Extract

ABSTRACT: Sustainability (and sustainable building) are topical subjects which have recently crept
into the regulatory arena. This paper is concerned that the use of these terms in current regulation may
be misleading and therefore distract practitioners and regulators from the real focus of sustainability
and so inadvertently create an inappropriate development path for Australia into the future.
Principles of sustainability and Australia’s current policy on regulation set the background for this paper
to review some examples of recent building and planning regulation which claim to be sustainability
based. Then a method for translating sustainability principles into an operational national sustainability
strategy (including sustainable building) is described, and problems which face a regulatory approach
to the issue are identified. A discussion follows to highlight specific areas of divergence between the
current regulatory approach in Australia and global principles of sustainability.

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