Over two years after the release of the Shergold/Weir Report (BCR) into the building industry the Building Ministers Forum (BMF) who commissioned the report have now decided to adopt its 24 recommendations in full or so it appears.

While this approach appears reasonable it does not capture all the issues facing our industry and even one of the co-authors Bronwyn Weir made it abundantly clear their report was not the panacea to reform the industry however their recommendations if implemented as presented will assist in making the industry more accountable.

Since the nineties we have witnessed a constant decline in consumer protection and industry standards and has not been helped by bad decisions such as the removal of the government operated Housing Guarantee Fund in favour of the private insurer system that turned out to be a disaster with protection being whittled away every time an issue emerged such as the HIH collapse or when the bottom line was impacted on.

We have constantly fiddled at the edges to show so called improvement when adverse publicity puts pressure on the system, and always it has done nothing for the industry and only provided some temporary relief to the government of the day.

The Last Resort system of consumer protection has been in the news since day one as a failed system while we see the Queensland model of first resort providing appropriate consumer protection without the involvement of private enterprise.

Considering the quality of buildings, we have been building we need an appropriate consumer protection regime and we don’t have one.

While the BMF suggest they will implement all the recommendations made by the BC report we already see the watering down of those recommendations as they don’t believe it is necessary to register trades or to have national consistency. Who would possibly advise them in such a manner and suggest that would be good for the industry, its consumers, and the quality of buildings?

Our industry has many failings and we have allowed them to fester and grow and we believe the cladding issue has shone a light on many of the failings with one of the major ones being our reliance on imported product without consideration of our own manufacturing base that has continued to diminish to a level that has become irrelevant.

Being an island nation with our own rich assets it appears senseless to have allowed this scenario to develop to the extent it has and those responsible for those political decisions were either naïve or did not understand the ramifications of their actions.

Dollars are important but at what cost!

While we go down this path of limited reform, we will not arrest the decline of the past 20 years as the intended reform will not and cannot cover the issues that has led us to this point of decline.

The culture within the industry and I target more specifically the trades is one of offhanded complacency to the quality of buildings and the dollar is far more important than producing a professional outcome and, in many cases, skillsets are lacking to achieve that outcome.

Never has an industry suffered such extreme abuse of its very fabric of being and understanding of what this once great industry stood for.

Our industry has lost sight of what is expected of it and we have developed an attitude of obtaining top dollar for a job badly done without any accountability for the ongoing issues thrust on builder who has paid the subbie, and only those with a genuine conscience will ever consider returning to rectify their failings.

There are many areas that need reform and none the least are the way we asses those who wish to enter our industry as we have taken a very laxed method of assessment that has seen many without the credentials for the category of licence they have obtained.

Appropriate skillsets are paramount to a quality building industry!

States and Territories all have their own building laws and each one of them have the best building regulations so each Minister suggests whereas they all build under the BCA/NCC and that fact alone suggests we should have uniform laws which would be sensible and rid our industry of so much ambiguity and the blame game.

One code, One Industry!

Will we ever learn.