Page 2582 - Week 09 - Thursday, 8 August 1991
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MR JENSEN (11.47): Mr Speaker, I want to make a couple of brief comments in relation to some of the matters raised by Mr Wood and Mr Connolly. I noticed that Mr Connolly referred in his speech to the establishment of the standard building code for Australia and the way that that is going to operate. There are a couple of aspects that I think Mr Connolly may wish to push a bit further in relation to that particular code.
I speak specifically about the requirement for the inclusion of mandatory insulation in new residential homes and extensions in the ACT. You will note, Mr Connolly - through you, Mr Speaker - that recently the Victorian Government introduced legislation to require mandatory insulation in homes. It would appear that that, in fact, is going to save new home buyers in Victoria approximately $300 per annum. That is not just one-off; that is per year. So, every year if your home is insulated, both ceilings and walls, you will have a continual reduction in your total energy cost.
While it is accepted that slightly more money may be required to be spent from a capital point of view at the early stage in the development of your home, particularly in Canberra where we require, because of our climate, slightly thicker insulation - a greater standard, a greater R rating - I would suggest that that would be more than compensated for by the overall saving that people are going to get. You must remember that the ACTEW figures, for example, have indicated that 60 per cent of the electricity that we use in the ACT goes towards space heating. When you add to that the increasing amount of energy that is being used from natural gas for space heating, it is appropriate, I suggest, that we should be moving along that path, particularly in a climate like that in the ACT where we have considerable extremes of temperature.
The important thing is: Why do it now rather than later? The clear point is this: If you insulate the walls of a standard three-bedroom home at the time of building the cost is approximately $400. If you insulate that home after the event the cost can range between $1,000 and $1,200 and, of course, the job is never as good as if it had been done in the first place. That is an important aspect that Mr Connolly may wish to take up with his colleagues in the States. He may seek to have that put on the agenda, following the efforts of the Victorian Government.
In fact, there was a building regulations review task force which produced a report that I have here dated May 1991. It prepared a business plan for the development of model codes for energy efficient buildings. There are a couple of aspects to that. There are energy efficient buildings for residential areas and, of course, energy efficient buildings for commercial areas. The document came out with the fact that there should be almost right now the development of an energy efficient code for residential
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