Page 3092 - Week 07 - Thursday, 30 June 2011

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On this subject, I seriously welcome that the planning directorate finally gets the significant financial tools with which to guide developments. This is all I am going to say about the lease variation charge, because we have spoken about it at such length in the Assembly over the past couple of years.

Moving on to energy efficiency ratings, I am really, really pleased to see that finally there is funding in this budget for auditing EER statements so that they better reflect reality. This has been an area of considerable public concern, both from the point of view of new houses and the sale of premises. As I outlined in my motion last week on energy efficiency ratings, there is still more to do. On-site auditing which is what I understand a fair proportion of the funding is for, needs to be better. We need to have better and clearer procedures or guidance for people who are doing the sale of premises inspections to see that they do the inspections properly and work out whether there is, in fact, insulation in the walls or the ceilings. What is in the plans is not always the reality. Sometimes the reality is better; sometimes it is worse. I am glad the new COLA legislation should mean there is more alignment between the HERS system for new houses and the sale of premises for existing houses.

There is a significant lack of data collection. It would be really useful to know what level of energy rating ACT’s housing stock generally has overall and by breakdown of housing types. In terms of trying to develop good greenhouse gas policy, we need to know that. I am looking forward to seeing what sort of breakdowns we get from the ICRC’s first report on ACT’s annual emissions, because this should be part of it.

This is an area where there could be some coordination with Actew about the level of energy use, because this will be on people’s energy bills. I would also like to see the Environment and Sustainable Development Directorate finalise the requirements for COLA-EER assessors under the legislation which was recently passed.

Mr Speaker, there is always more to say on these matters, but as I have only a second or two left I will finish at this point.

MR COE (Ginninderra) (9.38): I do not intend to speak for very long on this part of the budget because it is such a broad portfolio and there are a number of shadows that do touch on this directorate.

The heritage portfolio, and the heritage unit, has been shuffled around a fair bit of late. It went from TAMS into the Chief Minister’s department and now into the sustainable development directorate, all in the space of about a year, which is considerable movement and considerable uncertainty for the unit. I do hope that finally it will be given the certainty that it deserves.

I welcome recommendation 189 in the estimates committee report which suggests that a separate output class should be created for the heritage unit. As it stands at the moment, there is very little in the budget with regard to the heritage unit, which makes it very hard to scrutinise from opposition or from the community at large. So I think the creation of an output class would help to raise that level of transparency.


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