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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Tuesday, 29 June 2004) . . Page.. 2844 ..

commensurate with what they do. That applies also in terms of allowances such as the mobile phone rebates or payment for mobile phone use by them and things like that that are now coming out of electorate office payments.

Perhaps we need to get on to a footing that is more commensurate with that of some other jurisdictions. That is not to say that we should go overboard, but I think it is fair that the staff be paid well and are given the tools to do their job so that we can keep the good staff we have and get more good staff to come and join us here. That being said, the opposition will support part 1.1.

MRS DUNNE (10.50): The opposition will be supporting part 1.1, but there are some things that we should be paying attention to. Mr Smyth touched upon some of those. I would like to deal with the fabric of the building in the first instance. Some important works need to be done to bring this building up to standard, both immediate works and things that we should be looking at in the long term.

This building is a marvellous example of adaptive reuse. I think that it is a fine building and that the chamber is a pleasant chamber. It is not too grand, it is not too ostentatious and I think that it meets the needs of the people of the ACT. But there are a few problems with the building itself, which was built in the 1960s, that will need to be addressed over time.

The vast expanses of glass mean that the building has very poor thermal qualities. In particular, we really need to address the issue of the leakage of heat out of the lobbies on either side of the chamber. The fact that we run three-bar radiators in there in winter time is not an example to the people of the ACT of what we would like them to take up. We should have a building which is more energy efficient and is an example of how we should provide for energy efficiency in the sort of the climate that we have in the ACT. Unfortunately, I do not think that that was quite the flavour of the month when the building was built. We went for style over substance, but the substance is coming home to roost.

The Chief Minister made a bit of a gaff the other day about the fact that we do not have water efficient loos, whereas we do, but when I last had a shower in this building I did look at it and wonder whether it was a 9-litre a minute shower. I know that the showers in this building are not used a lot and do not consume a huge amount of water, but the thing is that the showers are used and an awful lot more water is being consumed if, as I suspect, the shower heads are the 1994 standard. We probably need to upgrade those.

Ms Dundas: They are not, Vicki.

MRS DUNNE: Have they been fixed up?

Ms Dundas: Yes.

MRS DUNNE: I withdraw all that. Ms Dundas informs me that the shower heads are 9-litre; I am relieved about that. But there are many issues here about energy consumption. One of them is the fact that we do not have an airlock on the front door, which means that every time somebody walks past, let alone comes in, vast amounts of heat go hurtling out of this building. These are issues that we should be addressing.

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