The former prime minister Kevin Rudd has been called to give evidence in a class action in Victoria over his government’s home insulation scheme.
The Victorian supreme court on Thursday asked Rudd to give evidence via video link from New York during the trial, which began in late April and is expected to last six weeks.
The class action over the cancellation in 2010 of the Rudd government’s home insulation program is seeking about $150m in damages from the commonwealth.
More than 140 businesses have joined the class action, which claims they suffered heavy losses when the program was shut down for safety reasons as a result of the government’s negligence.
The 2009 Rudd government established the $2.7bn home insulation program as part of a broader $42bn economic stimulus package.
But it was shut down a year later following the deaths of four workers in New South Wales and Queensland in 2009 and 2010.
When the trial opened on 23 April, class action barrister Jim Delany QC said the market for retrofitting homes with insulation totalled less than 70,000 homes annually before the scheme.
The program promised to fit 2.2m homes over a two-year period, representing about a 15-fold increase in demand.
The market was created and controlled by the commonwealth, and scores of businesses were left financially devastated when the government program was abruptly shut down, the court was told.
The class action says businesses took on staff, expanded production and invested in new machinery and other equipment to meet demand.
A royal commission in 2014 found the four deaths would not have occurred if the scheme had been properly designed and implemented.
Rudd also took the witness stand during the royal commission.
The former prime minister said when he was approached to give evidence to the supreme court he was “very happy to do so”.
No date has been set for his appearance in the supreme court but is not expected until at least late May.
- This story was amended on 13 May 2018 to remove any suggestion that Kevin Rudd was unwilling to give evidence.