Tuesday, 28 November 2023

Adjournment

Bulleen electorate planning

Matthew GUY (Bulleen) (19:00): (461) My adjournment tonight is for the Minister for Planning, and it concerns an apartment building in my electorate in Bulleen that unfortunately, like so many, has disgraceful defects, some of which may threaten the integrity of the building, the structure of the building, in the long term. 168 Manningham Road is not old. It is on the corner of Thompsons Road. It is a very prominent building, about three or four storeys high and circular in design – one part of it. The permit was issued in September 2013. Construction was through 2015 to 2019 or so. It is a nice building – a modern building, as I said – and not terribly old. The surveyor issued the permit around 2017. The occupancy was issued in May 2019. However, the issue with the building nowadays – as the owners’ corporation have contacted me – is that there is horrendous flooding throughout the basement of the building and the facing of the building is falling off. There are structural and cosmetic issues throughout the building that are quite prominent.

As a former Minister for Planning and former Shadow Minister for Planning, I have seen many, many examples of poor-quality workmanship in relation to apartments of this kind and issues which I previously referred on to the building commission as a minister and shadow minister. But this is certainly one which I do believe requires intervention. The residents themselves have spent tens of thousands of dollars on legal fees trying to rectify the circumstance themselves and find a way to rectify the situation themselves. As I said, there are cosmetic issues, internal structural issues and facing issues. But I just want to come back to where I started: the most important is of course the drainage issue in the car park, because that could potentially lead to structural issues. Where there is water and water through concrete, that is the only thing, as you can imagine, that can weaken concrete. There are times where residents getting out of their cars literally could get out into 6 or 7 inches of water. It is completely untenable. So tonight I respectfully ask the Minister for Planning to have the building commission examine this property, to look into the actions of the surveyor and the builder of the premises and to see if we can give some surety to the owners that these issues will be rectified and rectified in a prompt time frame.