As any Australian who has lived overseas knows, Australia’s houses are uniquely cold. Where residents of other nations enjoy the benefit of stable internal temperatures, Australians are mostly left to endure colder, leakier homes with no central heating that have more in common with open-air tents.
Sweden may have made double glazing on windows mandatory since 1960, and triple glazing may be common in many countries, but Australians have stuck with single. This has much to do with how Australian regulations have lagged – the country only got around to introducing energy efficiency standards into the building code in 2003. Even then, some states like South Australia have, at times, exempted developers from having to comply with national energy efficiency regulations on some projects – a decision that will cost residents more in the long run.
