Page 1582 - Week 04 - Thursday, 29 March 2012
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One of the other big problems with the strategy was that it really did not look at the biggest parts of Canberra, our suburban areas. It made no effort to make them more sustainable. What seems to be happening in Canberra is that, in the suburban areas, we are getting knock-downs and rebuilds. And we are finding that when houses are demolished, they are replaced by bigger houses, with fewer occupants, so that even if the energy efficiency rating of the new house is higher than what it replaced, the total operational energy for that house has quite possibly increased. Certainly when you look at the lifecycle cost, with all the resources required for the demolition and construction, there is almost no doubt that, from a lifecycle point of view, it will not be a positive move.
We would like to see the territory plan better reflect our commitments to the transport corridors, biodiversity and ecological connectivity. These are not currently part of the plan.
Design quality is an area everybody, I believe, would like to see improved. This is something that is not part of the draft planning strategy, and it is particularly important if we are to start to have community acceptance of infill development. The community continually says: “We are not against infill. We just want it done properly.”
It is also important to ensure that we build for our climatic conditions. It is particularly worrying that most new apartment blocks will not allow through-ventilation and thus will be difficult to cool in summer. We seem to be building a city that will rely on air conditioners in summer. That is not sustainable.
I will talk a bit more about how we need to change things to get towards lower greenhouse gas emissions. As I mentioned earlier, last month I tabled a bill which would require ACTPLA to revise the territory plan to ensure that it is compatible with greenhouse gas targets, and I would expect that this revision would lead to quite a number of changes to our planning codes, such as the territory plan requiring buildings to be consistent with our greenhouse gas reduction target. In the short run, that might be a move to, say, seven-star energy efficiency requirements but I would imagine that over time it would mean incremental increases to carbon neutrality.
I would point out that carbon neutrality is something which has been embraced by other parts of the world. England, which do have a more challenging climate than the ACT, have committed that by 2016 all new housing is going to be zero carbon emission. That is only four years away. As far as I know, they are on track to doing that.
It is happening, of course, in Australia as well. The Victorian government has zero emissions neighbourhood projects which include building zero emissions housing in partnership with the CSIRO. In South Australia the government has established a model sustainable urban village at Lochiel Park in the Adelaide CBD and each house there has to have a minimum of 7.5 stars EER. The South Australian Land Management Corporation, the people running it, are currently running it as a zero carbon design challenge for a block on the site.
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