Page 1152 - Week 03 - Thursday, 18 March 2010
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or rent a house, or if there simply is not enough housing availability, then homelessness is one of the outcomes. I think we have all spoken about how important it is to have safe and affordable housing. It is considered a basic human right. There are many organisations like YWCA, Housing ACT et cetera who will agree with that.
In terms of housing affordability, as the previous speakers have said, obviously the government has been very focused on land supply and the cost of the actual bricks and mortar of the house. In fact, we heard the Chief Minister speak on this earlier today in question time. That is important but it is not the only thing that is important.
What is important for a house owner, a house renter or a person who is occupying a house is the total cost of living there. That is not just the rent and the mortgage. It is your utilities, it is your energy, it is your fuel, it is your water, it is your transport. All of those make a huge difference towards affordability. I think that it would not be too hard for the government to raise the bar as far as these are concerned.
In particular, I would mention first public housing. The government has done some work in terms of increasing energy efficiency in public housing. But I am well aware that there is still a lot to do. There are many public houses which do not yet have adequate heating and cooling. This means that their tenants, who are vulnerable from the point of view of income already, have ongoing high costs of living there.
I am very pleased to see the interest that the members of the government here are paying to this and, hopefully, the agreement of members of the government to these sentiments. Building sustainably and retrofitting for efficiency is a win-win situation. It saves energy for the people living in the houses and it helps us as a territory to meet our carbon emission targets when, of course, we get them.
One good example of this win-win situation was to be seen in yesterday’s Canberra Times where the University of Canberra outlined their most recent innovation in terms of the housing shortage for students. They have just launched—I guess that is the word—a new building. It is five-star energy rated and it is about 500 residences for students. They do not have any air-conditioning. They are so well designed they do not need it. According to the Canberra Times article, the students were very happy with the temperatures over summer. The cost of running the 500 new units or rooms was, I think they said, a couple of hundred dollars per month in terms of energy.
For their previous 240 rooms, they were paying in excess of $10,000 a month for energy over the summer. So to go from $10,000 to a few hundred dollars and twice the number of rooms is a very good achievement. This is one case where the owner has realised that building for sustainability is a long-term plus. I hope that other builders of mass accommodation will take note of this and continue the trend.
Looking at housing affordability, I think every speaker has agreed that it is an issue. I guess that one of the things we think of is that we need to have broader, more innovative solutions. The government has tried some things and unfortunately they have not worked as yet. As Ms Bresnan said, one of the solutions is to raise the level of public housing in Canberra. This was one of the items of the parliamentary agreement, as I am sure you are all aware.
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