Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This debate has been brought on quite early because the government has not been able to provide the Senate with the business that we'd normally do at this time. Within that context, it's important to acknowledge that the Governor-General made a speech which outlined a very, very thin series of propositions that this government intends to pursue through this parliament. There are many issues that were neglected in that speech that the country has to face in terms of the welfare of our people, which, frankly, has not been part of the government's thinking.

One of those has been the issue around the questions of cladding on buildings, non-compliant building products and public safety in terms of our housing. We now have a situation where there are tens of thousands of buildings in this country which are in a highly dangerous position, a position which has now become acute. The Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, Karen Andrews, does not seem to have any grasp of the importance of this question or the seriousness of the safety issues that are facing the building industry, nor the economic consequences for the tens of thousands of Australians who are now faced with a situation where they have units which are virtually worthless, with no capacity to get insurance or to sell.

We hear repeated statements from the minister—in fact, I acknowledge you've been getting quite a sympathetic response from the media, the way the media is running at the moment. As I say, the Murdoch empire won the election, and they feel that they've got to congratulate their champions in the fight, so we hear the minister tell the states they must act, and, of course, this is the position that many here in the gallery take to be the situation. But these headlines miss the essential points that concern this issue. First is that this government cannot pass the buck to the states, because the states and the Commonwealth are collectively responsible for building regulation in this country. Second, and more importantly, is that this crisis has emerged as a result of deregulation and privatisation in the building industry. It is the product of deregulation, privatisation and the cutting of red tape, which we've just heard so much about, that has produced a situation where no-one is held accountable for a major question of public safety affecting tens of thousands of buildings across this nation.

The minister, like her predecessors in the Morrison-Turnbull-Abbott governments, refused to acknowledge these facts, but they've been confirmed in inquiry after inquiry, which are available to those that have taken interest to actually understand these questions. The fundamental responsibility of government—and there can be no more fundamental responsibility of government—is to protect lives and to protect public safety. This is where the government has fundamentally failed, and I think its failure not to have a forward agenda is a matter that ought bring public condemnation, not applause.

This crisis is growing more acute. Last week, the Building Minister's Forum met in Sydney. The minister told the meeting, in an ABC interview, that the states were going to implement the recommendation of the latest review, which is the Shergold-Weir review into building regulations, which the forum itself had commissioned back in June 2017. This is a report that the government has had for 17 months. The minister sought to pass the buck to the states for the implementation of the recommendations. This is, of course, despite the fact that the government had signed off in 2017 to an intergovernmental agreement between the Commonwealth and the states and the territories—that is, the agreement which declares that it is the collective responsibility of the states and the Commonwealth to enforce the national building code. 'Collective responsibility' are the words used in that agreement.

At the forum's meeting, the minister triumphantly announced that she had produced an effective response to the crisis in the industry because, she says, the states had agreed to implement the Shergold-Weir recommendations. There had been no progress at that meeting last week. They had already agreed to that 12 months previously, and the communique for the forum's meeting in August 2018 outlines precisely that. It indicated the states and the Commonwealth were developing a paper to implement the reforms based on the recommendations of the Shergold-Weir report. In February this year the forum communique said:

Ministers reaffirmed their commitment to developing a joint response …

Last week they announced it all over again—except that they are even further away from producing actual details of any response. The meeting produced no solutions. There was no agreement on banning the use of flammable cladding in construction, despite the fact that the existing national code bans the use of that cladding in buildings higher than three storeys.

How is it then that this cladding is on tens of thousands of buildings across this country? There was no agreement on a national licencing scheme for building contractors. There was no response on the phoenixing of rogue builders or on a national registration of directors. There was no acknowledgment by the Commonwealth that it had responsibilities in this area. It was all said to be a matter for the states. So there was a catalogue of nothings. Like this government's forward agenda, it is a catalogue of nothings.

One only has to look at this briefly to understand that this is a situation whereby, as a result of what's developing in the insurance industry now, where there is rectification action being taken in some states, there are no surveyors to actually undertake that work. Surveyors can't get insurance because of the exemptions that have been imposed as part of the latest fix, which has been presented as the grand solution for the crisis that has emerged within the building industry. So in Victoria at the moment the exemptions in insurance policies mean the surveyors can't get coverage. They're not going to be exposed to the liabilities incurred in a privatised, deregulated inspection regime, so the cutting of red tape is not going to be the solution here.

The privatisation of the industry has meant there has been no accountability. No-one's been held accountable for the maintenance of safety standards. We're seeing people forced out of their homes and onto the streets because of the fires and because of the structural defects in the industry, and we have no idea when it will be safe for people to return. Thousands of buildings are encased in flammable cladding. In this city the airport is one of those. The new building at the airport is one of those buildings. People have bought into high-rise apartments in good faith, and they do not know who is responsible for fixing the buildings or who is going to pay for it. People don't know what their personal liability is going to be. What they do know is that the value of their homes is being irreparably reduced, and this is a government that wants to talk about improving home ownership.

It's not just flammable cladding here. What we have seen is inquiry after inquiry pointing out problems with water-proofing, sprinkler systems and structural defects in steel; non-conforming building products right throughout the industry for the installation of fire doors, firewalls, fire doorframes; lead in water pipes; imported brass plumbing components; non-compliant electrical cables.

The Victorian government has offered $300 million for these matters. Has the Commonwealth sought to provide any assistance on this? None whatsoever. The Victorian government will have to make up the shortfall by increasing charges on building permits. Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland have announced temporary measures to deal with the insurance problem, but these measures don't fix the problem. Of course, they go to removing some of the liability for the use of flammable cladding. The so-called solution of insurance problems defines away the reason why people need the insurance in the first place! It absolves certifiers from responsibility when the building is encased in what is effectively a petrol bomb. So it does nothing to solve the problem, which is the fundamental threat to public safety in this country.

The crisis in the building industry can't be overlooked or concealed, and the Commonwealth cannot evade its responsibilities by pointing the finger at someone else. I repeat: this is not just a state issue. This is collective responsibility, and the Commonwealth has signed document after document acknowledging that proposition. And yet in the media in this country we're constantly told that it's just a state problem and that the states should front up to it.

How weak is that? Unless this is exposed by the Labor Party we won't hear any more about it. That's what's happening. This is a tragedy, and the introduction of the system with the complementary legislation to push deregulation prevailed over good sense. This is a system based on a simple proposition that we could have a model built on an assumption that self-regulation could work. The so-called 'deeming to satisfy' provisions of the national building code have been standard practice throughout the industry. The evidence is overwhelming—absolutely overwhelming—of document fraud, product substitution and continued gross malpractice. But have we had any prosecutions? Even on matters involving direct breaches of the Commonwealth Customs Act, nothing!

What we've got here is their failure to provide a regulatory system in the industry with the resources needed to make the regulations effective. When government sought to privatise the building approval process, they made sure that the accountability mechanisms were taken away. The very people who signed off on these buildings are the same ones who are dependent on those that actually did the work, and therefore there is a fundamental conflict of interest. That is the fundamental problem with the way in which the codes actually operate at the moment—an inherent conflict of interest which is at the core of the deregulated system. And now we have a deregulated financial market fostered on our apartment and housing construction boom, and everyone pats everyone else on the back and pretends, of course, that we can blame somebody else when disputes arise.

During the boom, of course, they just onsell it—they hope—unless it catches fire. Despite the warnings of the fire brigades and the fire authorities around the country this allowed shoddy, unsafe products, including flammable cladding, to be used. The savings involved in this are what struck me as so amazing. They have been so small by comparison on a per square metre basis. But the cost to the country—not just the financial cost of repairing but the potential costs, given what we've seen in these overseas examples of fires in high-rise buildings—and the enormous potential loss of life strikes me as something we simply can't ignore.

The Lacrosse fire in Melbourne in 2014 brought it home to me just how serious this issue was, following of course what occurred in the United Kingdom with Grenfell. We've had the situation now where the Opal Tower in Western Sydney has been evacuated. We've had the Mascot Towers in Sydney and the Neo 200 building fire in Melbourne's CBD. And I repeat: it's not just cladding. We've had the good luck that no-one has been killed to this point, but the Grenfell fire, where 72 people were killed, demonstrated what the potential is.

This crisis has been documented meticulously. It is simply not good enough to say, 'Well, we didn't understand the implications of this in the period from 2014 onwards.' The Shergold-Weir review of building regulations was released in February last year. The findings were unequivocal. They declared the system was broken. And now we have a situation—what is it?—nearly 17 months later, when they'd said that their recommendations should be implemented within three years, where no action has been taken. The response has been to evade responsibility, just like all the other shoddy product suppliers.

What we've seen is people trying to hide behind the Constitution, with this government claiming the states are responsible for building regulation. The Commonwealth introduced the national—and I repeat: national—regulatory framework with the states. There is a national framework. It would not be a national framework without the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth is responsible for the Australian standards process, which the system depends on.

The Senate has produced numerous reports on this matter and highlighted these issues. What we do know is that the states have made recommendations, but this government has failed to provide any support whatsoever. I know the minister keeps trying to avoid the responsibility here, but I repeat: the latest version of the agreement between the Commonwealth and states was signed by Minister Andrews's predecessor in December 2017. The agreement is quite clear:

Through this Agreement the Australian Government, the States and the Territories are facilitating the development of a more efficient, internationally competitive Building and Construction industry through reforms to regulation nationally—

Nationally. It's simply not enough to say that the agreement that regulates the relationships within the building industry is anything other than a collective responsibility—

This Agreement recognises that the States and Territories have primary responsibility for regulating Building and Construction

Yes, but it is still a collective responsibility. The responsibility is exercised collectively through the Building Ministers' Forum—

The respective Ministers of these Parties responsible for Building and Construction policy, known as the Building Ministers' Forum, are collectively—

I repeat: collectively—

responsible for the policies, decisions and actions to ensure the Building and Construction requirements meet the expectations of the community.

The agreement to which Minister Andrews is now bound does not allow for a cop-out that's so routinely become the pattern of public discourse in this country.

Professor Shergold and Ms Weir spoke to the ministers' forum when their report was released a year ago. Their report followed upon reports that had already been received, including the Wallace report of 2014 and the 2015 Lambert report. There were two pertinent Victorian Auditor-General's reports. There was, of course, the Victorian task force into aluminium cladding, which found that there'd been systemic rorting of the system—systemic rorting of the system.

Their recommendations—there are 24 of them—suggested that everyone in the industry had been consulted and that the states had agreed to them. Seventeen months ago they said to the ministers that they had to get this done within a three-year period. Nothing has happened. We now have class actions underway. We now have an insurance crisis. In fact, what's occurred since that time is the situation's become more complicated, as entire buildings have had to be evacuated and thousands of people have been put out on the street.

It comes down to this: the Commonwealth must accept its share of responsibility that it signed up to back in 1994 and repeatedly in other agreements since that time. The Morrison government must ensure the Australian community's expectation of safe and secure homes and workplaces are actually met. If this minister can't do the job then this matter should be dealt with by a COAG meeting of premiers and should be convened as a matter of urgency.

Instead of blathering about cutting red tape, this Prime Minister should insist that Australia has a national system of building regulations, a system in which all building practitioners are held accountable and proper standards are enforced. The Morrison government must ensure that the Australian community's expectation of safe and secure homes and workplaces are met. It's simply not acceptable to pass the buck and to try and avoid your responsibilities when so much is at stake.

The report was called Building confidence. We've failed to do that. (Time expired)