Page 1613 - Week 05 - Thursday, 2 June 2022

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as those negotiations are completed, the government will make those full details available.

There has been some discussion of the fact that some of the regulatory fees associated with remediation works should be waived for these projects. Replacing the cladding on a building is development application exempt. However, there are building levies that apply to all building work. The building levy and the training levy both sit as a small percentage of the total project cost. They are necessary to ensure that the ACT is able to continue to ensure that community standards around building quality are maintained and that the industry is properly trained to perform the required work. This is the same treatment as for other owners that are required to remove other hazardous materials or undergo other sorts of remediation work. The cost of these levies can be included in the concessional loan amount by owners corporations if they wish.

Let me wrap this up by saying that I welcome the opportunity today to outline the work that the ACT government has been undertaking, and to assure both Ms Lee and others within the Assembly that the government is far from ignoring this important issue. The ACT government is working hard to manage cladding risks for buildings that are the government’s own responsibility, supporting private apartment building owners to identify and manage risk in their buildings, and for them to be empowered to make decisions about how they want to proceed and to be financially supported with the path that they choose.

We do recognise that this has been a difficult process for building owners. We thank individual owners and organisations such as the Strata Community Association and the Owners Corporation Network for their collaborative approach in assisting the government to design and promote the support being provided for private building owners. I encourage all private apartment owners who may have concerns to engage with Major Projects Canberra and access the support being provided by the government. Together we can ensure that we reduce the risk and respond to this issue that communities across Australia and the world have been managing in recent years.

As has been flagged, there is a government amendment today, and I now move the amendment circulated in my name:

Omit all text after “That this Assembly”, substitute:

“(1) notes:

(a) in response to the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London, all jurisdictions agreed to and amended the Australian National Construction Code in 2019 to disallow the use of potentially combustible cladding for certain classes of buildings;

(b) the ACT Government has been progressively working to identify the risk and where necessary ensure that potentially combustible cladding on public and private buildings constructed before 2019 is remediated, where the risk it poses is unacceptable;

(i) remediation of ACT Government owned buildings with high-risk cladding;

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