Page 881 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 20 March 2019
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In the Seventh Assembly the Greens put a lot of effort into that and the government committed to doing more auditing and compliance work. I acknowledge that work is happening in that regard, but it does not seem that enough is being done. I am concerned that some of the too hot apartments we are seeing now may be the result of builders not complying with the rules and not building what they said they were going to build.
It is really easy to talk about the problems, and I can talk about them at length. The major issue is what we are going to do to fix them. We need to learn the lessons of this summer and develop a set of responses. These responses are probably going to be quite diverse. That is why, rather than having a detailed list of actions to take, my motion calls for wide-ranging investigations. This is also because, with a crossbench office, I simply do not have the resources the government has to get all of these things done correctly.
The government needs to respond to this problem by looking at a whole suite of potential things it could do and prioritising the things that will be most effective. Obviously there is going to be some need for a combination of improved energy efficiency standards and planning rules. My motion acknowledges that the government is already doing work in this area, at item (4). Items (5)(a) and (d) call for an expansion of this current work into an investigation of other actions that could be taken.
Item (5)(b) focuses on public housing. ACT Housing has three particular issues. First, it has a large number of highly vulnerable tenants. ACT Housing already know who many of them are, because they have an existing program where they contact vulnerable tenants during heatwaves to check on their safety. Second, many of its tenants are not able to afford to buy air conditioners and external awnings. Third, even when the tenants can afford it, there is a property management cost and issue for ACTÂ Housing as a landlord in making sure these are installed properly with no damage to the building. For these reasons, ACT Housing might need to go beyond any general regulatory changes that are made for all new apartments and require higher standards for the new housing it builds or buys. I note that it already does that in the area of accessibility standards for people with a disability.
Item (5)(c) covers the government’s energy efficiency improvement scheme. This scheme improves household heating, cooling and energy efficiency. It has now been extended to public housing, which is a very good thing. It is clearly a good program that has been helping a lot of people. However, it is also quite clear from the activities this scheme covers that the focus has been on improving winter comfort and energy use. This makes sense based on past climate, but future climate is going to be hotter; we know that. There might be ways to expand the energy efficiency improvement scheme to cover more cooling options which will be more used in the coming years.
The very hot summer that we have just endured is a sign of a climate that is rapidly getting hotter. It is a test run for the climate of the future. As with any test, it has picked up problems where the current practice is not working. The issue that has particularly been drawn to my attention is that we are building brand-new apartments
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