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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-10-15 Daily Xml
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Aluminium Composite Cladding

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens) (14:37): My question is to the Minister for Local Government. Is it true that of the 28 buildings referenced by the minister in relation to his cladding audit none have had defect notices issued under the Development Act by their corresponding councils?

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL (Schubert—Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government, Minister for Planning) (14:37): Again, this is just a different variation on the previous two questions that have been asked. Can I say that in relation to—

Mr Boyer interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Wright is called to order.

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: —a number of the buildings, rectification works or the rectification process are already underway. Yes, there is an instrument that gives power for us to be able to enforce this but, regardless of that, building owners are getting on, in a number of instances already, with the rectification of those buildings.

Again, the time frames there for extreme buildings are immediate and for high-risk buildings over the course of the next 12 months. That work is already underway. Again, those time frames are there. The government has obviously moved on its two government buildings immediately. In relation to those private buildings, as I said, that rectification is at different stages depending on at what point during the audit those buildings were identified. Again, there are quite a number of them on which work has already been undertaken.

This is not an easy issue because for those building owners there are going to be questions of how those defects are paid for. As is the case with consumer protection law, the person who owns the asset is the one who needs to take responsibility for it. There may be opportunities, depending on whether or not this building was built recently or as far back as when I understand this product was first introduced in about 2003.

Buildings are of varying ages and whether or not there are warranties or guarantees provided by the builder or whether there are opportunities via insurance or whether there are other opportunities by calling upon the professional indemnity insurance of people along the building certification supply chain, if I can put it in that way—whether that be building fire safety engineers, whether that be architects or whether that be the people who certified the buildings—there are many opportunities to essentially pay for these works, but first and foremost that opportunity rests with the building owner.

This is, as I can reiterate, a government that has moved more quickly than other jurisdictions. We are, in essence, dealing with a problem that is of a lesser scale than other jurisdictions are dealing with. In Victoria, for instance, there are 72 extreme-risk buildings and over 400 high-risk buildings. We are obviously dealing with a number of buildings of a far lesser magnitude than that.

Can I also say that we have been working with councils every step along the way. It is fair to say in the first instance that there was a degree of coming to grips, I suppose, with understanding what this responsibility for council means. The department has been providing some very clear advice and guidance to councils to be able to undertake these audits. Especially now that we are much further along the process, those councils are working with the government extremely well and extremely closely, and we are getting on with the job of fixing this problem.

It is a wicked problem that jurisdictions around the globe are dealing with. I think that, here in South Australia, South Australians can look forward to the fact that in our state at least this issue will be dealt with much more quickly than it has been and will be dealt with in jurisdictions around the country.

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