Page 1581 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 12 August 1992
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The other thing that needs to be mentioned is that a lot has been said from time to time about the ethics of our home building industry. I congratulate the Housing Industry Association for the swiftness with which they said, "Yes, we do want to weed out those few bodgies who exist from time to time in any industry, because they tend to give the industry as a whole a bad name". I think all members of this Assembly would agree that we would try to eradicate the bodgies from any industry, so the Housing Industry Association needs to be congratulated for that measure. They also need to be congratulated for alluding to the fact that a lot of the people involved in our building industry have non-English-speaking backgrounds. Apparently the Housing Industry Association now realises that perhaps some of the information that goes out to these people ought to be in community languages other than English. Once again, that is something that needs to be applauded, because we are all aware that there are a lot of people in this industry whose mother tongue is not English. So, for a number of reasons the Opposition is quite happy to stand up and say, "Yes, this is a very important industry in the ACT. It will continue to be one of the most important industries".
One thing that comes out loud and clear is that most of the people involved in the building industry on a subcontract level desire to remain small business people. They do not want to be deemed to be employees and be subject to the Industrial Relations Commission or anybody else. They are quite capable of setting their own standards, wages, salaries and conditions in such a competitive industry. One thing that we have to realise as soon as we start to attempt to wipe out competition in the industry is that that is when prices will really start to rise. The Housing Industry Association, for example, has estimated that subjecting subcontractors to the Industrial Relations Commission net could - and I say "could" - increase the cost of housing by up to 15 per cent. That is something that perhaps all of us, no matter what side of politics we tend to support, would look at askance. I think the housing prices in Canberra tend to be higher than anywhere else, mainly because we have higher standards. That is a good thing. But we do not want them to go through the roof.
So, for all those sorts of reasons, Madam Speaker, anything that we can do in government and in opposition to alleviate the paperwork and the complications that exist in any area of small business, and at the same time anything that we can do to reduce the cost of labour, obviously means that more people will be able to be employed. The housing and construction industry as a whole is a big employer in this town. We ought to be doing all we can to enhance it and, as I said before, with vigour. I think the members of the Government ought to be making strong representations to our Federal representatives to make sure that the Keating Labor Government, in its last months in office, looks after the building industry and other industries in the ACT.
MR WOOD (Minister for Education and Training, Minister for the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (3.44): Madam Speaker, I certainly agree with the gist of Mr Stevenson's motion - the need to support a productive and viable building industry in the ACT. It has been extended a little beyond that and, with your tolerance, I will also extend it because it becomes a debate about housing. It is probably appropriate, bearing in mind the debate that we had earlier this morning about urban renewal, that we carry on some of those themes. I want to use those words "productive" and "viable" to talk about house design.
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