DEEWR’s relationship was primarily with DEWHA, and not the OCG.

40 AGS.002.015.1200, 2. 41 AGS.002.030.0010, 1.

42 Transcript (31 March 2014) 1476 (K Keeffe). 43 Transcript (31 March 2014) 1476 (K Keeffe). 44 Transcript (11 April 2014) 2762 (M McEwen).

45 See Transcript (11 April 2014) 2762 (M McEwen), albeit noting that PM&C concerns may have been expressed more strongly.

8.5.5 On 5 May 2009, Ms McEwen responded to Mr Hughes’ email with some changes to the draft competency requirements. Her email stated, relevantly:

I think the concern that Kevin raised at Friday’s meeting about on-the-job/ apprentice-style training wasn’t actually addressed, so I have put in some suggested words to deal with that.46

8.5.6 Ms McEwen made changes to the document setting out the installer competency requirements.47 _{On the issue mentioned in her email to Mr Hughes, her additions were:}

Training staff on-the-job is permitted, however, junior staff not possessing qualifications below must have (1) [Occupational Health and Safety Training] and may not sign off jobs until they have attained relevant competencies or have completed X number of installations/ X period of supervised experience.48

8.5.7 Ms McEwen recalled that Mr Keeffe had raised the issue of apprentice-style training at a meeting separate from the 1 May PCG meeting (with Mr Hughes and others). She could not recall much more about what occurred. But it resonated with her, it would seem, because she knew that in the construction industry, people tended to be trained on the job.49 _{The analogy of the insulation industry with the construction industry was}

not particularly apt. The latter is and was heavily regulated and controlled. The former was not.

8.5.8 Ms McEwen’s drafting did not remain in the finalised document. It was changed by someone else (she does not know who) before the 8 May PCG meeting to be in the form in which it was relevantly identical to that ultimately approved by Minister Garrett.50 _It

may have been Mr Hughes that made these changes, given that he was the person with whom Ms McEwen was exchanging the draft document in its various forms.

8.5.9 Mr Hughes’ evidence about the changes to the draft competency requirements was to the effect that the removal of the proposed requirement that installers receive training in circumstances in which they were supervised occurred after the 1 May PCG meeting. It was Mr Hughes who was asked (by the PCG it would seem) to revise the competency requirements because of concerns about ‘barriers to entry’ and a reluctance to impose a higher standard than that presently in existence.51

8.5.10 Mr Hughes said, both in his oral evidence,52 _{and in his submission in response to a notice}

of potential adverse findings, that he had been tasked (by Mr Keeffe) with a secretariat role to revise the installer competencies in a way that implemented the PCG’s decision at its meeting on 1 May about how the installer competencies should be changed.53

He submitted that his role was not to assess the quality of competencies or attest to their appropriateness to the HIP. That, he said, was the role of others, including the PCG. I reject this evidence to the extent that it seeks to offer a justification for Mr Hughes’ apparent unquestioning acceptance of the changes that were being made to the installer competencies. I do so because Mr Hughes was, whether or not he had some

46 AGS.002.030.0010, 1.

47 See AGS.002.030.0012, 1-2, which shows those changes. The changes made by her are those other than prefaced ‘AH’ [ie, Aaron Hughes] as well as addition of the paragraph quoted above. Ms McEwen’s covering email to Mr Hughes is at AGS.002.030.0010, 1.

48 AGS.002.030.0012, 1.

49 Transcript (11 April 2014) 2763 (M McEwen). 50 AGS.002.023.2897, 1-2.

51 Transcript (8 May 2014) 4048 (A Hughes).

52 See, for example, Transcript (8 May 2014) 4042 and following (A Hughes). At no stage during his oral evidence on 8 or 9 May 2014 did Mr Hughes use the word ‘secretariat’ to describe his role in this respect.

secretariat role as well, a member of the PCG. He was a relatively senior officer whose role could not have been to act as a mere amanuensis for the PCG. The document he was charged with amending was a formal one, ultimately to be sent to the Minister for his consideration. Mr Hughes may not have had the role of attesting to the appropriateness of the changed competencies to the HIP, but he certainly had the role of assessing, appraising and criticising if necessary, the changed competencies then being drafted by him. This arises from his relative seniority, his position on the PCG and by reason of the responsibility he had been given (perhaps by Mr Keeffe) of drafting those changes. 8.5.11 There is no evidence to show that Mr Hughes made the assessments or appraisal, or

made any criticism, for which his role called. Nor was there any evidence of him having warned the PCG that the competencies as he had drafted them left unspecified what was meant by the word ‘supervised’, and the potential consequences of that omission. 8.5.12 I add here, however, that I found Mr Hughes to be a forthright witness. He appeared to

be honest in his answers, albeit that some, as I have indicated elsewhere in this Report, reflect a less than accurate understanding of the true state of affairs and, on the occasion to which I refer below in the context of the requirement of supervision, he remained passive when he ought to have intervened. In response to a potential adverse finding Mr Hughes points out that, although present at the PCG meeting, he was not a member and was merely following the instruction of Mr Keeffe in implementing the decision made by PCG. I note this but, as a fairly senior officer and Director in the Home Energy Branch dealing with the HIP and the draughtsman, it behoved him to intervene.