Page 3499 - Week 12 - Thursday, 19 September 1991
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Mr Acting Speaker, over the years the ACT has attempted on a number of occasions to develop hardwood plantations around the ACT. There has been some work done. Maybe our local rural leaseholders could participate in a program to develop what is in fact a sustainable industry. We would be proposing to encourage the development of hardwood fuelwood plantations within the ACT, as has been done in other States, maybe using the second-class water that we find coming from the sewage treatment systems, as they have done in South Australia. That is something that I know they have operated successfully in South Australia.
I think it is really just a matter of continuing the research in relation to the types of eucalyptus that would be appropriate for hardwood plantations. I know that work has been done. Such plantations would assist, as has been indicated in the report, in providing wildlife conservation movement corridors. There are processes whereby timber is coppiced so that it very quickly regenerates and revegetates an area. I think that is the way we should be moving.
Mr Acting Speaker, one of the final areas that I want to comment on, as I have done in the past, is improvements in energy and efficiency within homes. I note that there has been considerable work done in that area. There seems to be a move towards changes in attitude to the need to upgrade energy ratings in homes.
One of the proposals gathering momentum is the need to set up a standard for assessing existing and new homes and rating them with a certain energy efficiency rating, in much the same way as we see nowadays when we buy a refrigerator. There is a big sign on the side of the refrigerator and, the greater the number of stars, the greater is the energy rating. With this greater awareness of the need for communities to reduce energy use and make more efficient use of what they have, I think it is appropriate that we should be moving towards that area within housing.
If this standard is developed as an Australia-wide standard it may be possible to have made available to the community a service, possibly at cost or at some minimum cost, by which people can have their homes rated. Provision could then be made for that to be added to the title deed. When someone goes along to buy a home they can see that this house has a particular energy rating. You would probably find, because of the increasing interest and awareness about environmental issues, that that would become a selling point. In recent times there has been a move by some sellers to talk about the issue of energy efficient homes as a selling point.
I note that after some initial reluctance by the Housing Industry Association about the need for mandatory insulation in the ACT in much the same way as Victoria, they now propose to support moves towards this at the time
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