Page 909 - Week 03 - Thursday, 30 March 2006
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I now briefly turn my attention to the amendments contained in the provisions of the bill. The Construction Occupations Legislation Amendment Bill makes several amendments to the Construction Occupations (Licensing) Act, known as COLA, and its operational acts. This package of legislation commenced on 1 September 2004 and replaced an outdated regime that left the government little scope to take action against delinquent construction practitioners other than to suspend or revoke licences.
The new legislation has provided the government with a suite of measures to address patterns of inappropriate behaviour. These measures include the issuing of reprimands, licence demerit points, fines, rectification orders and suspension of licences. The introduction of a demerit point scheme has enabled the identification of delinquent patterns of behaviour and allowed these to be addressed without the need to resort to the extreme act of revoking a licence. Doing so would deny somebody their livelihood, and for this reason it was a measure that was rarely exercised.
In the 18 months since the COLA legislation has been operational, the government has successfully been able to use the new provisions in the legislation to more effectively regulate construction and building work, to identify patterns of delinquent behaviour, to protect consumers and to ensure safety standards in the industry. In that time the government has identified a number of minor improvements to the regime and has identified a number of new initiatives that will assist both industry and consumers. This bill implements those improvements and new initiatives.
One such new initiative is the recognition of the CodeMark building product certification scheme, which is an initiative of the Australian Building Codes Board. The CodeMark scheme will recognise and accredit building products and components that comply with the building code of Australia, such as fire doors or glazing. The scheme will provide building designers with certainty that when these building products are employed in the design of buildings they will be accepted by building certifiers as being compliant with the building code. In order to give the scheme legislative effect, the bill creates a new section 139A of the Building Act.
Clause 1.2 will improve the operation and efficiency with which the provisions relating to the issuing of notices to carry out work can be applied. This will provide benefits to members of the community who may have experienced the effects of deficient building or construction work for which a notice needs to be issued. The amendment replaces a requirement that the registrar conduct an inspection prior to issuing a notice to carry out building work with a requirement that the registrar be satisfied on reasonable grounds that certain conditions are met.
The government recognises that in some instances the registrar may need to rely on technical reports in order to be satisfied that the conditions are met and that the order should be issued. Given the range of building-related issues, conducting an inspection may not always be sufficient to satisfy the registrar. Clause 1.17 of the bill creates a new part 14 in COLA to deal with transitional matters. This amendment will extend the provisions of COLA to work undertaken by licensees or former licensees prior to the introduction of the new COLA regime in September 2004.
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