ORIGIN STORIES: Many important developments in Australia’s energy history are being lost. Many important documents were dumped during Victoria’s energy privatisation and other institutional changes. A lot of the players moved on over time. This article summarises some of my own involvement in the development of Victoria’s home insulation regulations in the 1980s and early 1990s.
In its 1979 election policy, Victorian Hamer Liberal government proposed to introduce insulation regulations. This was at a time when the Gas and Fuel Corporation was Victoria’s biggest retailer of ceiling insulation.
But by the early 1980s, the Liberal Party dumped insulation regulation. Election of the progressive Cain Labor government in late 1982 focused attention on delivering the regulations, but there was powerful opposition. The government made several unsuccessful attempts to deliver.
My involvement began when I moved from running Melbourne’s Energy Information Centre to focus on development of a government energy efficiency program.
Along with a colleague, I developed the software for the Home Energy Advisory Service and trained assessors for a program that assessed almost 100,000 low-income homes and upgraded many of them, until it was shut down by the Kennett Liberal government in the early 1990s.
After that came my work on development of appliance energy labelling, then in development of insulation regulation.
I had some useful networks and background, including leading the Energy Information Centre, which had been educating and assisting households and progressive designers and builders to design efficient homes.
With the help of two of Allan and Beth’s research assistants, who I was able to employ, we secured funding for the conversion of their TEMPAL simulation software to run on a desktop computer instead of a mainframe. This meant we could model a house in a couple of hours instead of overnight!
We ran the annual efficient home awards, and among the highlights was the privilege of accompanying Ron Ballantyne, CSIRO building head, and Allan and Beth Coldicutt who were building modelling leaders at University of Melbourne, to visit finalists’ homes, enjoy their insights and build relationships with their networks.
With the help of two of Allan and Beth’s research assistants, who I was able to employ, we secured funding for the conversion of their TEMPAL simulation software to run on a desktop computer instead of a mainframe. This meant we could model a house in a couple of hours instead of overnight!
I also had a small but talented and committed team, as well as strong support from a manager in the energy department.
Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to get the insulation regulations in place before the progressive energy department was absorbed into the industry and resources department in the mid-1990s.
The difficult years, then some luck and community support
Key senior industry department managers were not keen to implement any regulations, especially those that impacted on the building industry. We faced several very difficult years, even though government policy remained in place. Eventually, we began consultation and built community support.
We also had some luck. Evan Walker was appointed industry minister. He was a progressive architect and former environment and planning minister. We managed to persuade him to publicly launch a commitment to regulate for housing energy efficiency.
At one point, I persuaded environment groups to strongly and publicly criticise me for being too weak. I explained I’d been labelled as a “ratbag greenie” and needed to be seen as more moderate.
Later, former progressive energy minister David White took over the industry department and pushed progress in the building regulation program that I was leading at the time.
But despite White’s support and strong community support there were serious conflicts I was forced to manage with senior department managers, along with powerful opposition from the building industry.
At one point, I persuaded environment groups to strongly and publicly criticise me for being too weak. I explained I’d been labelled as a “ratbag greenie” and needed to be seen as more moderate.
While David White was minister, members of what’s now Environment Victoria met with him, a model house in tow. It had all-glass walls and an insulation batt on the top, to show that the regulations regarding glazing were too weak.
The minister realised there were problems, so he called in his former energy adviser, Andrew Herington. Andrew and I had worked together on other issues including appliance labelling, and he was widely regarded as a tough, progressive “fixer”.
We met one night after work and developed an overall approach, which included some minor compromises. I wrote up the result overnight as a public document, and it was adopted by the minister and published.
See the document below, which shows how progressive it was – such as by introducing the 3 and 5 star approach and rapid progress.
All of this activity meant I was not popular with several senior industry department managers, and it was pretty clear that I didn’t have much of a future in the industry department. But I stuck it out until early 1991, when introduction of the regulations was locked in.
The Australian Capital Territory introduced building energy regulations a couple of years later, NSW tried in the late 1990s, and Victoria phased in a 5-star approach from 2004.
It was 2003 before basic national regulations under the Building Code of Australia were introduced, followed by the 5-star regulations in late 2005 – against the opposition of the Howard government.
Change is difficult…
The government document, October 1990 [see below]. I framed this approach using star ratings, based on the successful appliance rating scheme. The 5-star scheme proposed for 1993 was not introduced after the conservative Kennett government won the 1992 election. That took more than a decade.
Insulation Regulations, 1990
