Not cool for school: heaters dumped from BER

About 500 of the unsafe heaters are housed by Dubbo public schools and four more were recently installed at one school.

A spokesperson for Ms Gillard, responsible for the roll-out of the program prior to her appointment as Prime Minister, did not directly answer a question from the Daily Liberal about why the building was fitted with the heaters.

But the spokesperson did confirm “no further BER projects will be fitted with unflued heaters”.

A study commissioned by the government found that while the heaters’ emissions were unlikely to have “severe adverse consequences” in the short term, “exposure to the unflued gas heater in the sub-group with asthma suggests an adverse effect, which is best avoided”.

“The federal government has been in contact with the NSW government on this issue,” a spokesperson for Ms Gillard said.

“The Premier and the NSW Education Minister have committed to replacing all unflued heaters throughout the state.”

The commitment followed a political slip up last week where the NSW Education Minister Verity Firth announced a $400 million plan to remove the heaters from all NSW public schools before it had been approved by cabinet or Treasury.

NSW Premier Kristina Keneally reprimanded Ms Firth over the incident but both have since committed to the removal of the heaters from schools.

The government’s decision comes after four years of lobbying by parent groups for the removal of the 51,000 unflued heaters across the state’s public schools.

Unflued heaters in public schools elsewhere in the country have already been phased out.

Ms Firth did not respond to the Daily Liberal’s questions by deadline, including enquiries into the name of the Dubbo school that received the newest unflued gas heaters.