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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 11 Hansard (10 December) . . Page.. 3510 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

I am aware that a consultancy needed to be undertaken to look at the applicability of the existing ACTHERS to the Act, but I understand that there were some delays in getting this consultancy under way. I understand that there were also delays at the end of the consultancy, when the details of how the agreed rating process would be publicly promoted were being sorted out within Urban Services. I find it amazing that in these days of performance contracts, ownership agreements, outcomes and outputs, and performance measures Urban Services could not plan their work over the 12 months to effectively meet the clear deadline for implementation set in the legislation.

I am also concerned that, in its panic, the Government has left it to the last minute to address these implementation issues by now extending the commencement date in this very rushed Bill, which will probably provoke further anger in those people selling their houses now who have gone to the trouble of getting a rating, only to find that they do not really need one for three months. It is no wonder that the Government's incompetence has caused considerable confusion and angst within the community. This confusion has certainly not been helped by the scare campaign that has been run by the Canberra Times, which at last count had run three editorials and two feature articles attacking the legislation. Unfortunately, the Government's tardiness in implementing the legislation has led to criticisms of the legislation which are quite unfair.

We have had a number of calls from people who are under the impression that they had to improve the energy rating of their house before sale by installing better insulation and the like. This is certainly not the case. The legislation only requires that an energy rating statement be provided to potential purchasers. What account these purchasers take of the rating in making their decision about buying a house is their own personal judgment. Obviously, though, our intention with the legislation was that, if other factors were equal, buyers would tend to favour houses with higher ratings.

I do not expect that house buyers will suddenly ignore other factors, such as location and size of house, just because houses for sale will now have an energy rating. An energy rating will, however, expand the range of information available to house buyers to help them make the best choice of where to make their biggest investment. The cost of obtaining an energy rating is about 0.1 per cent of the total cost of a typical house. This is a small price to pay compared to the energy savings that would be achieved every year from buying an energy efficient house.

The claim has also been made that there is no need for a rating, because the energy efficiency of a house would be obvious to any potential purchaser. However, this claim ignores the fact that not many people are energy experts, that many of the features of a house which influence energy efficiency are not easily visible and that the relativities between different energy efficiency measures would be hard to assess.

Some critics have said that it should be the responsibility of the buyer to determine the quality of products being sold - the "buyer beware" line. This is true up to a point, but it is unlikely that a buyer would be able to obtain all possible information about a product to make the best choice, particularly where the only way of obtaining that information is by actually testing the product. That is why there are a whole range of labelling requirements

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