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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-11-15 Daily Xml
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Aluminium Composite Cladding

Ms WORTLEY (Torrens) (15:12): My question is to the Minister for Planning. What is the government doing to assist apartment owners impacted by dangerous flammable cladding, and are there any alternative proposals?

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION (Taylor—Minister for Trade and Investment, Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Minister for Planning) (15:12): Nothing can be more important to a government than the safety of its citizens. Citizens in these apartments—and there are about six buildings in this extreme range and about 40 or so in the moderate range—live with anxiety every day because their buildings are covered in composite cladding which is flammable and highly dangerous.

Of course, this is been an issue for a long time, since not the previous government but, initially, the government before that, and arises out of the terrible tragedy that occurred with Grenfell Tower. Last week, we announced a loan scheme which we believe will assist building owners and apartment owners in buildings affected by this cladding. The essential part of this scheme is a fixed interest loan at the government rate of 4.93 per cent, a loan repayment term of 10 years, no application fees and individual loans to buildings of up to $15 million to the owners corporation of those buildings.

We believe that this provides valuable assistance to people who are in a very, very difficult situation, and we think that's incredibly important. To assist the body corporates and the individual owners of these apartments in these buildings, we have appointed Wendy Campana, who has a long history of assisting governments and citizens with this issue. She was appointed by the previous government to assist cladding owners and she has been reappointed by this government. We hope that she can reach out over the next couple of months to individual building owners to assist them with our program.

I was asked also about alternatives, and it's interesting because the member for Bragg—future leader of the Liberal Party, I understand; self-appointed future leader of the Liberal Party—claimed he had run a long-running campaign to bring zero interest rates for people in this situation. It seems like the Liberal Party has jumped from doing nothing for three years to a position of extreme generosity. I would just like to remind the member for Bragg what was said in this chamber in 2019:

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.

That was the former Minister for Planning Stephan Knoll in this chamber in 2019. What followed that was three years of zero financial help to people in this situation, so much so that I was inundated by people making representations to me when I was appointed as planning minister. Even more interesting, the member for Bragg might want to understand who is responsible for this and all he needs to do is ratchet his head to the right and he could see the member for Dunstan is here—good enough to join us today. In a question on notice, replying to—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION: —the now Treasurer and then former shadow treasurer, he said, and this is a direct quote:

Financial options to assist building owners with replacement costs have not been considered, given that all the ongoing costs associated with building, such as maintenance and repair, are the responsibility of building owners.

So what we have had is a situation where in government, and we have heard plenty about the great achievements of the Marshall government—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION: No, we hear it from them all the time—they move motions all the time—but what we don't hear is about where they fell flat, and they fell flat in this situation and they left people—

The SPEAKER: Order! The minister's time has expired.

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