Page 169 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 15 February 2012
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for this sort of legislation. They are the sort of people Mr Coe says he has an understanding of, but he quite clearly does not or he would be supporting this legislation; he would be supporting groups like the Brotherhood of St Laurence, ACTCOSS and VCOSS, who are calling for this sort of legislation.
Mr Coe said the Greens were out of touch. It is quite clearly Mr Coe who is out of touch because he has obviously completely ignored or failed to even look into the fact that these sorts of groups have supported the legislation. They have been calling for this for quite some time. As I have said, he has disregarded that and has not even seemed to pay any attention to the detail of the bill.
It is a great shame that we are not seeing either Labor or Liberal support this. We hear a lot about costs of living. Here is something that would have a huge impact on the cost of living and we are getting no support from them. I commend Mr Rattenbury for bringing this bill to the Assembly, for listening to the groups who have that direct day-to-day contact with some of the most vulnerable people in the community and who want this sort of legislation. It will be of great disappointment to them that we are not getting any support from the major parties on this legislation.
MS BURCH (Brindabella—Minister for Community Services, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Women and Minister for Gaming and Racing) (12.17): The government will be opposing this bill. I echo the Attorney-General’s comments about the intention of the bill. Let us be clear that if this was passed the impact on the ACT rental market would be significant and public housing would not be immune from that. This bill comes with a $200 million price tag, because we have done the costings. The Greens say that our numbers are wrong, but they are yet to provide any costings to actually counter our costings. As has been said in the Canberra Times recently, the criticism is often made of the ACT Greens that they are savage for openness and transparency, but for others. With a bill that has been in this place and circulating for some time that has the potential, on our numbers, of a $200 million-plus impact, it would have been nice for the proponent to actually bring their costings forward. But we have seen nothing; we have not seen a thing. They say, “We will tell you how to spend the money, but you can just work out how to pay for it.”
As I have said, the bill comes with a price tag of over $200 million. Housing ACT currently owns close to 12,000 properties—11,860, I think it is. An estimated 2,000 of those would have energy efficient ratings to the level demanded by this bill. It would cost approximately $3 million to obtain an EER on the remaining properties, each costing around $300. The assessment reports themselves would not have a direct impact on the tenants’ quality of life or utility bills. It would only serve to confirm what we already know—given their age, the majority of ACT Housing’s constructions do not meet a three-star standard.
But that is just the start. A $100 million price tag for energy efficiency improvements would mean that the entire maintenance budget would have to be diverted to meet the 2016 deadline. Ceiling insulation, wall insulation, floor insulation, draught sealing, shuttered exhaust fans, pelmets, thermal curtains, hot water systems, pipe insulation and double glazing are all very well, but to pay for them no public housing tenant
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