Page 810 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 16 June 1992
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We will continue to spot purchase houses which are good value for the area. We will continue to scatter those houses throughout the suburbs. We will continue to expand the public housing list, which we have done dramatically. We have doubled the new starts compared to not what you say but what your two colleagues Bib and Bub on the back bench suggest. Mr De Domenico and Mr Westende suggest that we should be on a process of flogging off public housing to pay out the ACT public debt. You say one thing on public housing; these two say the other. The Liberal Party not only is in total confusion but it also is now slipping into this nasty approach that public housing should be cheap and substandard, and we reject that.
Housing - Energy Efficiency
MS ELLIS: My question is to the Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning. Minister, you have announced new energy efficiency requirements for both home construction and subdivision development. Is it feasible to impose an energy rating on houses, and what will you do to make subdivision energy efficient?
MR WOOD: Madam Speaker, it is feasible to seek five-star energy ratings on houses and to make subdivisions energy efficient. I am very keen that these matters should be attended to. This was a matter that I pursued as soon as I became Minister for the Environment and Planning, not least because I came to Canberra many years ago now from a warm climate, a hot climate, to a cold climate. I had great difficulty. In fact, I was unable to locate a house that had energy efficiency; that let a bit of sun into it, among other things. So I am very keen and I was proud on World Environment Day to announce this five-star energy rating for homes. It can be done. There is a set of criteria that is laid out in a paper. I have no doubt, because of the good comment we are getting now, a very strong flow of comment, that we will refine those and improve them further.
Mr De Domenico: Was your picture on the publication?
MR WOOD: There is no publication. A few sheets have gone out, a quite thick volume of sheets. I would predict that, while this is to be voluntary in the first year and is then to be assessed, after that in fact you will not be able to buy a home in Canberra in the near future unless it has three, four or five stars indicating its energy efficiency.
Secondly, as for subdivision development, we are now requiring the Planning Authority, when giving approval to subdivisions, to include that they be energy conscious, among other important aspects; that is, as far as possible, bearing in mind the importance that people place on views and, I suppose, topography. The suburbs will be designed to give maximum benefit to the houses to receive sunlight, and to receive sunlight on a long northern wall.
I believe that home buyers in future will move into some very strangely shaped allotments. There is no guarantee that in the future you are going to get your nice rectangular allotment, because we will design the flow of the streets and the shape of the allotments to maximise that northern aspect. The Planning Authority is going to impose that regime. It will be introduced steadily as developers acquire that technique. I think these are very important measures for the comfort of those people who will live in these homes and for the saving of energy.
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