Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the private senator's bill submitted for consideration to this place by our former colleague and former senator Nick Xenophon, the Customs Amendment (Safer Cladding) Bill 2017. While I know that its intentions are worthy, indeed, this bill seeks to use border controls to restrict the importation of aluminium composite panel. This bill is misguided—it is misguided overreach, ill-considered and knee-jerk politics, with significant unintended consequences. To some extent it does reek of rank populism. This bill seeks to capitalise on the Grenfell Tower tragedy in London in an erroneous attempt to compare that with the Australian situation. This is simply poor legislation without thought to the nuances and complexities of the Australian context. The government therefore cannot support this bill.

The government recognises that there is genuine community concern about non-compliant use of combustible external wall cladding in Australia. The safety of occupants in high-rise buildings, including fire safety, of course, is a priority for the Australian government. But, while the problem that this bill attempts to solve is very important, the solution that is presented in this bill will not actually fix the problem it intends to address.

Aluminium composite panels, or ACPs, including polyethylene-core aluminium composite panels, which are referred to as PE ACPs, are a safe and legitimate building product in Australia, if they are used appropriately and in compliance in the National Construction Code. The introduction of border controls to restrict importation of a legitimate product would neither be effective nor practical to implement.

These products are not just used in high-rise buildings, which are the concern of this bill; in fact, most of these products are imported by Australian businesses for use in signage and in interior design. So we should be managing cladding, not banning it. This is an unnecessary simplification of a policy problem that is, frankly, I think, beneath this place. Banning the importation of ACPs would have unintended consequences for those businesses that use the product correctly, legitimately and legally. We need to ensure that the public has confidence in their built environment, and the coalition takes that responsibility very seriously, but banning a specific product that has legitimate uses outside of high-rise buildings is not the answer.

Like many Australians, the video footage of the Grenfell Tower tragedy in June last year is indelibly seared on my memory, as it is on all of ours. The day of 14 June 2017 was indeed a tragic day: 71 people lost their lives and over 70 people were injured. While more than 220 escaped the inferno, occupants of 23 of the 129 flats there tragically lost their lives that day, and I, like many Australians, express my sincere and heartfelt sympathy for the residents and families affected. However, it really is unreasonable to draw alarmist comparisons between the United Kingdom and the safety of Australia's high-rise buildings. Put simply, an apartment block such as the one that caught fire in Grenfell in London could not comply with Australia's National Construction Code.

The inquiry into the Grenfell Tower is ongoing, and recommendations are yet to be finalised, but we do know that the building was constructed in the 1970s; it lacked many standard fire safety features of modern buildings, like fire sprinklers; and it had only one isolated staircase for evacuation. The combination of these factors seems to have contributed to the spread of the fire and to the unfortunate and tragic loss of life. In Australia, the National Construction Code has very strict fire safety requirements for high-rise apartment buildings. Specifically, while requirements vary with a building's size, the provisions include things like smoke detection and occupant warning systems; fire-isolated exits, such as exit stairs; more than one exit for each storey; exclusion of smoke from exit stairs; fire sprinklers; fire-resistant construction to limit the spread of fire between apartments and storeys; non-combustible external walls resistant to collapse as a result of fire; and features to assist the fire brigade's operation, such as fire hydrants.

Similarly, the Lacrosse building fire in Victoria, in my home town of Melbourne, in November 2014 was extremely frightening, and there were over 300 people evacuated from that building. There was, thankfully, no loss of life. External cladding in that situation was indeed a factor; however, it's important to understand that the Lacrosse fire was caused by a compliance issue, not by an issue with the product itself. ACPs are a legitimate building product in Australia and, if used appropriately and in compliance with the National Construction Code, are perfectly safe. If they are used in a noncompliant manner, as was the case in the Lacrosse fire in Melbourne in 2014, then they can contribute dramatically to the spread of fire.

The National Construction Code does not permit the use of combustible material in the external wall cladding of high-rise buildings, and this has been the case in Australia since the 1990s. The underlying problems at Lacrosse were due to failures in practitioner competency and state government administrative compliance systems. The Melbourne Metropolitan Fire Brigade concluded that the cladding on the building did not comply with the National Construction Code. The Victorian Building Authority has also conducted an investigation and is undertaking disciplinary action against the building surveyors. The Australian Building Codes Board office found also that the underlying problems at Lacrosse were due to failures in two specific things: practitioner competency and state government administrative compliance systems.

So, on 14 December 2016, the Building Ministers' Forum agreed to implement a comprehensive package of measures to address these concerns of noncompliant use of wall cladding and fire safety in high-rise buildings, and that package of measures included such things as referencing a contemporary and rigorous testing standard based on international best practice for full-scale testing of fire performance of external facade systems; providing rigorous, contemporary and clear National Construction Code requirements to improve the application and compliance; enhancing onsite checking, auditing and enforcement; providing practitioners with the tools and supporting materials to support compliance with the national code; and, finally, increasing awareness of the potential risks associated with noncompliance.

What are ACPs? They have multiple uses in building construction. They're a flat-sheet material faced with a thin aluminium sheet on either side of a core material. They're a legitimate product with a multitude of uses, including in advertising, signage, interior design and caravans and trailers, and refrigerators and freezers use them in applications as well. So banning the product itself is not the answer. All building work in Australia must meet certain performance and legal requirements, and this ensures that our buildings are safe, healthy and durable, which means that we can have confidence in their performance.

There is a very big difference, however, between building products that are not legitimate and shouldn't be used at all and building products that are legitimate but are installed in a way that isn't compliant with the National Construction Code. It's critically important to note the difference, as these two issues are often erroneously conflated. Non-conforming products, for instance, are products that claim to be something they're not, don't meet the required standard for their intended use or are marketed and supplied with the intent to deceive the user—for example, windows that are marketed as safety glass that don't actually conform to our glass building standards or insulation that is marketed as having a higher thermal resistance than it actually achieves when it's tested.

A non-compliant product, however, is different. They're legitimate products that are used or installed in a way that doesn't necessarily comply with the National Construction Code—for example, using a wood product in place of a steel structure which isn't capable of meeting the durability requirements of the National Construction Code. In this instance, it would not be a problem with the product, but it would be a problem with compliance with the code.

Banning all ACPs will not fix the problem. The introduction of border controls to restrict the importation of building products is not possible, nor is it practical. The majority of complaints that were made to the Joint Accreditation System of Australia and New Zealand over building products were actually concerned with domestically manufactured, not necessarily imported, building products. The cladding products in this bill are, in fact, legitimate products which, if used in a way that is not compliant with the National Construction Code, can, in fact, pose a threat, but their mere existence doesn't make them a threat. It's their incorrect use that makes them a threat.

The opposition senators recognised in a Senate committee interim report into composite cladding that these products can be legitimately used, yet they still want to ban them. To ban aluminium composite panels at the border is a significant overreaction. It won't fix the actual problem, and it will destroy thousands of small businesses, particularly those in the signage industry, that use this product legitimately and legally. Banning products will not solve the issue.

The proposed introduction of a border control to restrict the importation of aluminium composite panels is, as I said, neither possible nor practical. It's not possible because we live in a global economy with free trade. As we manufacture ACPs domestically, Australia must act in a manner consistent with our international trade obligations. Technical regulations and standards must not be trade restrictive to overseas manufacturers where there is no domestic restriction on the manufacture of the product. The proposed prohibition would also likely breach Australia's commitment to the World Trade Organization's General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and also our free trade agreements. It's also not practical to restrict importation as most PE ACPs are imported by Australian businesses for use in signage and interior design, and not necessarily used for external cladding. Specifically, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection pointed out, during the Senate Economics References Committee inquiry, that the Australian Border Force has no ability to determine the end use of these particular goods at the point of importation when they actually cross the border, or whether or not these products will be used in a manner which is compliant with the National Construction Code. So, even if a product was imported for a purportedly legitimate purpose, the Australian Border Force has no control over whether that product is then used for the reason it was imported. Screening would, therefore, impose a range of costs on the industry, it would slow down clearance times for imported goods and it would also unnecessarily divert resources from the enforcement of important border controls for products like asbestos, drugs and weapons.

From a governance perspective, a stronger compliance and enforcement framework for the building and construct industry would likely prove a more effective approach than trying to impose an ineffective and expensive series of border controls. The coalition government has already gone a long way to addressing this particular problem. In the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire, there is concern in the community about combustible material in high-rise buildings, so we've been working with state and territory building ministers to implement multiple reforms to prevent the misuse of aluminium composite panels and ensure the safety of Australia's built environment. There have been a number of ways we've gone about doing this.

First of all, the government has reinvigorated the Building Ministers' Forum, which is convened by the Australian government and made up of each of the state and territory building ministers. It is responsible for building and plumbing policy and regulation. The forum is chaired by the federal minister, and Minister Laundy has performed in this role since 2016. We've made it easier to identify these particular products. The government has been cracking down on inappropriate advertising and labelling of ACPs to ensure the correct use of those products and is introducing a new system of permanent labelling on cladding products to prevent product substitution. We've also been tracking the distribution of these products. The government has instigated a pilot program with the cladding industry and the New South Wales government to track the movements of products from the wholesaler to the building site. The pilot program involves several manufacturers and distributors of external wall-cladding products, who have agreed to provide product distribution data to the New South Wales Data Analytics Centre for analysis. The analysed data will assist the New South Wales building regulator to track what and where these products are being used for throughout the state, greatly assisting the regulator's compliance-monitoring capability. We have also improved fire-testing standards, introducing a new fire-testing standard in the National Construction Code for external wall-cladding products.

The government has improved compliance with the National Construction Code. Through the Building Ministers' Forum, the Commonwealth has encouraged states and territories to use their available laws and powers to prevent the use of ACPs on buildings of more than three storeys. The Building Ministers' Forum has also directed the Australian Building Codes Board to expedite the implementation of measures through the National Construction Code which prevent the use of noncompliant cladding. In addition, the Building Ministers' Forum, with the Australian Building Codes Board, has created a website providing information about noncompliant building products which allows members of the public to submit a complaint or an inquiry about a particular product.

We are implementing audits to ensure the compliance of existing buildings. This is particularly important. The Prime Minister has called on the state and territory premiers and chief ministers to undertake a nationwide audit of high-rise buildings to identify the extent to which noncompliant cladding is in fact an issue across Australia. The Building Ministers' Forum is overseeing the cladding audits and reviews that are underway across the states and territories.

Finally, we have established, as Senator Patrick mentioned, an expert assessment of compliance and enforcement systems. On a suggestion from the Commonwealth, the Building Ministers' Forum has commissioned a report by two independent experts, Ms Bronwyn Weir and Professor Peter Shergold AC, on the compliance and enforcement issues affecting the implementation of the National Construction Code. Their assessment is examining a number of elements that form a part of the building and construction regulatory system, including things like licensing and accreditation, certification and inspections, quality controls and assurance processes and, of course, auditing and enforcement practices. The outcome of their report will be to make recommendations for a national best practice model for compliance and enforcement to strengthen the effective implementation of the National Construction Code. Professor Shergold and Ms Weir presented the building ministers with their initial findings in December last year at a special meeting of the Building Ministers' Forum. The ministers were confident that this very important work is on track and that the relevant stakeholders had been providing meaningful input to their considerations. Professor Shergold and Ms Weir are expected to provide their final report to the Building Ministers' Forum very soon.

National Construction Code amendments have been made. The Building Ministers' Forum has also directed the Australian Building Codes Board to expedite the implementation of a comprehensive package of measures to prevent the use of noncompliant wall cladding on high-rise buildings through amendments to the National Construction Code 2016. These will take place from March this year and include things like implementing a far more rigorous testing standard to determine the fire safety of external wall assemblies; a new verification method to demonstrate compliance with performance requirements of the National Construction Code; increased stringency for the sprinkler protection of balconies on residential buildings in particular, through referencing a revised standard for automatic fire-sprinkler systems; clarifying language within the National Construction Code relating to the use of external wall claddings and attachments; and introducing stricter compliance documentation in the National Construction Code's evidence-of-suitability provisions.

You can see that the government has taken the concerns of the Australian people about the safety of our built environment very seriously indeed. Australia already has a National Construction Code that is undoubtedly among the world's best. The issue of aluminium composite panels, ACPs, is very complex and highly sensitive. We should not let the fearmongering espoused by others in the chamber deceive us. There are significant differences between products like asbestos, a genuine non-conforming building product which is illegal to use in Australia; nonconforming products like infinity cables, which cannot be used safely; and ACPs, which in certain contexts are quite appropriate and fit for purpose but, used in the wrong context, can pose significant risks. Let's not forget that ACPs are legitimate products. There are a multitude of safe uses for ACPs, such as advertising signage, interior design features, caravans and trailers, and refrigerators and freezers. There are multiple uses for this product that those opposite would consider banning.

The issue that needs to be addressed in response to concerns about the use of combustible materials in high-rise buildings is not the building products themselves, which are legitimate products when used in compliance with the National Construction Code, but ensuring appropriate compliance and enforcement within Australia's building and construction system. That's why the Australian government, through its Building Ministers' Forum, is taking a leadership role in driving reforms with the states and territories to ensure that Australians continue to have confidence in the safety of our built environment. Implementing a ban on imports of this product would be neither an effective nor a practical restriction on the building industry. Senator Patrick is correct: this bill is not a silver bullet. It is in fact an ill-advised carpet-bombing campaign that will destroy legitimate businesses. The government therefore cannot support this private senator's bill.