BUILDERS Collective of Australia is looking optimistically to the industry’s future in Victoria, after the Allan government announced the state’s under-fire building authority would be replaced with a “watchdog with teeth”.
“After all this length of time, it’ll be wonderful to have a scheme that is actually going to protect our consumers and benefit our builders,” Phil Dwyer, national president of Builders Collective, told Australian Property Journal.
The Victorian Building Authority (VBA) will be replaced with a “new more powerful watchdog”, the Building & Plumbing Commission, to oversee building and plumbing industries across the state. The new regulator will bring together regulation, insurance and dispute resolution for building quality control into a single agency.
“For those building, renovating or buying a home, the new regulator will mean peace of mind. For those found doing the wrong thing, it’ll mean consequences,” Victorian Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny.
The announcement came with a damning independent review into the VBA by Weir Legal and Consulting that found systemic failures in the authority applying its powers to protect consumers from builders who breached legislation or engaged in unprofessional or incompetent conduct. Among the findings was a “dismissive” culture towards complainants, with complaints being delayed, lost or ignored altogether for months.
Identified complainants in seven case studies used in the final report had suffered and are suffering “severe financial, emotional and physical distress” from their dealings with the building industry and the regulator, the report said.
“It just confirms everything that we knew,” Dwyer said to Australian Property Journal.
“Having a person like, and with the credibility of Bronwyn Weir, look at this and produce that document – we’re very, very happy with that. And the government has most certainly not backed away from it.
“So, look, I do have confidence that it will be a lot better.”
Builders Collective has been in dialogue with the Victorian government throughout the process and has a meeting planned in the coming weeks.
Dwyer said that when Builders Warranty Insurance was introduced in 2003, “we felt the concept of what they said they were going to do at that time would never work. And we would basically lose control of the industry and have an industry that would not perform”.
“And it turned out that we were right. The things that we were concerned about, that we had already flagged, such as the lack of compliance and the way the authorities approached regulation and did nothing about it.
“And that report has just confirmed all the things that we felt would happen when it was first introduced.
“This business of doing nothing and sitting back and allowing people to be hurt has got to stop, and I think it will stop. We must change the culture of what we’ve had in the past and have a watchdog that does have teeth and will enforce compliance and regulation.”
