While the new energy saving rules for houses in NSW announced today fall into line with last Friday's agreement by the nation’s housing ministers, they won’t redeem the climate damaging stance of NSW Planning Minister, Anthony Roberts.

Photo by Li-An Lim on Unsplash

‘’When the Minister did the bidding of the developers in dumping public consultation and the wide-ranging Design and Place SEPP in early April this year, he showed his true colours when it comes to tackling urban heat, growing our cooling tree canopy and local green spaces, and walkability to services,’’ says Jeff Angel, Director of the Centre.

‘’You can build an energy efficient house, but there is another major challenge. That is an external environment that is not producing killer heat, causing households to use more energy, incur health problems and lack convenient access to services and green spaces. By leaving this to developers, he is condemning millions of residents to a poor and declining urban environment, particularly in Western Sydney.’’

‘’Later introduction of some guidelines for urban design will simply create massive loopholes for developers.  The Minister’s recruitment of Matt Kean to bolster his announcement today is further evidence he has a credibility problem – but it will take more than that.  He only listened to climate damaging developers who wanted the SEPP dumped.’’