Page 1577 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 12 August 1992
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The importance of the home building industry to Canberra cannot be overstated. The industry is based on confidence. That is why we were so concerned when the results of that random audit became public. We had ordered the crackdown. We had ordered a substantial random audit because we were concerned about rumours that were circulating in the industry, particularly through the trade union movement, that some standards were not being applied as they should be. Having responsibility for the administration of this Act in the final analysis, I was not prepared to ignore those rumours. I wanted our people to go out and check. That was how that report came to be prepared.
The industry is booming at the moment. When I said that during question time yesterday there were some howls of derision from members opposite, so I thought I had better bring the figures in. In the 1990-91 financial year 1,357 new residences were approved by the building section. In the year ended 30 June 1992, the 1991-92 financial year, in which this Labor Government was in office, there were 3,183 approvals. That is an increase in activity of 134 per cent, Liberal members. Members would recall that at the time of the last budget we provided some significant stimulus to the industry by way of expanding the Housing Trust program. That came at a time when the industry was at a low. Since then it has boomed.
Another significant figure here, Madam Speaker, is that the total value of building permits in the residential area in this last financial year was $391m, compared with $287m the year before - an increase of $104m or 36 per cent. Again, it shows that Mr Stevenson is right; this is a vital matter of public importance because we are talking about an industry that in the last financial year generated just under $400m worth of activity in the ACT. It is an industry that is clearly volatile. Those dramatic swings in the right direction, dramatically upwards at the moment, show that, if the public loses confidence, it could just as easily swing in the other direction; we could just as easily lose $100m worth of activity and all the jobs that go with it.
There have been some suggestions that the random inspection system has led to slackness or that inspections are not being carried out often enough. Again, the yearly comparisons show that in the last financial year some 16,464 inspections were carried out, which was an increase of 3,232 or 25 per cent on the number of inspections carried out on residential properties in the previous financial year. So, the inspectors are out and about. They are not inspecting at every stage of the process. It would be extraordinarily expensive to return to that system which operated in the early years in Canberra. It was almost based on the premise that builders are going to cheat, that you need an inspector present at every stage. We should be able to assume that the industry is not going to cheat. After all, it is the industry's bottom line that is at stake. If the consumer loses confidence in the industry, the industry loses its customer and its profit. The random inspection system provides a vital check, so that the industry has to be on its mettle and ensure that it complies with standards, in a sense voluntarily, with the sanction being that an inspector could turn up at any stage.
In the report there was a reference that some inspectors felt that they were under pressure not to detect faults and that if they detected faults they would not have support. I have made it abundantly clear that the Government fully supports inspectors who detect faults and who require them to be remedied. Often a stop-work notice or a demolition order is the most effective sanction - to say, "You do that again", if it is structurally unsound - and it is clear that the Government supports it.
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