Page 5565 - Week 13 - Thursday, 17 November 2011
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An excellent example of public housing redevelopment that we have highlighted before is the K2 development in Melbourne. Before the government announced the design competition for the Northbourne flats, I moved a motion in the Assembly asking that the government commission a design competition for the Currong flats with K2 in mind. This motion was voted against by the government and the Canberra Liberals; obviously, this idea was then used by the government for the Northbourne flats.
The K2 apartments are designed to last for a significant amount of time, generate their own power, use less than half the usual amount of water, and provide an adaptable array of housing for 150 public housing residents. Since K2 opened in 2007 it has won national and international awards, and been a social success for its tenants.
ACT’s public housing stock appears to have a poor level of energy efficiency. Documents that were tabled by the Minister for Community Services on Tuesday show that the government does not have the data on the energy efficiency ratings of its public housing stock—the reason the Greens did not undertake that type of modelling. We knew the data was missing because we had already asked the government to provide it to us. We knew that their modelling would not be accurate and would not mean anything. The government have aimed to estimate the EERs of the housing stock—the 9,500 they do not have rated. At best, they have estimated that none of them are higher than two stars. That is quite concerning.
What is even more concerning is that the government do not have a strategy to address this situation and do not seem to believe that they have an obligation to provide energy efficient housing. It is important to be clear about what we are talking about here. EERs of two and below indicate housing that is cold in winter and hot in summer. These are houses that are expensive to heat. What kind of situation is it where we leave our most vulnerable households in hard to heat houses that are expensive to run? While we did support the increase in the energy concession rebate, there is no point in ensuring that people stay dependent on it by not addressing the underlying causes of high energy bills.
In the parliamentary agreement the Greens ensured that the ACT government doubled the amount of funding on the retrofitting of properties from $2 million to $4 million per annum. That was allocated in the last budget. However, we want to see that funding continue into the future. Unfortunately, it looks like that money has only doubled for the 2011-12 financial year, and will return to $2 million in the year 2012-13.
Not all public housing dwellings have pelmets for curtains. That is one practical way to address heating costs. As a part of the current retrofitting program, the government has been installing pelmets in single standing housing, which is good to see, but not in any apartments. I hope that this will be reconsidered.
The Conservation Council suggested prior to the last election that a curtain bank be established where people from public housing could donate or borrow curtains. I understand that the Conservation Council did request some assistance from the
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