Page 871 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 21 March 2018
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
and I hope that this is going to be one of those occasions when the Assembly can all agree that there is a problem, that there are some ways forward and that more needs to be done. I think that is the essence of what both Mr Parton and Minister Gentleman are saying, if I read it right.
Building quality problems are, sadly, a regular feature of my constituent emails, as no doubt other MLAs find. They also come up regularly when I am talking to stakeholder groups. The individual problems raised with me are very diverse and appear to be the result of problems right through the construction process from design to manufacture to final signoff. You name it, it has got issues.
One of the first emails I got from a constituent in late 2016 was about building problems, a house in this case. She had had an extension done to her house. It was important to her there were no steps inside the house. The plans, agreed with the builder, signed off by the certifier, had an extension with a suspended timber floor at the same level as the existing house. Despite this, what was built was a concrete slab on the ground, a very major change which was not actually noticed by the certifier.
I have been contacted most frequently about problems with apartments, and these span all the way from very serious waterproofing problems to cosmetic issues with quality of the fitout and landscaping of a brand new apartment block.
Another issue I have been repeatedly told about is unapproved building work. For instance, there is one case where a house in a heritage area has been repeatedly extended in breach of planning approvals and then the unapproved work is just signed off in a retrospective approval. The cumulative impact of this on the heritage value of the area has been substantial. These problems are usually not trivial in their impacts on the people. They have a huge impact on people’s lives, both financial and in terms of stress and emotional toil.
Just on the money side, I have been told by people in the industry that apartment owners can be required to put in as much as $80,000 per unit to fix problems. In one case the problems may be unable to be fixed for less than the value of the smaller units.
We have seen recently that the problems are not restricted to residential buildings. I was shocked to see earlier this month media reports about major defects in the National Portrait Gallery that will force it to close for six months in 2019. I quote from the director of the gallery as reported in the Canberra Times on 7 March:
We have to replace a brace of windows, in which the double glazing is faulty, we have to replace the floors throughout the galleries, and we have to replace the water proof membrane which underlies the concrete podium that surrounds the building.
The only comfort in this litany of problems is that the ACT is not alone; it is a national problem. I am sure that most members of the Assembly will recall seeing TV or newspaper stories about very similar problems occurring in Sydney, Melbourne or the Gold Coast.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video