Environment Minister Peter Garrett has reportedly ordered the inspection of about 160,000 homes with batts to check for serious safety risks.
This follows admissions that 49,000 homes with foil insulation are already being inspected for potentially deadly electrical faults after the botched insulation program,The Australian reports.
The inspections will cover 15 per cent of the homes, numbering more than one million, that received non-foil insulation.
Mr Garrett said the inspections would target homes likely to have safety issues and the government was prepared to check "as many houses as necessary," the newspaper reports.
Mr Garrett has faced an onslaught during the past fortnight over whether he should have acted earlier on problems with the government's failed insulation program, which has been linked to four deaths.
He faced a censure motion from the opposition - which failed on party lines - and was the target of all coalition questioning in question time.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott told Mr Garrett "enough is enough". "It is now time to take responsibility and resign," he said.
"We have seen him ... doing anything to try to save his political hide rather than addressing the serious problems that are now absolutely manifest in the programs that he has been administering."
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has, so far, stood by his minister in the absence of a "smoking gun" to bring him down and there are no signs he is planning to cut him loose.
But the opposition did little to help its aspiration to claim a ministerial scalp, with its campaign against Mr Garrett patchy and lacking a strategic focus.
Mr Garrett stood firm as the coalition failed to pin him down over how much he knew of the safety warnings contained in a report by Minter Ellison.
"The full Minter Ellison report was received by me this year and that is the first occasion that I read and saw that report in its entirety," Mr Garrett told parliament.
Delivered to the environment department last April, the Minter Ellison report catalogues a range of possible hazards with the hastily-rolled out program.
"The totality of advice I've received ... I've responded to," Mr Garrett said. And he tried to turn the tables on the opposition, whom he accused of creating fear among homeowners.
He cautioned Mr Abbott against "extrapolating from interim results" to create apprehension "that each and every ceiling is of an order to be identified as having a specific risk".
While the coalition was gunning for Mr Garrett, the government hit back with charges of "recklessness" against the opposition, focusing on its rejection of changes to the private health insurance rebate.
Mr Rudd said the opposition was blocking billions of dollars that should be going to health reform.
"This is absolutely fundamental to the future funding of the reforms and expansion of the system that we need, a system that is already under considerable stress," he said.
The Australian Greens are in negotiations with the government over a means test for the rebate but it's looking unlikely Labor will find a compromise to appease all seven cross-bench senators.
If rejected a second time, it will become another trigger for an election, as could youth allowance laws now before the Senate.
Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard warned Mr Abbott the youth allowance bill would be a test of his leadership.
"Will (he) step up to his responsibilities to ensure that legislation passes this parliament which enables us to pay fair student income support to the students who need it the most," she said
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