T'is the season to dump important news if you're in government, and hope nobody notices.
Except that when it comes to the unheralded Great Australian Property Scandal, burying information vital to filling the stockings of builders and emptying those of homeowners is always in season.
Let's stick with GAPS as a more gripping and memorable name than the actual title of a must-read report out this week that you mostly likely missed – the National Energy Efficient Building Project. It was published on an obscure South Australian government website with the customary zero fanfare and matching media coverage.
To understand why GAPS matters, imagine Santa was generous and brought us a new fridge, or particularly munificent, and parked a new set of wheels outside our front door.
We'd be thrilled.
If, however, the fridge failed during the Christmas feast or the car turned out to be a lemon, we'd leap for the warranty (recalling Santa is really our partner or parent) and demand a replacement or cash back – confident that the elves within our consumer protection agencies would be there to help.
But say the present was a couple of magnitudes more costly, such as a new house required by law to deliver six-star energy efficiency. And it turned out to be so riddled with let's call it, gaps, it performed well below that mandatory standard, reducing comfort and increasing energy bills.
We'd be livid, right? After all, it's your biggest financial asset.
Wrong. According to the new report, we'd be blissfully disinterested and merrily squander our wealth on what surveys say is supposedly households' biggest worry – energy bills - until kingdom come.
Or to state the report's key finding: "[Building] industry participants appear to hold the view that there is little risk that underperformance in the area of energy efficiency will be detected or punished – by regulators or consumers – contributing to a culture of low-energy performance."
And before the commercial sector gets all cocky and assumes the flaws in the National Construction Code dwell solely among the mug homeowners ripped off by dodgy builders, the report found concerns "appear systemic in nature ... [covering] all aspects of the building supply chain and regulatory process, and all building types".
GAPS winners will demand: where's the proof? And so what if the building sector accounts for some 19 per cent of Australia's energy use and 23 per cent of our greenhouse gas emissions, if consumers don't care enough to check how much we waste or pollute?
They'd have a point. The terms of reference of the report, by Pitt & Sherry and Swinburne University, didn't extend to quantifying the extent of non-compliance.
It did, though, point to its own survey of stakeholders that found 65 per cent thought the building code energy-efficiency provisions are not implemented strictly, and to a recent CSIRO report suggesting many homeowners weren't getting what they thought they'd paid for. (And, yes, that report went largely unheralded too.)
Then again, it is a curiously understudied area not least because when local councils – which typically sign off on new homes – do bother to look, the results are ugly. The report cites a survey in Adelaide that found non-compliance rates of up to 70 per cent. Imagine the furore if fire safety were as deficient.
As Phil Harrington, the report's lead author and a principal consultant at Pitt & Sherry notes, "absolutely all of the stakeholders [agreed] there is a virtual total absence of checking of anything, basically".
Instead, "a culture of sign-offs" dominates, based on trust. Building surveyors merely tick off whether documents meet the building code, with "as-designed" energy standards in a computer model checked rather than the "as-built" result. "That is taken, prima facie by planning and approval authorities, as evidence that the building does comply," Harrington said.
In theory, the home or building owner could sue the construction firm or designers or suppliers of sub-par materials. "Of course, none of that ever happens, because no-one checks and there are no mandatory inspections of energy performance of buildings," Harrington said.
GAPS, as it happens, is a handy acronym, hinting at one of the biggest failings in standards that leaves Australian homes far behind the performance of other wealthy, more ambitious nations.
Airtightness standards are absent in Australia. The report cites a study by A.M. Egan in 2012 that found Australian homes are far leakier than those in the US and Europe.
Echoing the CSIRO's findings, the study noted US homes had 0.5-2 changes of air per hour at a standard pressure level. In Europe, the rate for homes and apartments was 1.5-6 times.
By contrast, Australian homes had 12-26 air changes per hour. Whether because of gaps in windows, patchy or absent insulation, our homes prodigiously and profligately leak the heating or cooling energy we buy for our comfort.
To address this national scandal requires governments taking the lead, imposing minimum – but rising – standards, and enforcing them despite objections by loud and well-resourced industry lobbies.
The Pitt & Sherry/Swinburne report was ready half a year ago. There's perhaps little mystery why its release was timed for when consumers' attention would be most diverted.
