Page 1596 - Week 06 - Thursday, 23 July 2020
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Establishing a team of public sector certifiers is part of our plan to restore confidence in the territory’s construction sector. Government certifiers will provide the opportunity for consumers to make better judgements about who they are trusting to approve building work, as well as encouraging developers to do the right thing and not cut corners.
Madam Speaker, the ACT government’s review of the Building Act and associated building regulatory system was comprehensive. We started to make changes during the review, including introducing a pilot builders exam for class C applicants and increasing checking of licence applicants’ claims of experience.
Three legislation amendments over 2013 and 2014 included new powers for the Construction Occupations Registrar to refuse to grant or renew a licence, request a skills assessment and direct licensees’ training. We revised the penalties for major offences for failing to comply with the building code, with requirements for carrying out building work and/or with a rectification order. We also established the public register of information about licensees.
After the review was complete, from late 2015 to early 2016 we consulted publicly on further reforms targeting the most common building-related issues raised during the review, as well as concerns about payment arrangements between contractors. The result of that work was the current program of 43 integrated reforms, chosen to target the cause of problems and help improve the integrity of the building regulatory system and practices in the building and construction industry.
Reforms completed early in the current program included important changes. These included extending statutory warranties to all new residential building work and giving the registrar powers to help prevent people from phoenixing and shifting their operations between licences and avoiding their obligations. These earlier reforms also established the foundation for the more detailed reforms in the program, creating powers related to licensing qualifications and eligibility, codes of practice, guidelines and residential building contracts.
By the end of June 2019 we had completed 28 of the 43 reforms. Reforms in this group include a code of practice for building surveyors; documentation guidelines for building approval applications for apartment and commercial buildings; exams for class A, B and C builder licence applicants; regulations that prevent residential building contracts from including an authorisation for the builder to act as the landowner’s agent to appoint the building certifier; and considering the expansion of rectification and other relevant powers to allow orders to be issued to people closely associated with corporate licensees, which resulted in new legislation applying to the directors and partners of corporate and partnership licensees.
I am happy to advise the Assembly that, despite some significant challenges presented by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, as of June 2020, 41 of the 43 reforms were complete and the remaining two are in progress.
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