Page 3783 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 24 August 2011
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million dollars on more work on the subject, and the Greens strongly feel that this work is worth doing, because we want to find the best solution to the problem.
One of the problems we have got is the term “carbon-neutral enabled”. We have really no clear idea what that means. Someone pointed out that a zero-star energy-efficiency rated house could quite potentially be called carbon-neutral enabled because you always have the opportunity of buying 100 per cent green power. This was one of the questions that we put on notice after the estimates process because it just does not seem to mean anything.
I think what it is trying to say is that we would do what was most cost efficient—we would either have a good building or we would buy green power. But that is a very fudgy sort of answer. It will be a few years before this building—whatever it is—is built or refurbished. In that time there will presumably be a carbon price. In that time electricity pricing will continue to change. So what is carbon-neutral enabled now—if I have the definition right—will not be carbon-neutral enabled in five or six years. That seems to be something that needs a lot more work done on it.
Another thing which needs more work to be done on it is, on the basis of the financial analysis of 7 May 2009, two scenarios—2 and 4—were excluded from the CB Richard Ellis cost analysis, which were leasing a space in Civic of comparable quality to a new building so as to enable co-location or a scenario involving minimal upgrades. Both of these potentially were more cost efficient.
One of the things that I would like to talk a bit more about is, in the retrofitting option, the government quite clearly in the past has not looked at the option of not putting all the eggs in one basket. I am glad to see that the government has considered this option now and clearly agreed to it to some extent insofar as there will be a building out in Gungahlin. A building in Gungahlin is something that the Greens asked for repeatedly in the past, and the former Chief Minister unfortunately did not think this was appropriate. So I am very glad to see that the ACT government will do some small work around addressing Gungahlin’s most substantive problem of lack of a local employment base. I think it is very unfortunate that neither Liberal or Labor federal governments put a substantive office building out in Gungahlin, and I am very glad to see the ACT government is at last looking at it.
Also, though, in terms of more innovative solutions, the government could be looking at building a smaller additional building which might house, say, the town hall functions or some of those sorts of things and at the same time utilise and retrofit one of the existing buildings which are quite close to the Assembly.
The other thing we are very concerned about is life cycle impact analysis. It is not clear on the basis of what the Greens have read that this is being properly done. It seems that the government is focusing almost entirely on the operational energy requirements because of their desire that the government operations will be carbon neutral by 2020. We agree this is a worthy aim and it is one that we totally support. But it is not one that should be achieved at the expense of not looking at the life cycle analysis.
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