Episode 1: Transparency, Trust & the Future of NatHERS
Episode 1
Transparency, Trust and the Future of NatHERS
20 February 2026 · 70 minutes · Hosted by Brian Haines, Matthew Graham and Andrew Hooper
Summary
The first episode of The Rating Room opens with the question the industry keeps circling: how much can anyone trust an energy rating? The team works through where variation actually comes from — between software tools, between assessors, and between one year and the next as the software itself changes.
The conversation then turns to the CSIRO Energy Rating Finder, the pilot that publishes star ratings against residential addresses. The team walks through it live, and raises the questions it creates: which certificate is shown for a renovation, what happens to ratings that were issued under partial compliance exceptions and never built to that specification, and how a homeowner who was never party to the original agreement can consent to their data appearing at all.
From there the discussion covers future climate files out to 2090, the closure of the Victorian Residential Efficiency Scorecard, how the existing-homes framework compares with new-home assessment, and the new NatHERS guidance on assessor integrity — including a real story about a client who refused to pay unless the numbers changed.
In this episode
0:05Introductions, and how the three hosts first crossed paths
3:43The Software Accreditation Protocol and what the test houses do not cover
4:56Do the different NatHERS tools rate the same house the same way?
6:53Ceiling area, shading limits and subfloor control: where the tools genuinely differ
10:01Choosing a tool to suit the project, and why AccuRate is the benchmark
11:04Tolerances in NatHERS, and the research nobody has done
14:18Builders rating the same house in three tools and keeping the best result
16:12The workshop where accredited assessors rated one project from 0.7 to 7.2 stars
18:09Was the Certificate IV a missed opportunity to lift the standard?
20:33A six-star house re-rated ten years later: five stars, nothing changed
22:53Future climate files: why cold-climate homes improve and hot-climate homes do not
25:39The CSIRO Energy Rating Finder, walked through live
29:36Renovations: which of the two certificates is being published?
30:14Partial compliance exceptions and ratings that were never built
32:47Opting out, and the third party who never agreed to any of it
37:20Privacy clauses in fee proposals, and what assessors should tell clients now
43:47Testing AccuRate Enterprise against a new-home assessment, back to back
47:35Scorecard closing, and where those assessors should go next
54:26The workforce mandatory disclosure would require
57:15New guidance on assessor integrity
1:04:36"I am not paying your invoice unless you make this work"
1:07:15Why the front page of a certificate became an image
Key points
The tools differ in features, not fundamentals
All the NatHERS tools share the same underlying modelling. The differences sit in the details: BERS Pro accepts only three shading elements per orientation where FirstRate5 or HERO will take dozens; ceiling area exposed to outdoor air beneath an attic can be modelled in AccuRate, BERS Pro and HERO but not in FirstRate5; subfloor wall heights and construction can be controlled in AccuRate and HERO but not in FirstRate5 or BERS Pro. Matthew's testing found that once you level those differences down to a common denominator, the tools produce very similar results — but the test houses used for accreditation were never designed to isolate them.
The assessor is the larger variable, by a wide margin
The most striking figure in the episode comes from a workshop where more than two hundred accredited assessors modelled the same project. The results ranged from 0.7 stars to 7.2 stars on a project that should have landed somewhere around five or six. Set against that, the fraction of a star that separates one software tool from another is close to noise. As the team put it, when you are seeing a tenth or two of a star, it is the assessor, not the software.
A rating is a snapshot of the year it was produced
Andrew re-opened a six-star assessment from roughly a decade earlier in current software, changed nothing, and recalculated: five stars. Matthew reported the same one-star drift in his own test over a comparable period. Between software revisions, Technical Note updates and the NCC 2022 star bands, the team's position is that ratings issued before about 2018 cannot be relied upon as comparable to today's, which has direct implications for any public database that publishes historical ratings alongside current ones.
Future climate files flatter cold climates and punish warm ones
Running projects against the 2050, 2070 and 2090 climate files produces a counter-intuitive result in Victoria and South Australia: homes score better, because reduced heating demand outweighs the gradual rise in cooling load — until roughly 2070, when it turns. In Queensland and warmer zones the picture is very different, and the team question how a home would be built to reach seven or eight stars against those files at all.
The Energy Rating Finder raises a consent problem
Assessors obtain consent through the software licence agreement, but the homeowner living in the house years later was never party to that agreement, and their address now carries a published star rating. An opt-out form exists, though it requires the owner to know the listing is there in the first place, and CSIRO indicates it may release the data in bulk by state or nationally in future. The team's practical response: include a privacy statement in your fee proposals, as Andrew already does, and start telling clients that the Finder exists and can be opted out of.
What the Finder does not tell you
Only homes built or renovated after 2016 are likely to appear, FirstRate5 assessments are not yet in the data set at all — a substantial share of the market — and dwellings that complied through elemental provisions or verification methods rather than a NatHERS rating do not feature. For renovations there are two certificates, and it is not clear which is published. In Victoria in particular, certificates were issued at six or seven stars under partial compliance exceptions for homes that were never built to that standard, so a published figure may describe a dwelling that does not exist.
The existing-homes framework holds up better than expected
Brian modelled the same dwelling twice — once in AccuRate Enterprise, used for existing homes, and once in new-home software with an identical specification — and the two rated the same. The Whole of Home figures differed, though only by about a point, and a correction factor exists to bring them into line. His conclusion was that AccuRate Enterprise is hard to use but sound, and that the trial process visibly improved it.
Integrity, in practice, is a Friday afternoon problem
The new NatHERS guidance covers fraud, falsified credentials and data, fabricated QR codes, conflicts of interest, and an obligation to correct errors and inform the relevant parties promptly — including, unusually, alerting the NatHERS administrator directly rather than only your Assessor Accrediting Organisation. The team argue it needs worked examples to be useful. Brian supplies one from his own experience: a client who responded to a glazing problem with "I am not paying your invoice unless you make this work", and received "see you in court" in reply.
Documents referenced
NatHERS publicationsTechnical Note, assessor handbook and scheme guidance material.
National Construction CodeAustralian Building Codes Board — the code itself, and the Housing Provisions referenced throughout.
Transcript
Lightly edited for readability. Hesitations and repetition have been removed and technical terms corrected; the substance is unchanged. Where the recording states two years for existing-home assessment validity, see the correction noted at the top of this page.
0:05Welcome to The Rating Room. My name is Brian Haines. I have my co-hosts Matthew Graham and Andrew Hooper with me, and we are here to talk about NatHERS and energy efficiency and everything in between. Where do you want to start?
0:21How about how we met originally? That is going back a long way. I remember Cheryl coming to me at one point and saying there is this fellow Matthew Graham who really knows his stuff. The first time you and I met would have been at training, around ten years ago. And I remember arguing with a building surveyor who kept saying "but Andrew Hooper said this", and thinking to myself, who is Andrew Hooper? Apparently you were right and I was wrong.
1:58I am in the presence of greatness, because you have both been doing this longer than I have. The business started in 2005, but I only started working in it in 2008, so that is eighteen years. I am up to twenty-four. I did the first training in 2002, when Victorian planning brought in energy ratings as part of the planning process, before it moved to building permits. Trying to measure everything off one-to-two-hundred planning drawings was always fun, using FirstRate 3 back in the day.
2:53You were both using FirstRate 4. I remember the very start of FirstRate5 — around 2009 or 2010. We were doing the testing for FirstRate5, and there are all the stories from that: you would press a button and get one star rating, press it again and get another, and pick whichever one you liked best. Until you reopened the file. What is one star between instances? I think there was more like three or four in some of those.
3:43The new homes situation is interesting, because people are probably unaware that the NatHERS software tools are going through a Software Accreditation Protocol at the moment. Have they changed the reference houses yet? No.
4:04This is the thing I do not understand. You have multiple software tools all modelling a specific set of houses, which I do not think are particularly complicated, and you cannot really get down to exactly how each one works and where they deviate from one another — enough to be confident they sit within five per cent of each other. The houses would have to be extremely complicated. They are quite varied, and they have a lot of different scenarios in them. But they do not have all the scenarios. There is still a lot of software functionality, and Chenath functionality, that does not exist in the accreditation houses. So how is that tested?
4:56In all the years we have been doing this, we know there are differences and nobody has been able to put a finger on exactly what they are, even now. Matthew, did you not do some testing where you rated the exact same house in each tool, with people you knew were very competent, and found they rated the same?
5:30There are a few caveats around that. A lot of the tools have slight differences and nuances, so they cannot all rate exactly the same way, and it is difficult to get an apples-with-apples comparison. Functionality exists in one tool that does not exist in another. But if you make adjustments — if you effectively dumb one tool down so that it matches another — you can get the same result. The accreditation houses were not designed in a way that lets you do that easily.
6:19Does the average user know how to manipulate it that way to get parity? And can they do it without compromising the Technical Note requirements or the software protocols? Take BERS Pro, which can only take three shading elements in any one orientation, where HERO or FirstRate might have dozens doing the same job. So do we take out shading?
6:53One that is really interesting is ceiling area, which can have a big effect on a rating. For anyone unfamiliar, it is effectively the floor to an attic roof space. This can be modelled in AccuRate, and it can be incorporated into BERS Pro and HERO — that setting for a ceiling area with outdoor air below, for an attic space. That would be where the roof extends over a portico at the front, or over an alfresco. That cannot be taken into account in FirstRate5.
7:41When you say it cannot be taken into account in FirstRate5 — obviously if you draw an elevated area over an alfresco and you do not insulate it, then insulate it, you get a different result. So what is the difference? The setting is simply not in FirstRate5, so you are unable to test it. And it is not just having the area in there, it is whether that area is insulated or uninsulated, which is very much climate zone dependent.
8:24In BERS Pro it is area based, and it is area based in HERO as well — you are just entering an area. AccuRate is the most specific, because you do multiple ones and you can control the roof spaces. There are a lot of differences. You do not have control over subfloor wall heights in FirstRate5 or BERS Pro, but you do in AccuRate and HERO: the construction, whether there is insulation, what the heights are.
8:59How much difference would something like that make? Who is advantaged and who is disadvantaged? They can produce different results, but it is impossible to compare unless the feature set is consistent across all the tools. If it is missing in one, you cannot make the comparison, because the functionality is not there. So the testing I did was very specific: where a tool could not do something, we went to the lowest common denominator and adjusted. If you consistently do that with all the things that differ slightly, you get a very similar result.
9:50That sounds complicated. I wish they all just worked the same, to be perfectly honest.
10:01If you had the resources, could you pick the best software for a specific floor plan? Not for a specific floor plan, but I definitely choose different tools based on the project. I may have a unique skill set being accredited in all four, so I can pick the tool most suited to the job, whereas many assessors have one or two. AccuRate is the key though, because it is the benchmark tool — there is no functionality in the other tools that AccuRate does not have. At the end of the day, if the other tools do not have what I need, it has to be assessed in AccuRate. The problem is that an AccuRate assessment can take three times as long, so it is not cost effective for a client.
11:04Do you think in the end we are splitting hairs? If you have competent assessors who know exactly what they are doing and can input the data correctly, are we splitting hairs with the software? I think we are really talking about whether there are any tolerances in NatHERS, and nobody has done that research. There is no study that works out what the tolerances are. I would like to see research on the tolerances around the various modelling aspects. Does it really make a difference whether you are ten, twenty or fifty millimetres out with your eave projection, or vertical offset, or screen height? Is a window really 1800 or is it 1810? Does that make much difference? I do not think anybody has done that work, and I would like to see a test to work out where the tolerance really lies.
12:14Coming back to the accreditation houses — they were fine for what they were when they were originally developed. Andrew and I have had the good fortune of working on some training projects for the NatHERS administrator, and we have put a lot of time and effort into those. We are still refining them, because in some instances the design we came up with over-complicates things, or we do not need to test something more than once. But I think those projects test more scenarios, and are closer to real-world examples, than the accreditation houses are.
13:03They are real-world examples in the design, but you would not find all those elements in one real house. We have tried to pack so much into five houses that you might normally see those features spread over ten or fifteen. So you look at it and think, this is not really good design.
13:32Coming back to whether a competent assessor could pick and choose the software: I do not think it makes enough difference, because you are talking about two per cent differences. They are little features. Overall the tools do the big job — they all share the same modelling and construction. It is the details: the ceiling area, the wall height, shading in BERS is probably the biggest one. The little features should not affect the outcome enough that you need to pick one over another.
14:18I know there are builders out there doing a thousand or more homes a year who are literally getting every house rated in three separate software tools and choosing whichever suits them best. I really think it comes down to the assessor and the way they input the data, not the software. I would be curious to know whether it was the same author. Having three different people do it in three different tools is not the same thing at all.
15:01It is about the accuracy and consistency of the modelling. Andrew and I have rated the same dwelling in different tools, and with other peers as well, and for the most part we get within cooee of each other. There is a bit of argy-bargy as we converge, but usually it is interpretation of the drawings — you went this way and I went that way — or a calculation like averaging screens on fences where we have gone slightly differently. Even that can make a fraction of a megajoule of difference, but usually we are within a megajoule of each other, in different tools, having put a lot of effort into modelling them consistently.
16:00When you are seeing a tenth or two of a star difference, it has to come down to the assessor. I do not think it is the software.
16:12I used to run a workshop many years ago where students submitted an assessment of a particular project — probably more than two hundred assessors — and I would give them feedback. Do you want to guess what the range of star ratings was? Over a star? It was a lot more. The lowest was down at 0.7 of a star, and the highest was 7.2 stars. At that stage the project was around five or six stars. So that shows you the range. And these were not students — these were accredited assessors.
17:04I was sitting next to Tony Isaacs in one of those sessions, and you start to realise the detail you really have to put in. He was getting into the little detail of a wall change and all of that, whereas at that point I was going on my merry way. Sometimes that detail is what makes the difference. Quite often it is. But to what degree do you go, when you are talking about points of a megajoule that will not change it by a tenth of a star, yet you are adding fifty per cent to the time it takes to create a file? There has to be a happy medium.
18:09I think the introduction of the Certificate IV in 2015 was a bit of a missed opportunity for a lot of people. It was a chance to upskill and to do genuinely meaningful continuing professional development, and I do not think everybody did that. The training we had before 2015 was fine, but it is not quite the same. The Technical Note has grown enormously — I cannot remember how many pages it was when it first came out — and we did not have a handbook then. I think the calibre of assessors who have studied in the last five years or so is different.
19:16There are so many nuances and differences in the way the software operates since around 2010. The Technical Notes have changed, we have added neighbouring dwellings, fences, all of that, which was not there in FirstRate 4 or 5 as I remember it.
19:43I remember a point around 2013 to 2015 when it felt like every second week there was a new version of the software. You would recalculate a job you had done a week or two earlier and it would drop by a tenth of a star, and that happened again and again. I am thoroughly convinced that any project you did in 2010 and re-did in 2025 would show a star difference, purely from the changes in the software and the Technical Notes. Which brings us back to the CSIRO website: anything before about 2018 I really do not think is worth the paper it is printed on, because so much has changed. You cannot rely on those older ratings.
20:33I tried that experiment a couple of years ago. There was a house a few doors down from me when we moved in, and I knew we had done the rating on it — a six-star house at the time. I opened it in the latest version of the software and recalculated. I changed nothing. It was five stars. It had lost one star in ten years of software changes. I did not update it for the Technical Note. I did nothing. I wrote a LinkedIn article on that exact topic a few years ago, and my test showed one star over much the same period.
21:23Then there is NCC 2022 with the star bands changing, which is another one to deal with. When we were trying to do the 10 Star Challenge in Victoria it was literally 0.0 megajoules. How much of a saving grace is it now that the star bands have changed and it is so much easier to reach those higher ratings? What does that say about old energy reports — have we moved the goalposts?
21:57I think we have, but for the better. The whole point of the new climate data is that it is more modern. The old data went back to the 1960s. The climate has moved on; we are hotter. Not to confuse weather with climate, but it is changing. Having these new data files makes it more accurate, and I think that is where most of these changes are heading — increasing accuracy every time there is a change, whether that is the Technical Note, the software, or Chenath interpretations.
22:53Have either of you run the 2050 or 2070 climate files? They extend all the way to 2090. I have played with it briefly. It was interesting — some of the houses actually came up better as the climate got hotter, which surprised me. It suggests either that there are problems with housing today, or that it is future-proofing.
23:46I have had the same results. If you take a house in South Australia or Victoria and run it through the future climate models, by around 2050 everything is getting better in the colder climate zones, because of reduced reliance on mechanical heating. The heating load starts to drop, and it is so dominant in colder climates compared with the cooling load. The cooling load grows gradually, but the heating load decreases sharply, so everything improves — until about 2070, when it starts to become an issue. But if you go to Queensland and those warmer climates and run almost any of the predicted files, I do not know how you would build a house if it still needs to be seven or eight stars, because it is not going to happen.
24:47In those future files there were multiple sets, depending on whether there was abatement of climate change or whether it continued at the rate of five years ago. Which grouping did you choose? I believe I used the medium of the three — lower, medium and upper — but it was a long time ago. The thing that stuck in my mind was that in the colder climate zones the houses could get higher star ratings, which I thought was strange.
25:39Let us head to the CSIRO website and see what is new. The NatHERS news last week said star ratings are now available online. CSIRO is seeking feedback on a new pilot called the Energy Rating Finder. Are we happy with that? Would you be happy with your energy rating certificate being published?
26:04I am trying to wrap my head around it. They are going to publish the star rating out of ten for previously assessed homes, alongside the address, back to a certain point. So I type in my address, and if it has had an energy rating done within that period, it shows the star value.
26:30The data is being collected from NatHERS for new homes, so it is historical data and does not include existing homes. Although new homes assessed some years ago are, in an everyday sense, existing homes now — just not the NatHERS existing homes. It is pretty much everything built since 2004 that has had a rating done. We need to find out how far back they go.
27:15They are asking for help to shape the next phase of the project: discover your home's rating, follow these steps. So presumably this is being marketed to the homeowner. Let us go to the Energy Rating Finder, enter the address, and see what the star rating is.
27:51How is it going to help the homeowner, other than letting them compare with their neighbours? One would assume it leads to realestate.com.au or similar, and then we start comparing energy ratings — and if it is the same house in the same suburb with the same orientation and one has half a star more, maybe it gets another five thousand dollars. That would be the advantage, I would guess.
28:29The real challenge I see is public perception. People see a star rating of six stars, but this is very different from the existing homes scheme. Is a new home that was assessed three or four years ago off a plan, before it was built, still a new home? Somebody has been living in it for years. In my mind that is now part of the existing built environment.
29:17They do have some frequently asked questions. Why can I not find my address? It says only homes built or renovated after 2016 are likely to be included, so that answers the question about a cut-off. But it raises another one with renovations: were those houses brought fully into compliance? In Victoria, with the two-house energy rating method, which certificate was certified? Back then there would have been both certificates — the six-star version and the post-construction version. Which one are they displaying? There are two certificates for every renovation and extension.
30:14Maybe they take the address and pick one, but then it is not a real certificate and not a real star rating. And in Victoria we were issuing certificates for six or seven stars that were never actually built to that standard, because they had partial compliance exceptions. Other jurisdictions have similar allowances in their assessment methods. It is all going to come out in the wash at some point, and people are going to think they have a six-star house when it is really three.
30:48The next part says homes assessed using FirstRate5 are not yet included in the data set. I would have thought FirstRate5 was a fairly sizable percentage of the market — and if it goes back to 2016, that is a lot of data. That is a big hole. And if your property is not listed, there is a link to RapidRate.
31:32What information do we get out of this? We have the star rating, cooling in megajoules per square metre, heating, the Assessor Accrediting Organisation, the NCC class, the project type — new build, renovation or existing construction — and when the assessment was completed. So no certificate, and no assessor named, just the accrediting organisation. It is keeping it as anonymous as possible. That is fine, but you can still type in almost anybody's address in any new estate and get the star rating of their house.
32:16It is also ignoring all the other compliance pathways. There is no elemental provision, no verification using a reference building. They cover that a little under "where does the data come from", saying more than eighty per cent of new homes are assessed using NatHERS, which is a healthy statistic.
32:47Can an owner opt out if they do not want that information displayed? It is covered — homeowners can opt out of having their NatHERS certificate data displayed. I wonder whether that is after the fact. You have to find it first to know that it is there. We originally consented, because as assessors we have to obtain consent as part of the user licence agreement. But what happens if the homeowner changes their mind? There is a third party here who is not involved in that agreement at all, whose house is online with a star rating, and who has no control over it.
33:52There is a link for opting out. It says that in future CSIRO may make this data available in a downloadable bulk format — for example all certificates for a state or territory, or nationally. That is a bit rough. If you do not want your dwelling's certificate data to appear in the Energy Rating Finder, you can opt out by completing a form where you enter your address. So it is like telling Google Maps to blur your house out.
35:16There are some samples loaded already — a postcode 2138 project, class 2. There is data from CSIRO on average star ratings and percentiles through the Australian Housing Data portal, and I presume this information comes from the same database; the top of the page says as much. Is this data any different from what you could already get through that portal, or is it simply collating and simplifying it? You would not have been able to type in an address and get the details before, that is for sure. It was more high level.
36:05I just do not see any privacy in this, because again there is a third party involved. We all have to keep everybody's privacy. I cannot see how that third party, who had no involvement at all, has their data given out, when the agreement is between an energy assessor and the software provider and back to CSIRO. I am not saying it is a bad thing.
36:44Is it really any different from a domain or realestate.com listing the property's price, where you can go back historically and see that someone bought that house twenty or thirty years ago? What is the difference between a star rating for a dwelling and what the property sold for? And on realestate.com you have the three-dimensional walkthroughs and everybody's photos as well. I guess every year we keep losing more of our privacy and everyone is fine with it.
37:20I will make a point though. In all my fee proposals I have a privacy statement saying the energy rating data can be used in other ways by authorities, including this sort of thing. So I am notifying clients that the possibility exists and they are signing off on it as part of the agreement. That is very smart. A lot of assessors probably should have a clause like that. It was a requirement at one point — a preliminary version of the Technical Note talked about having a privacy statement, so it went into my documents and stayed there, because why not.
38:22Have your terms and conditions grown over the last eighteen years, Brian? Definitely. Different things happen and you need to cover yourself, and as your services expand it introduces different issues. The variables that have to be covered off in the NCC have to be covered in your terms and conditions as well. It is not just NatHERS — there are other items that need to be complied with, and as the National Construction Code changes that keeps expanding. It becomes very nuanced: thermal breaks and all of those things. You have to be on top of it, and it will catch you out one day.
39:22I feel like I am constantly trying to demystify things and reduce them to something more tangible. That runs through everything — even the simple email address. It is the same with fee proposals: I have tried to distil it to a one-page version with the terms and conditions. That is good for converting work, because it keeps it light and the potential client does not see a wall of fine print. But there is a risk that you cut it too fine and it does not have enough in it. You could almost put a link on the quote saying please see our terms and conditions, and put them on a web page.
40:52Getting back to the Energy Rating Finder — do we need to tell our clients up front that this information is there, and that there is an opt-out? I think we do now. For some reason I was comfortable with it when I knew it could be used, but now it is being used. Seeing it in this format is different. It makes it real. I feel I probably have a duty of care to raise it with clients and send them the link. And if we are working for a designer or a builder, do we need to emphasise that they pass it on to the homeowner? How far do you go? Where does our responsibility start and finish?
41:58Put it in your documentation and then it is up to them. Projects can sell before they are built — you can buy something with plans and permits that include the energy efficiency assessment. The builder is meant to be knowledgeable enough to read the documentation and know what to do with it.
42:37So how are we feeling about a supposedly six or seven star project, and about the introduction of existing homes, where it is completely different? As far as the consumer is concerned, they are going to get a star rating off a different set of rules.
43:08I have some prior knowledge of this, having been involved in the trial. Where the issue will arise is that people will start to realise how poorly the existing stock rates. You have houses rating at 0.6 of a star, or 1.2, or 2.3 — and if they do an insulation upgrade and it suddenly rates at 3.2 stars, that is still very low compared with a house built since 2004 or 2005.
43:47I wanted to know what the difference was between the specification and calculation for NatHERS for existing houses and NatHERS for new houses. So I did back-to-back calculations using AccuRate Enterprise, which is used to rate existing houses, with the exact same design, and then ran the same specification through new-home software. Funnily enough, it rated the same. I was extremely surprised. I think the reason is that there was such a learning curve, not only for the assessors in the trial but for CSIRO — making changes to the software, listening to feedback, implementing specific requirements — that it has been brought into line.
45:06Where it was very different is Whole of Home. There is some difference in those calculations between the two, but there is a factor that can be changed to bring it into line as well. On a score out of sixty or a hundred, it was within one point. I was quite dubious at the beginning about AccuRate Enterprise, but for the one I did back to back it was fine. It took a long time — Enterprise is difficult to use — but it was pretty much spot on, and it restored my faith in the whole thing. My hat is off to CSIRO: it is hard to use, but it is good.
45:49So an existing home is unlikely to come out wildly different. But it goes back to whoever did the original energy report. If you had an incompetent assessor and it rated six stars as a new home, and then it does not rate six stars as an existing home, that is down to the assessor. Who is to know? And as we said earlier, there have been variations in the software over the years, so it does not have to be an incompetent assessor — what was assessed back then might simply not be what it is today. One star difference, whatever. Which brings us back to anything before about 2018 not carrying much weight. Anything after 2018, where assessors were competent and properly trained and the Technical Notes had been updated, is probably reasonably accurate.
47:35What else was in here? Scorecard closes in June. I was a bit sad to read that. Did you do Scorecard? No, never did. The reason we never went into Scorecard is that it was not mandatory, and I did not see a business case in it. You need something legislated before you go and do that; everything with Scorecard was voluntary.
48:05The other thing about Scorecard is that it is confusing for the consumer, because you have a NatHERS assessment with a star rating and a Scorecard assessment with a star rating, and you can have a ten-star Scorecard result on a five-star NatHERS home, because they measure mostly different things — and it is much easier to obtain a high Scorecard rating. Scorecard should have used something other than stars. People recognise stars though — we have that with appliances. It is still a star, and everyone thinks they know what a star means, but the metrics are completely different. And with the green loans the banks were offering, you could qualify with either a Scorecard rating or a NatHERS rating, and it was so much easier to get there with Scorecard.
49:26One of the things that was great about Scorecard was the opportunity it created for a conversation with the homeowner. It was a sit-down conversation. It was dynamic and interactive — did you really need that extra drinks fridge in the garage? Is there scope for that under the new existing homes scheme?
50:04Current Scorecard assessors should be jumping onto NatHERS for existing houses. They should be getting certified now, and building a business case to carry it on. It would be the perfect upgrade to their skills, a genuine value add. There are different business models being floated for how existing houses will work, but there is a case for it. If you wanted to do a handful of assessments a week, it would still work.
50:57Does it still work with a data collector going out who is not a NatHERS accredited assessor? They have to be part of the NatHERS scheme and trained, but perhaps not a fully accredited assessor. If you are going out with your LiDAR and taking a three-dimensional scan and you want to add value for the client, you are going to have to manipulate that data yourself to work out the star rating and the Whole of Home position. I think you would have to be accredited in both streams.
52:43That is separate from the data collection though. If you are taking that LiDAR information and sending it to an accredited assessor — would you not think the person on the ground still has to be accredited? I think trained and recognised under the scheme is what has been discussed. To sign off on the certificate and have your name on it, you have to be accredited. The data collection, I am not so sure.
53:32It is one of the things I raised in the round tables — separate accreditation for the person who walks through. It is really about the opportunity to have that conversation, because that is what set Scorecard apart. It was more personal.
53:59The NatHERS website notes allowing trained and accredited assessors to evaluate data involving comprehensive on-site data collection. On-site inspections: trained, accredited assessors visit homes to record data. So it reads as though the collectors will be accredited as well. They are not compromising on the accreditation process.
54:26Can you imagine the workforce that will have to be employed to do that for every Australian house that does not currently have an energy assessment, or is being sold, or needs a Section 32, or is being rented out? And is it ongoing? Does it happen once, every three years, every five years, or every time you upgrade a cooktop or a heating and cooling system? It is going to be big.
55:10That is why I think Scorecard assessors are potentially losing their livelihoods. They need to jump on this as soon as possible. It will be far bigger than Scorecard ever was — assuming mandatory disclosure comes in, which we have been hearing about for eighteen years. If it does, take Victoria: I think we had eighty thousand sales and leases last year. And if I remember rightly, existing homes assessments will last for a period before a reassessment is needed if the house is sold again, or if major work has been done. New South Wales is trialling mandatory disclosure at the moment, so they will be the first to see it and make decisions. If it does not come in, the number of Scorecard assessors probably does not change much — but if Scorecard is removed, it does. I am just worried about people's livelihoods. Where do you move to after they cancel what you do for a living? The natural move would be existing houses.
57:15Ready for the next one? Guidance on assessor integrity. There is a new document on the NatHERS website covering this specifically. It is relatively short, and it is trying to reinstate the integrity of the scheme.
57:50The first thing for integrity would be mandatory accreditation — would that not be where we head first? That is a jurisdictional matter, not a NatHERS one. They cannot control it. They encourage accreditation, which is good and proper, but it is up to Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland to make accreditation or registration mandatory. Some states and territories push it harder than others. It is difficult in Victoria to get a building permit unaccredited — not impossible — but it puts more emphasis on the building surveyor, and in my opinion all the liability would sit with them. How do you prove you are a competent person if you are not accredited?
58:46In lieu of mandatory accreditation, this is something. Assessors should act with integrity. It is not just about protecting the scheme; it is about the homeowners, and about making sure there is a level playing field. It is not right if some assessors are adhering to the Technical Notes and doing everything correctly while others are knowingly circumventing it.
59:38Does this go beyond the code of conduct we all sign already? I think it is complementary — in addition to it. The code of conduct is written and driven by the Assessor Accrediting Organisation; that is their requirement. Perhaps the NatHERS administrator looked at that and wanted something more encompassing, an umbrella document to be read in conjunction with it. It is not long, really a two-pager.
1:00:11It is good that it covers fraud and falsifying credentials and data. Fake QR codes. Do not do that. There is some overlap, because the code of conduct also covers not bringing the scheme into disrepute. It also covers disclosing conflicts of interest.
1:01:03One of the examples is correcting errors and promptly informing relevant parties. That is really interesting. There was a hint of that when the Technical Note was updated in June 2019 — or perhaps it was in a draft; I cannot remember whether that section flowed through — about taking greater responsibility.
1:01:32Is that not the same with the mentoring you both do? If you look at a project with a mentee and they have done something incorrectly and you spot it, and they go back and correct their work, is it not one of the requirements to go back to the client and say this was not quite right? We tend to work with mentees before they produce a certificate. Even in the audit process though — if something incorrect is picked up, is it not your obligation to go back to the client and let them know? It is, apparently, in this particular document, but I am not sure that has been happening broadly across the accrediting organisations.
1:02:53There is also an aspect that says you should alert the NatHERS administrator. I thought that was interesting, because ordinarily you would inform your Assessor Accrediting Organisation and they would inform the administrator. This one seems to indicate you are supposed to alert everybody — your organisation, the NatHERS administrator, and the relevant state or territory building administration. I might run a short professional development session on this one, mainly to raise awareness. I think it needs examples; it is a fairly dry document.
1:03:38Say somebody comes to you at half past four on a Friday afternoon. The project is sitting at 6.8 stars, they say it has to be seven, and it has to be done by close of business or first thing Monday morning. Maybe they are your number one client. What do you do? Are you going to pull a lever and magically make it happen? A bit of push back — this is too much pressure on a Friday afternoon, I cannot pull rabbits out of hats. But if you had integrity you would just say no. That is right. The answer is no. Simple.
1:04:36Let me tell you a story. This is Section J related rather than NatHERS, but it is a rating of some form. Going back many years, using the glazing calculator to do Section J reports, it was notoriously hard to comply. We were having issues with the glazing specification — the client wanted single glazing, let us say. The response I got was: I am not paying your invoice unless you make this work. And I said, that is okay, see you in court. That is how blunt they were with me.
1:05:26On the point about it being your number one client — if you had a number one client, they would not do that to you in the first place, because you have a relationship where you can talk problems through. They are not going to go for the burn-it-all-down option. I have a lot of respect for my clients and I can talk to them. Even if I have only worked with them a couple of times, you show who you are and they listen. Sure, you get push back at times, and you push back yourself. If your integrity is weak you will bend to their will, but a good client will not put you there — you will work through it.
1:06:26Would you put your accreditation at risk for a few hundred or a few thousand dollars, for one random client, or even one who gives you a hundred thousand a year? You are just not going to, because that is your livelihood. I made that scenario up on the fly, and honestly that is what weekends are for — I would probably still get it done by nine on Monday morning. But I am talking about a scenario where it cannot be done, or where they are trying to get you to do something that is wrong. That is just something you would not do. It is not worth it. Your whole business, potentially, down the drain.
1:07:15Am I right in saying that a few years ago the first page of the certificate became an image rather than a PDF, because people were changing the results? That is right — it was digital and it could be edited. I also understand it was to stop people getting around the certificate fees by removing the word "preview". So it became an image, and the first few pages could not be modified, while the rest stayed as clear, legible PDF. If you do not pay your fees, you do not get a clean certificate. And then the address was watermarked as a further step after that.
1:08:23There is one other thing that has changed, and it may differ between FirstRate5 and the others: the certificate number is no longer in the preview certificate, where it used to be. It is only available on the final certificate, which makes doing BASIX reports really difficult, because you cannot put a number in that you do not have. I know how to do it — but if you did not work with APIs, you would not be able to, and it makes things very complicated. Is that one for another podcast, where you help everybody get their certificate numbers for BASIX? No.
1:09:29I think that is it for the NatHERS news from last week. Thanks everybody for tuning in to The Rating Room. We will be back next week, and we are very interested in what you have to say — leave a comment, or any questions you have, on the NatHERS Assessor Network Facebook page and we will endeavour to cover those topics as well. See you next week.
