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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-03-04 Daily Xml
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RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT CODE

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Leader of the Opposition) (14:55): How much money was provided to industry to educate and train industry in the residential code?

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY (Minister for Mineral Resources Development, Minister for Urban Development and Planning, Minister for Small Business) (14:55): There has been no money provided to industry in relation to that. Of course, local government will be the principal authorising body in relation to these new changes and, clearly, it is their officers who will most need to be up to speed.

The government is running information sessions and will provide a significant amount of information to industry. That will be happening very shortly. Our first priority was to ensure that local government was up to speed on these particular changes. Once that is in place we will be extending those information sessions to industry and, in particular, to smaller home builders.

Clearly, the larger developers in this state, through their various organisations (the MBA, the HIA and the UDIA) are very well aware of these forms. We have had a number of meetings and discussions with those bodies and they are generally aware. What we need to do now in terms of information is to ensure that that information flows through to the renovators and the small business sector so that they, too, can receive the benefit of these new changes.

We believe that there have been some people who, in relation to additions, have been holding back awaiting the introduction of this code. I am sure that a number of applications under the new scheme would have been lodged with local government following its introduction this week. However, as I pointed out in my answer, the main initial benefit of these changes will be to additions and alterations to existing homes.

The code for new dwellings (the second stream I referred to) will, in the first instance, apply only to those areas which are nominated by local councils. One would expect that will largely be in the greenfield areas of councils in the outer areas. Over the course of 2009 we would expect to gradually extend the areas to which the new residential code applies to new detached or semi-detached dwellings.

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