The devastation being inflicted on innocent persons in Australia relating to the cladding issue is nothing short of a devastating blow to apartment home owners and is the direct result of building industry mismanagement by the Governments who financially benefit from the very being of our industry and its importance to our nations fiscal security.

Recent years and days have been blighted by appalling failures within Australia’s residential construction sector and these failures will keep coming while regulators and politicians sit back and pretend or don’t understand how broken the system really is.

Some failures have resulted in court actions that have set precedents of a historic nature such as the recent decision of Justice Woodard of VCAT that subcontractors to a builder may be accountable for their work as he found in his decision relating to the Lacrosse Tower fire of 2014. This outcome is something we have been advocating for, and while the principle builder still remains primarily responsible and accountable his subcontracted professionals can also be pursued.

The same Lacrosse Tower fire saw a Supreme Court action decision late last year when the builder LU Simon sued VBA and a decision was handed down that VBA had no power to serve a building order after the issue of a Certificate of Occupancy. It did not consider the liability of a builder with respect to defects. The builder still remains liable for defects for a period of 10 years after the date of the certificate of occupancy.

While the cladding issue is a national problem nothing could have prepared the legitimate owners of apartments who purchased a compliant home/property against the onslaught of what appears to be unethical conduct now being bought to bear by the Victorian Government agency charged with the responsibility of managing our industry and its compliance. The Victorian Building Authority comes at a great cost to our industry and it is reasonable to expect such an industry entity to fully understand its workings and impacts on those associated with the decisions and presentations it may make. We do not expect the VBA to threaten/bully consumers who have purchased their home under the system administered by them with the threat of huge fines if they don’t comply with their demands.

The cladding Taskforce has suggested the Supreme Court decision has impacted on their ability to hold hi-rise builders accountable for defects however on our advice sought from a senior QC last week finds that is not correct.

A builder remains responsible and accountable for the buildings he constructs for a period of 10 years from the date of the Occupancy Certificate.

The taskforce believes the approach of having the owners rectify the non-compliant aspects of their properties is acceptable based on the safety issues associated with the non-compliance which is directly the result of the systems failure to adequately administer the regime and ensure compliance is met. The end purchaser has purchased on the basis he/she had faith in the overall system which starts with the planning stage followed by the building process, its administration, its consumer protection, and finally with the sale process that involves the Surveyor, the Lawyer, and the transfer process through the Titles office.

With all the so-called gatekeepers surrounding each and every home transaction no purchaser would ever consider that the government’s system could let them down. However, on Friday the 3rd of May we learn of 9 residential Towers in Darwin that are suffering from structural stress to do with non-compliant transfer slabs that do not meet Australian Standards and the common thread is that they were all signed off on by the same structural Engineer according to the Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Logistic who named John Scott of JWS Constructions Pty Ltd as the structural engineer who approved all nine buildings.

The department wrote to about 200-unit owners and advised they must engage an independent structural engineer to assess and repair the problems to ensure the buildings meet Australian standards.

The recent developments in regard to cladding and structural failures have created enormous unrest, angst, and a sense of it can’t be right, by the owners of homes in affected buildings to such an extent that owners will now come together as a block and question the Governments role in the cladding fiasco and how and what can be done to rectify the injustice currently exposed to innocent purchasers.

The national building industry is in crisis. The various governments’ roles in administering and managing our industry have clearly failed and their view of self-regulation has allowed building practices to deteriorate to such an extent that life and limb have now been put at risk.

These circumstances highlight the concerns of the Builders Collective as we have forecast these outcomes over a long period of time, and unfortunately there are none so deaf as those who will not hear.

These significant events are in focus at this time but unfortunately are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of issues confronting our industry as commercial vested interest has and is playing a dominant role in the lowering of standards throughout this industry that plays such an important part in the fiscal health of the nation and while that is an important aspect what this industry delivers to the domestic end user has to be more important by anyone’s measure as their purchase signifies the largest financial commitment in a lifetime in most cases and yet their consumer protection is virtually non-existent.

Governments and their agencies are charged with managing and delivering a compliant building industry and even though the building industry funds them to the tune of tens of millions per annum in each jurisdiction they are a law unto themselves and appear to ignore their fundamental role of administering regulation and enforcing compliance.

We now don’t have the luxury of time as the industry is at breaking point and the only way to arrest the decline is to instigate a Royal Commission with a terms of reference that will address the issues such as immoral conduct in terms of cladding, structural failure, consumer protection, culture, and be conducted under a tight time frame of months and not years.

The Federal Government must step up to the plate on behalf of the tens of thousands of affected consumers not to mention all the legitimate builders of the nation.