Page 969 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 31 March 1993
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It is the case now that, as developers come to government with their subdivisional design, it is required to conform to new standards of orientation towards the sun - acknowledging those important principles. That is now the case. Any new subdivisional design - we have yet to see houses on these, of course - has blocks oriented, as far as possible, towards the sun. It cannot be universal, of course. We have to take into account the contours of any subdivision. But they are now having to do a great deal better than was formerly the case. I am quite pleased about that because I think that as people come to build on their sites it is going to be easier for them to align their house to the sun and to make use of that cheap energy source.
It is a further step to see that the house is adequately designed. That is something that I am continuing to look at. It seems that it is taking a bit longer to turn that around. At least we can tell developers, when they come in, that their plans have to be a certain way and they will not be approved unless they are. Home design is taking a little longer. We are educating the public. More and more people are indicating that they want a passive solar house, and we can see advertisements in the paper promoting them. I am not always sure that the houses are particularly good in that respect, but certainly there is a change.
Shortly I will be bringing into this Assembly some tougher guidelines about house design, and the design and siting approval that needs to be given. At present we are operating under a system of voluntary guidelines. It is interesting to note that more and more I am getting letters from people complaining to me that their design, their plan, has not been approved simply because it is an inadequate design for that block of land. I welcome those letters, I suppose, now and then. They may have a justification because sometimes the requirements of the subdivision are difficult to accommodate to the passive solar design.
There is a turnaround, but I am still disappointed at the number of builders who seem to have no concern about where the sun is. There are too many who are building quite efficient homes - they are probably cost-efficient; they have been doing it for a long time - but who do not want to change. If we cannot change the builder, then I hope to continue the education of home buyers so that they are determined to buy a house that suits the level of sun we get in Canberra and the level of cold that we experience. Those two factors together make it imperative that we get a better house design.
These are matters that I will be raising again in the Assembly in the near future. I will bring in those guidelines. I look forward to discussion of them. I am discussing with the chair of the PDI Committee the extent to which we can have it mandatory in the new Territory Plan that these and other principles apply. I will make them as strong as I can in order that we get the benefits. It is to the longer-term community benefit, to the benefit of the whole of the ACT, and a recognition of our world responsibility, that we use a little less energy relative to the rest of the world in designs and urban planning of this nature. We are playing our part there. It is important that we do so and it is important that the end result be more comfortable homes for the people who live in them.
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