Tuesday, 22 February 2022

Victorian Building Authority

Ms KEALY (Lowan) (19:04): (6218) I raise an adjournment matter for the Minister for Planning, and the action I seek is for the minister to immediately intervene to revoke the massive price increase in practitioner registration fees proposed by the Victorian Building Authority. I have actually received a letter from one of my local builders, Dean Hogan—or Hoges, as he is better known—which I would like to read into Hansard because I think it outlines the issue very, very eloquently:

Today we received communication from the VBA that practitioner registration fees are increasing. For a Domestic Builder, the increase is 181%! That is so far above inflation it is beyond reasonable. You will know that the building industry is already struggling with material shortages, labour shortages and price increases that have almost destroyed margins completely. For government to impose such unreasonable increases at any time is unfair, but in the current circumstances this is way beyond reasonable.

These increases should be pegged to inflation at most … I have not seen any evidence to justify the increased cost—either as a benefit to consumers, or as a benefit to practitioners.

Dean is spot on. There have been so many pressures on the building industry that we have seen particularly exacerbated over the pandemic period—massive shortages in all materials really but particularly in timber, plasterboard and batts. Of course we have seen a flow-on effect—supply and demand. There have been massive price increases as well, which have been passed on to builders. They cannot pass them on to consumers, which is what was recommended today by one of the government’s ministers: that the consumer should pick up all those costs. But if you have got a fixed-price agreement, if you have quoted for a job and there has been an increase in the cost of these materials in the interim time, the builder must absorb these fees. We are not talking about small bickies here, we are talking about really massive costs that are being put on the builders. For one builder that I was speaking to today, his frames have gone up $17 000 since he first quoted this job. The trusses went up $13 000. That is a $30 000 price increase that he has to absorb somewhere, and he has not got the margins in his work to be able to deliver that.

We have got a massive shortage of labour. A lot of our builders have moved to Queensland over the pandemic because they wanted to get away from Victoria’s restrictions. We have got a massive shortage of apprentices coming into the industry. We have also got issues around price increases that I have referred to and particularly in steel—steel products and fasteners like screws and the like. Even steel frame homes are going up by about $9000 each. So there are massive pressures already on the building industry. It is impacting on tradies and it is impacting on the construction industry and the builders who own these businesses. They are not these big massive businesses; these are small family businesses.

Given we have got now an additional cost put on these building practitioners, I ask for the government and the minister to intervene and immediately get rid of these massive price hikes that could make the difference between keeping their doors open and shutting for good and tradies losing jobs.