This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
THE Builders Collective of Australia said potential future prime minister Bill Shorten’s decision to reject calls for a Royal Commission into the construction industry, could potentially cost lives.
The response follows the Builders Collective of Australia’s call last month for a Royal Commission in its paper The Residential Construction Industry in Australia: Destined for Disaster, declaring, “It is time for legislators and regulators to put in place a compliance regime that is actually meaningful”, and that a Royal Commission with nationwide coverage would give a badly broken system no place to hide.
“Major high-rise buildings are just a rogue ember away from burning, others are at risk of collapse, and there are thousands of low to medium-rise buildings that have failed badly, to the point that many are uninhabitable,” Builders Collective of Australia president Phil Dwyer said.
“The best that Shorten can come up with is a 4 point plan to ban polyethylene cladding, which has already been done; re-establish the national licencing scheme that previously failed; introduce new penalties; and re-establish the Minister for Industry,” Dwyer explained, following Shorten’s response.
“These rehashed, watered-down policies demonstrate that not even the Opal fiasco in Sydney, nor the near-tragedy of the Neo200 tower in Melbourne have heightened Labor’s understanding of how urgent this issue is,” he added.
Dwyer said Labor’s plan would do nothing to assist the thousands of consumers already impacted by conflicts of interest, poor oversight from regulatory bodies, and seeming indifference from Governments.
“Labor’s plan also provides no assistance to those in the future watching helplessly as their homes are declared unsafe through fire, risk of collapse, mould infestation, or water ingress; or as a horrific fine is imposed for non-Builders Collective
of Australia compliance issues emerging from a regulator’s failure to enforce existing
regulations.
“In addition, Governments are withholding the location and addresses of buildings clad in the potential death-trap polyethylene cladding that decorates thousands of buildings in Australia, leaving countless owners/occupiers not knowing their lives are at risk when they go to bed each night,” he said.
Dwyer said people’s life savings have been diminished or completely exhausted, while accompanying those costs are the emotional impacts a building failure has on the recipients.
“Joe and Jill Average have purchased a fully compliant home where they, their children, their parents or their extended family can expect to place their heads on a pillow every night in complete security and safety.
“Fiddling by Governments and regulators is of no value. Reliance on one state review out of 65 is only as good as its local terms of reference, but does nothing the improve the national industry, and certainly does not rectify failures delivered to innocent consumers.”
“Joe and Jill Average deserve much more from this industry, its regulators, and its politicians. They all need to take responsibility now to arrest as many future failures as we can by taking urgent action in regard to the safety of buildings before we are faced with a real tragedy.
“To continually sit by and do nothing makes those in power equally complicit.
“A Royal Commission with a tight timeframe and an effective terms of reference into the national building industry is urgently needed before people start losing lives.”
Australian Property Journal
