Page 3124 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 22 August 2017
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double-glazed windows that in fact turned out not to be. One of the classic issues, I have always felt, is that the energy efficiency rating is done of the building in isolation, so the tree or the house to the north which is going to totally overshadow you is not in there. So we have some significant issues with how our EER system works.
We also have the significant issue of climatic change, which you have all heard me bang on about many times. Why it is relevant to this is that our energy efficiency ratings are rated against a certain climate. The climate that is being rated against is last century’s climate; it is not the climate we have. The Bureau of Meteorology has done lots of work as to what is the most likely climate of the future. We can disagree about exactly how much it is going to change, and why it is changing, but I think it is clear to everybody that our climate is changing. It makes sense to build buildings for the expected future climate of Canberra, or even the climate of Canberra over this past decade, rather than the climate of Canberra for the past century.
The parliamentary agreement review is going to look specifically at rental properties, where we have significant issues with energy efficiency rating. This is particularly unfair. It tends to be the less well-off people who are renting, and they end up having huge energy bills because the houses and units they are living are cold and draughty.
Another issue is weeds. Weeds damage biodiversity and may well increase bushfire risk. The Greens are very pleased that an additional $1.34 million has been allocated to weed control over two years. But this is over two years. This is short-term budget funding and it does not allow good ongoing management. We would like to see recurrent funding for weed control.
The other thing I want to bang on about, as I have done many times, is building quality and enforcement. This is something that there is a huge amount of community concern about: that we are not building properly and we are not enforcing what rules we have. The Greens welcome the three building reform budget initiatives, which I spoke about last week because, bizarrely, they were in revenue measures because we are increasing the building levy to fund them.
Building certification audits was a Greens election commitment. Certifiers will be audited once a year to ensure that they do the right thing. There will be more building audits, a better building inspection program, and the government intends to continue with regulatory system reform. These items both implement a parliamentary agreement item and the government’s 2016 building reforms commitments. That is good.
But I was very disappointed with the government’s response to estimates recommendation 22, that the ACT government review the priority of resourcing given to complaints about noncompliance with the approved DAs.
The government’s response was:
Not Agreed.
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