While we can be thankful something is finally being done,the minister’s assertions are overblown.
The bill will have no immediate impact on confidence in the building market because it can only begin to apply to new buildings after about 2022 and it will have no impact at all on existing housing stock. If recent research by NSW,Deakin and Swinburne universities is accurate,more than 70 per cent of strata units less than 30 years old have defects.
Since the Great Fire of London in 1666,the aim of building regulation has been to ensure that buildings are built to meet standards in order to avoid the potentially dramatic,or even fatal,consequences of failure. The NSW government's approach seems to be to ensure that building practitioners,the definition of which does not appear to include developers,should be held accountable for any future problem by making it easier to bring claims for civil damages.
This approach is the wrong way around. Ensuring that buildings are built correctly in the first place is more cost effective and less disruptive than fixing them up afterwards,particularly where the provision of access to upper floors of tall buildings can be so expensive;a $2 flashing failure repeated over 30 floors can become a $2 million rectification project.
Re-regulation has only got this far because a string of fires and major building failures in Australia,including the 2014 Lacrosse fire,the Neo200 fire,Opal Tower and the Mascot Towers structural failure have kept the issue alive in the media.Grenfell Tower in London is another grim reminder of the failure of building deregulation. An uncontrollable fire sustained by combustible aluminium composite panels on its facade led to the death of 72 people in June 2017.
It is a common misconception,clearly held by the minister,that compliance with the National Construction Code,of which the Building Code of Australia is a part,is a guarantee of building quality and fitness for purpose. Originally,the Building Code of Australia,or BCA,setminimum standards for life safety,structural adequacy and to ensure that the spread of fire from building to building could be contained by a fire brigade. In these respects,the BCA works tolerably well,although between 50 and 90 Australians die in house and apartment fires every year,which is far too many.