Wednesday, 1 April 2026

 Nicole WERNER (Warrandyte) (14:52): I rise to return to speaking on the Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill 2026. I was in the middle of my contribution, with 6 minutes left to go, and will speak now about, again, the lack of consultation that has taken place and thereby support the Shadow Minister for Housing and Building and Shadow Minister for Planning on his reasoned amendment, which has come from within the industry, from the Housing Industry Association as well as Master Builders Victoria, who have called for a delay or deferral of this bill until further consultation with the industry takes place. This is because Master Builders has warned us that the combined weight of this bill and related reforms could add up to 30 per cent to construction costs – 30 per cent in a state where housing affordability is already at breaking point. This is a risk we cannot afford to take without proper scrutiny and without proper consultation, as the industry is asking for. Industry has referred again to this state, where 43 per cent of the cost of a new home in a greenfield area is attributed to government levies, taxes and charges – almost 50 per cent of a new home that a Victorian would build in a greenfield area – and the industry quote that is going to cost another 30 per cent in addition to this. Another major risk raised by the industry, if only the government had consulted, is that the regulator is simply not ready.

This bill creates the new regulator. It formally abolishes the Victorian Building Authority (VBA) and replaces it with the Building and Plumbing Commission, the BPC, a single body that controls licensing, enforcement, insurance, dispute resolution and disciplinary action all under one roof. But the reality is that the BPC cannot manage its workload already. Licence renewals sit unanswered for months, and there are builders with construction on hold.

Consumer reviews of the BPC are damning and giving it sweeping new powers before it can handle what it already has in terms of workload is not reform, it is risk. I took the liberty of looking up the Building and Plumbing Commission online and the google reviews for which it is rated one star. Here are some of the reviews from the people using the BPC, who have given story after story of their personal experience of the delays and the inability of the BPC to even do its job currently. A person online said:

[QUOTES AWAITING VERIFICATION]

Our builder has been waiting for his licence renewal to be issued since October last year. Construction is on hold because of this. BPC, please provide an answer.

Joel, another builder, said:

There are too many confusing layers of staff who are not very helpful. Doing the run-around again. The VBA have just rebranded to BPC. Same stuff around. It is very disappointing.

These are the people trying to build homes for Victorians to get into. Another person said:

These people are the same if not worse than the VBA. More power? More like more people getting paid taxpayers money to do sweet …

stuff all. I will not read the actual wording here.

Hours on hold only to be told you cannot speak to the departments needed. The BPC is going to be no different to the VBA apart from more red tape, longer wait times and more frustrations for all.

These are damning reviews for the new regulator, which the government is trying to then give more work to. Doesn’t it just speak of the government’s challenges that the government is so under-resourced that it would overload the BPC, which already is not performing its core functions? That to me is just unbelievable.

Every change the government makes that touches the building industry needs to have a crystal clear focus on increasing homes. Yet we know that under this government the data is there that Victoria is building fewer homes now than a decade ago, in 2014. Under this government, the Allan Labor government, we have built less homes than in any year since 2014. It is a decade of home building. After a decade of Labor in government, home building has gone backwards in Victoria.

The government set itself this 80,000-homes-a-year target, and yet we have seen that they have fallen well short of that, not to mention that dwelling approvals collapsed 32.2 per cent in December 2025, more than double the national decline. This is not a national trend landing on Victoria; this is a Victorian problem made by this Allan Labor government, who have made it too hard, too slow and too expensive to build in Victoria.

In the short time that I have left, when we look at what is happening in the growth areas, speaking already of the greenfield areas, the 27 new suburbs already identified to be planned, land set aside for up to 180,000 new homes is now stuck in a planning system so slow that it takes up to 10 years to plan a new suburb – not to build it but to plan it – when it used to take two. In fact we had a group of builders in Parliament just this week. We have heard from them, and they said – straight from industry’s mouth – that the government has spent years in this ideological pursuit of demonising greenfield housing, talking up density in established suburbs while treating new outer suburbs as a second-best option. This is coming from the builders themselves, that the government have demonised greenfield areas where people want to live, where young families want to live, where young families want to build their homes, build a backyard for their families and their kids to grow up in. Yet the government has demonised it. This is coming from industry themselves, and that is why we have a plan and why the coalition is committed to unlocking these areas, to not slowing up but fast-tracking the precinct structure plans. (Time expired)

 Alison MARCHANT (Bellarine) (14:59): It is a pleasure to rise and speak today on the Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill 2026. In the short amount of time that I have been in this place I have spoken quite a bit on different reforms that we have undertaken in the housing sector and the building sector, and it really is about modernising and keeping pace with all the changes that we do see across the building sector. We do it all the time with all different pieces of legislation. But this is not just a bill to talk about in this place; it has real intent and it is a statement of intent, I believe. We know that when people make the huge investment of building their home – it may be their first home, their second home or whatever it is, or renovating – and they save all that money and they are planning for their future, they should get the product that they deserve and had been promised.

They need to have confidence in the quality and confidence in the builder that they have, but also they deserve to feel safe. We know that it is a big investment to build. I am lucky that I have a husband who is in a trade; he is a plumber, and it is an excellent trade to have. I hear a lot about the industry at home from him – he teaches apprentices now – and the amount of apprentices that are proudly building our state, maybe in construction in a domestic sense or in a commercial sense. We have an incredible amount of work on the go. Those new apprentices coming out will have to learn the new regulations and learn the new ways of doing things. We do not do the same things we did 30 years ago when he was first a plumber and his father was a plumber as well – it is in the family – and we need to keep reforming our legislation to keep up with those changes.

When someone saves and saves to invest in a home or a renovation and they see corners are cut or standards are slipping and there is no accountability, those are just very personal and devastating outcomes. That is why this bill is really important. It does signify that we are doing a significant overhaul of our building system here in this state. These reforms that we are doing are really looking at old legislation and the framework that was established many years ago – over 30 years ago. These industries are changing, as I have indicated.

The introduction of this bill also provides a clear, modern and consistent framework to administer and enforce Victoria’s building legislation. That framework is about strengthening regulatory oversight and really improving how that entire building system is operating. It replaces outdated provisions that are scattered across multiple acts, and it is about bringing in efficiencies. It does clarify and strengthen, as I said, the regulatory powers and responsibilities, improving monitoring, compliance and enforcement, and it does ensure that administration arrangements and those enforcement tools are consistent. It is about creating a stronger, fairer and more predictable framework.

Part of that is the establishment of the Building and Plumbing Commission, a regulator designed to oversee the system but also to actively uphold its integrity. But at the centre of it, this is about people. It is about people that are looking to build or to renovate. It is about putting consumers back at the centre of the building system, where they should have always been. For too long, it has been a pretty complex system to navigate – chasing rectifications and bearing the cost of poor workmanship – and this bill is aiming to change that. It introduces, for the first time, clear and overarching objectives for the entire building system that place health and safety front and centre – not as an afterthought and not as a secondary consideration but as the fundamental principles that will guide the entire system. It is really important that it comes with that strength and that critical regulation, and the Building and Plumbing Commission will have stronger, clearer powers to monitor compliance.

I have heard in this place a lot of people talking about and sharing their building stories, and sometimes it goes extremely well. In my case we have built a new home, and it has gone extremely well. We have had an incredible builder that has talked to us the whole way through the build and contracts, and we thank him for his dedication to providing us with a wonderful home. But it does not always go as smoothly as that. I understand it can be quite a stressful situation to be in, but it is about preventing that in the first place. We do not want to be getting to where we are responding to problems; we want to prevent them in the first place. Where we do have deliberate wrongdoing, this bill is really about ensuring that there are consequences.

There is the introduction of a new civil penalty regime which will allow significant financial penalties that act as a general deterrent to serious noncompliance. These are not meant to be token measures; these are designed to ensure that cutting corners is no longer profitable for builders and that disregard for safety is no longer tolerated. Equally, we need a system that backs builders and plumbers who are already doing the right thing as well – a system that is clear and that is consistent so that they are not going to be undercut by those who ignore the rules.

I have seen this also firsthand in my own community. As I have said, we have got many skilled and hardworking builders and tradespeople across the Bellarine who take an immense amount of pride in the work that they do. I know that those builders are building not just houses but homes for families in our region. They are locals, they employ locals and they train our local apprentices. They certainly contribute to the fabric of our community, and they want to do the right thing – and they do – but they also want to know that their system is going to be fair for them so when they invest their time and effort into delivering that high-quality work they are not competing against the operators who are, as I have heard others describe, the dodgy operators who do cut corners and ignore standards and walk away from their responsibilities.

I just want to talk a little bit about one section of the bill. We know that it does back those good operators, but one of those other things that I hear from my local constituents – and I hear it in the media as well – is about those who do not take accountability. We need to make sure that those who do the wrong thing are held to account. This bill does go to one of the most damaging practices I think I have seen in an industry, which is phoenixing. For too long we have seen that operators hide behind those company structures. They walk away from their defective work. They can leave their customers to pick up the pieces, and it is completely unacceptable. Phoenixing is about where you may start with one company, start a business, and you cut corners and you are in financial trouble. They stop, they go bankrupt and they go and start another company in a different name. That is when they are failing to comply with any emergency orders or building orders or direction to fix.

The Building and Plumbing Commission that I have talked about will have the power to issue a declared directive notice, which will make directors personally responsible for ensuring those obligations are met. This is a big reform. It means that those directors cannot simply walk away from their responsibilities, and it creates a direct incentive for companies to comply with those orders and do the right thing in the first place. At the same time it is also about putting fairness back into it, and it allows directors to seek a review when they were not involved in management or took reasonable steps to ensure compliance. Where there is serious wrongdoing, particularly where there are health and safety issues, we need to make sure that those people are going to be accountable for those actions. This bill draws a line, really, under that phoenixing practice. It protects those consumers, supports the honest operators and obviously strengthens the integrity of the entire industry.

We know these reforms are really essential to achieving our broader housing objectives, and it really matters that we get this system right. It is something that we are continuing to work on, because that is something that we are seeing even across the Bellarine. With our growing communities and new developments families are choosing the Bellarine as a place to call home, and we want to make sure that they have a building and a home that they can be proud of and live in for a very long time. Really, this bill is about strengthening that confidence in doing that. It is not about just building more but also building better.

In conclusion, I would wrap this bill up, I suppose, as around trust – trust in our building industry, trust in the system, trust in the standards and trust that Victorians are going to get the home that they have purchased. I commend the bill to the house.

 Martin CAMERON (Morwell) (15:09): I rise to say some words on the Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill 2026. As the member for Bellarine just articulated, there need to be some works to make sure that builders and plumbers and so forth are complying, because there are issues across the building area. I do not know her husband, but he must be a good bloke because he is a plumber, like me; I reckon we would be able to sit down and have a beer or two across the journey.

There are a couple of issues within the bill. The member for Narracan, who spoke previously, pointed out a couple of glaring issues within the bill. There are some okay parts in it, but one of the huge parts which is getting a lot of pushback from the building industry and the building fraternity and mum-and-dad builders – who are contacting us to say, ‘You need to raise this issue, because it is a huge red flag’ – is the minimum financial requirement for builders. In short, it could be set up to wipe out our builders workforce. The reason I say that is that for our smaller builders, our mums and dads that put their blood, sweat and tears into the industry to build new houses for the people of Victoria, this minimum financial requirement that they need to have, whether that requirement is $1 million or $5 million or $10 million – the way that it works now is that if you are building a house and it is worth, as the member for Narracan said, $500,000 and your limit is $1 million, when that house is completed it used to come off the register, as such, so you could then move on to the next house. But it now has to stay as a requirement in your threshold and what you can afford and what you can get insurance and so forth for. It could be cutting the capacity of a small builder who may build four houses a year nowadays, with the length of time it takes to build a house, down to two houses, because of this particular part of the bill, which I think needs to be looked at.

It has been flagged by the industry. We had two weeks to put this out and get the building industry to have a look at it and come back with their concerns, and come back they have, because two weeks is not long enough for them to go through it and talk with us and talk with the building industry and their clientele, who are the builders that are building the houses. When these red flags were raised, they came in a rush. It was not just one red flag; it was multiple red flags, because the people that are on the ground having to build and construct housing right across Victoria, whether it is in the regions or whether it is here in the city, know that this is going to be a huge issue moving forward. We cannot afford as a state to have builders walk away and go and build houses in other states around Australia because we are strapping more red tape and more financial burden to their back.

I was having a chat to a mum and a dad who are plumbers in the Latrobe Valley and talking about the cost of running a business at the moment here in Victoria. We all know times are tough and materials are going up. We have got a fuel crisis at the moment, which is exploding how much PVC costs, whether you are doing PVC pipes or conduits if you are an electrical trade. To have that stock of material that you need to put in the ground to build houses, it just continues to rise all the time. So there is that part. But talking with Ashley and Sarah, in their plumbing business they have four tradespeople that work there and they have got to pay $9500 for public liability this year. There are a lot of insurers that are now just refusing to insure small businesses because of the compliance that is needed to run these businesses. I said, ‘Well, how much has that gone up from last year?’ They told me and showed me the figures. They had it on their paperwork: the premium had increased 198 per cent from last year.

This is a small business in regional Victoria that is doing the right thing and employing other individuals from regional areas to give them a job. But before they can even start to work they have got to have public liability, and when it jumps in one year by 198 per cent, alarm bells are ringing everywhere for this small business. How are they going to come up with that money? Then they said their WorkCover insurance has jumped to $16,000 this year. So they have got nearly $26,000 in WorkCover and public liability that they have got to bankroll themselves. It is a huge issue right across the regions. We cannot even then put a value on the amount of hours of paperwork that a mum and dad running their small business in the building industry need to do to get invoices out and to get money back in. There is that continual stress level.

You have only got to talk to people in the building fraternity – it does not matter if it is builders, plumbers, electricians or if it is the painters painting the house or if it is a tiler that is putting tiles on the floor or on the walls – to know that cashflow is the key for any business to keep the doors open. Sometimes if you are just a single operator, you can wear that, but when you have four other people in your business, they are relying hopefully on you to provide the works and move forward for them to have a job so they can go about living their lives. The stress comes onto owners, who probably have not done a business degree because they are in the trades and they learn on the job – that is what you do when you are a tradie; you learn on the job. The amount of pressure and stress, moving right across the board, from building houses in Victoria is really hard.

Then we have the developers that are trying to unlock land supplies in the Latrobe Valley. Obviously we are surrounded by three major coalmines, and coal overlays are a huge issue down in and around the area at the moment. These are coal overlays that are 40, 50 years old and which are no longer relevant. They are just there and are holding up shovel-ready developments of thousands of houses, virtually, from starting.

In the building industry there is a lot at play. As I said, we do not want to burn out the actual workers that bring these houses to life and that bring these dreams to life for people that are building a new house. Whether it be anywhere in the regions or whether it be here building multistorey housing in the city, we do not want to burn them out. It is getting to a point where the older generation that are moving towards retirement – and they might be five, eight, 10 years away from retiring – are seriously looking at what their best option is: ‘Is my best option to keep going? Do I still want that stress? Do I still want that burden of doing the right thing, complying everywhere, paying insurance and paying WorkCover premiums?’ It is right across the board, so my biggest concern with this building legislation that we are debating here today is having small mum-and-dad businesses thinking it is all too hard and walking away. I hope it is not the case. We have a reasoned amendment, which has been put up by the member for Caulfield and which I support, to get it right. Have a look at it. Do not put the pressure on these people. They are raising the flags and there is an issue, and we seriously need to look at it.

 Chris COUZENS (Geelong) (15:19): I am pleased to rise to contribute to the Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill 2026. I have heard from quite a few members in this chamber today that there would not be many of us that have not had constituents coming to us about dodgy builders and what they have been left with. Certainly in a climate of cost-of-living challenges, that is the last thing we want families to have to endure – having the experience of a dodgy builder.

There are many, many stories out there, and I think this bill gives consumers confidence that they will actually get the high standards and the quality that meet the requirements of their new home, particularly around safety. We do not want people feeling unsafe in their homes, and unfortunately, with some of these dodgy builders, that is exactly what they have experienced – that it is not safe to stay in their own home and they have to move out and find alternative accommodation because it is not safe to live in the their dream home that they have spent a long time aiming for. There are serious repercussions to dodgy work that has been done by builders, and of course they should have the right to get the outcome that they have paid for. As I said, many constituents who have had experience with dodgy builders end up in serious financial consequences as a result of this, so this is a really important bill. Given that cost of living is putting pressure on family budgets, we will continue to provide housing but also enable housing developments to ensure that we do have adequate housing close to trains and jobs, which is what this government has been working towards.

I think it is interesting that the opposition keep blocking us on consumer-focused reforms that protect working people. We hear them again today making up lots of different stories about why this bill is not going to work. I think it is something that is really important to ensure that our constituents have every confidence that this sort of bill is there to protect them, to protect their rights and for them to get what they paid for.

I also want to note that, yes, these building companies are small businesses and there are many good builders in our communities. I know in my electorate of Geelong – and I heard the member for Bellarine talking about the builder that built her home and how good he was, or she was; I am not sure whether it was a male or a female – we have some exceptional builders that go out of their way to make sure that they deliver the best quality for their clients, or for the consumers in that case. Those builders also do not want their industry to have a bad reputation.

When the opposition talk about a lack of consultation, I find that really interesting, because there are about 50 builders in my electorate of Geelong alone that have been talking to the department about this bill and having input into that, because they were not necessarily happy with the representation they had at state level. They are really onto this bill and are very much aware of the content of and the rationale for the bill. They all provide a high-quality level of work. They are not the ones that are to be held in question here. They are not dodgy builders; they are good builders, and they do not want their reputation being tarnished by dodgy builders. They also underquote. These people will often do lower quotes but not complete the work or not complete the work to the requirements. The builders in my electorate are pretty happy with the consultation they have had, and I do want to thank the department for their work with those Geelong builders. In saying that, they have also indicated to me that there are builders all around the state that want to make sure that this bill is right and fit for purpose for the work that they do. I am aware that they are happy with the consultation that they have had.

Of course we are building more houses in Victoria. We have the most first home buyers in Victoria. Again, it is really important to make sure that this bill gives those people the confidence that when they are appointing a builder to build their home or apartment or whatever it might be, it will be built to the quality and standard that it should be but also in a safe way.

As I said, the builders in my electorate and, I am sure, right across this state are really proud of the work that they do and will continue to deliver good work, and hopefully this will get rid of those shoddy builders that are making it far more difficult for the building industry.

This bill is first and foremost about protecting consumers. The affordability and availability of housing is one of the most pressing issues we face today, and the single biggest investment most Victorians will make in their lifetimes is their home. As I said earlier, it would be absolutely devastating to be building a home, only to find out that it is not the quality that it should be or as safe as it should be and actually you do not end up with your dream home that you have been aiming for for a very long time. But this bill delivers more protections for Victorians by establishing a trusted regulator that will improve culture in the building and plumbing industry by providing a credible threat to remove rogue operators. This means more building and plumbing work done right the first time, fewer defects, and proactive certification of any defects or noncompliant building work that does occur. So it is reassuring to those building their home that this bill outlines what the requirements are. These reforms rightly protect consumers, placing them at the heart of the system, and industry will also benefit from more certainty and improved productivity. With clear pathways to identify and rectify any defects, builders and plumbers doing the right thing will benefit, while those doing the wrong thing will be held to account. The bill supports the government’s housing objectives by reinforcing consumer confidence and supporting the construction of high-quality and well-built homes.

This bill represents the most comprehensive overhaul of the system since the Building Act 1993 was introduced over 30 years ago, so it is clearly due for a change. I know in my community and, I am sure, in many other communities across Victoria that those people that have had the unfortunate experience of having a dodgy build will very much welcome this legislation. The main reforms in the bill include a new public interest objective, which will require builders to put health and safety at the centre of every build. This is the first time a common objective will apply across the entire system. Under the bill the objective of the building system is to promote and protect the health and safety of building occupants and the public.

Building or buying a home is the single biggest investment most working Victorians will make in their entire lifetimes. Families deserve to have confidence that work will be done right the first time. That is why the bill gives the Building and Plumbing Commission strong new powers to protect consumers and ensure dodgy builders face consequences. I think the ultimate purpose of this bill, in my conversations with consumers and with builders, is that there are consequences for that shoddy work. People want to feel confident that when they go through that process of appointing a builder – and I am sure many people are very much aware of needing to look at who the builders are and what their history is – if there are any issues around dodgy work and safety issues, there are avenues for that to be dealt with. It is really important that we continue to improve the consumer protections in our legislation and in particular around building new homes for Victorians.

 Roma BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (15:29): I rise to speak on the Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill 2026. Whilst the government presents this as a tidy administrative consolidation, the reality is very different. This is not a minor reinstatement of existing laws; it is a sweeping overhaul of the entire regulatory framework. It centralises power, expands enforcement, increases penalties and imposes new financial compliance burdens across the industry. And it is being rushed. Industry has not been given the time or clarity needed to properly assess these changes. Key stakeholders, including Master Builders Victoria and the Housing Industry Association, are critical.

This bill goes much further than advertised and requires proper consultation before it goes any further or proceeds through the upper house, and that has not happened. Instead we are seeing a familiar pattern: big reform, big promises and very little groundwork.

At the centre of this bill is the creation of a new regulator, the Building and Plumbing Commission, replacing the Victorian Building Authority. The government claims this new body will restore confidence and improve enforcement, but there is a fundamental problem. The system has not failed because of lack of government power; it has failed because of poor oversight, inconsistent enforcement and lack of accountability. Yet the government’s answer is simply to concentrate even more power into a single regulator.

The bill gives the commission broad powers of entry, inspection and investigation. It expands civil penalties and introduces significant new liabilities, including personal liability for company directors. It allows for suspension, cancellation and disqualification of practitioners, in some cases before matters are fully resolved. That is not about reform, that is about power. The bill also introduces a minimum financial requirement framework, again with the intention of improving consumer protection. But industry has been clear: insolvency in construction is not driven by a lack of capital alone. It is driven by cash flow volatility, fixed price contracts and risks being pushed down the supply chain. This framework does not address those realities.

I had a conversation with a local builder this week. Let us call him Ed. Ed is someone with 35 years experience in the industry. He turns over $2.6 million a year and employs eight staff. He has apprentices and long-term employees. He has never had a single warranty claim against him because he builds with integrity and quality. However, he has now been forced, ahead of this legislation, because of his warranty insurance, to take out an overdraft. In this case the unclear thresholds and limited safeguards mean that there is real risk that these powers target not just bad actors but good, compliant builders as well, just like Ed – builders who are already operating under immense pressure.

Let us be clear about the context. Construction costs have surged more than 40 per cent since 2020, and building materials remain around 30 per cent higher than prepandemic levels. At the same time nearly half the cost of a new home is made up of taxes, fees and charges put in place in the last decade by the Allan Labor government. In South-West Coast we are in the middle of a housing crisis. The Allan Labor government say they are going to build more than 80,000 homes a year, but they are absolutely nowhere near it. They are not meeting anywhere near their targets. Approvals are actually falling, projects are stalling and more than 120,000 approved homes are sitting unbuilt. This is the reality behind the statistics: rising homelessness, a rental market that is tight and unaffordable and a generation of young people losing hope that they will ever be able to build a home of their own. And yet at this critical moment the Allan Labor government is laying on more regulation, more compliance costs and more uncertainty.

Industry groups warn this could increase construction costs by another 30 per cent. They are already up 40 per cent from prepandemic times. That is not just a marginal impact, that is a direct hit to housing affordability and supply, and it is the small and medium builders like Ed who will feel it most. These are the businesses that employ local workers, train apprentices and deliver the bulk of housing across Victoria, but under this bill they face increased reporting requirements, stricter financial thresholds, greater exposure to penalties and expanded personal liability. Many will simply decide it is not worth the risk. Ed told me that when he started 35 years ago there were 16 builders in his town. Now there is only one. When builders leave the industry, projects do not get built. Housing supply falls, prices rise and every day Victorians pay the price. It risks restricting otherwise viable builders, reducing capacity and further constraining supply.

Then there is the question of readiness. The government says that this new commission will be able to handle an increased workload, more enforcement, more disputes and more oversight, but the evidence suggests otherwise.

Even now the system is struggling. Complaints are not being dealt with in a timely way and stakeholders report delays, confusion and inconsistencies, and yet we are being asked to believe that this same system, rebranded and expanded and new and shiny, will suddenly perform better under significantly more pressure. That is a leap of faith we should not be asked to take.

There are also serious concerns about how this framework will operate in practice. What constitutes a major defect versus a minor one? That is not clear in this bill. How will enforcement powers be applied proportionately? What protections exist for builders facing suspension or disciplinary actions before matters are resolved? Too many of these questions are left to future regulations, guidelines or policy decisions. That creates so much uncertainty, and uncertainty is the enemy of investment, of confidence and of delivery of the homes we so desperately need during the housing crisis that we have here in Victoria.

Stronger consumer protection is important, better oversight of building standards is necessary and restoring confidence in the system is absolutely critical, but this bill in its current form does not strike the right balance. It risks overreach instead of reform, it risks burden instead of clarity and it risks undermining the very industry we rely on to deliver the homes Victorians desperately need. This government has set itself a target, but it keeps changing the goalposts, and no matter how you look at it, the failure of this government to reach its targets and build enough homes to meet demand is an abject failure of the Allan Labor government here in Victoria.

That is why the coalition have moved a reasoned amendment – not to block reform but to ensure it is done properly and to allow time for genuine consultation with industry. That is why I support the reasoned amendment put forward by the Shadow Minister for Housing and Building, to actually get this done properly and to allow the time for genuine consultation with the industry, because they know how to do it right. They are not trying to build shoddy houses. There are always bad actors, but the majority of people want to get this right so we can build the houses that are needed. We need to allow time for that genuine consultation to ensure the impacts are really understood and do not have unintended consequences and to get this right. Once again we are seeing a tired and arrogant Allan Labor government asking for trust without doing the work – no proper consultation, no clear implementation plan and no confidence that the system is even ready. We deserve a building system that is a fair and effective system that is fit for purpose and that will actually get the homes built that so many young people, so many who are homeless, so many who are waiting on public housing lists and so many who are fleeing family violence need to just have the basic right of a roof over their head.

 Eden FOSTER (Mulgrave) (15:38): I am delighted to speak in support of the Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill 2026, a bill that delivers for working Victorians. On this side of the house we understand something very simple: for most people, building or buying a home is the single biggest investment they will ever make in their lives. It is not just a financial transaction, it is the foundation of security, stability and aspiration. It is where families are raised, where memories are made and where futures are built, and when that dream is shattered by dodgy building work and when families are left to fight alone, the consequences are not just financial; they are deeply personal. We are talking about debilitating debt, stress and heartbreak. That is why this bill matters. This bill is about protecting Victorian families. It recognises that when something goes wrong in the building system, the burden should not fall on the shoulders of ordinary homebuyers. No family should be forced to spend tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars fixing defective work. No-one should have to navigate a complex system alone while trying to hold a builder to account. Victorians deserve better. They deserve confidence, confidence that when they build or buy a home, they will get what they pay for. That is exactly what this bill delivers. It strengthens oversight, it modernises enforcement and, most importantly, it puts consumers, regular Victorians, at the centre of the building system, where they belong.

We know that the vast majority of builders and tradies take enormous pride in their work. They build homes they would be proud to live in and show to their families. They contribute to communities, and they do the right thing. But we also know that there are a small cohort of bad actors – dodgy builders who cut corners, exploit loopholes and leave ruin in their wake. Over time these practices have eroded trust in the building industry. They have hurt consumers, and they have unfairly undermined the many hardworking professionals that are actually doing the right thing. This bill takes decisive action to restore that trust. It finalises the establishment of a new integrated building watchdog, the Building and Plumbing Commission, and equips it with the powers it needs to root out those bad actors and lift standards across the industry.

At the core of this bill is a reform that represents a fundamental shift in how we approach building regulation in Victoria, and for the first time we are introducing a clear legislated building system objective, one that places consumers at the heart of the system. This objective makes it explicit: the purpose of the building system is to promote and protect the health and safety of building occupants and the public. This is not just a change in wording; it is a complete reorientation of the system. Every decision, every action, every regulatory function must now be viewed through one lens: does it protect Victorians?

Of course a strong objective must be backed by strong enforcement. That is why this bill introduces a robust modern compliance framework that ensures the regulator has the tools it needs to act early, proportionately and decisively; it strengthens powers to enter and investigate sites; it enables regulators to compel information; it protects authorised officers from obstruction and abuse; it introduces early intervention measures, such as improvement notices to stop problems before they escalate; and for the most serious breaches it delivers consequences that match the severity of the offence.

One of the key reforms in this bill is the introduction of a civil penalty regime. For too long penalties in the building sector have been too low, treated by some as simply the cost of doing business. That ends with this bill. Courts will now have the power to impose significant financial penalties, up to $600,000 for individuals, and to strip companies of profits gained through cutting corners and putting lives at risk. This is about removing any financial incentive for bad behaviour. No builder should ever profit from doing the wrong thing.

Perhaps one of the most important reforms in this bill is the action it takes against phoenixing. We have all seen it: a builder walks away from defective work, liquidates their company and re-emerges under a new name, leaving consumers with the damage, the debt and the stress. This is unacceptable, and under this bill it will be much harder to get away with this. We are introducing new director liability provisions, ensuring that those behind companies can be held personally accountable when they fail to comply with orders; we are giving the regulator the power to issue declared director notices, making directors jointly and severally liable; and we are strengthening the ability of courts to disqualify individuals and companies from operating in the industry. This sends a clear message: you cannot hide behind corporate structures to avoid responsibility.

This bill, though, is not just about penalties, it is about fairness. It introduces a range of ancillary orders, including compensation orders, compliance orders and adverse publicity orders, ensuring that consumers are informed and protected. It establishes a consistent disciplinary framework across the industry, one that is efficient, transparent and fair, and it ensures that the regulator can act quickly when there is a serious risk to consumers. Importantly, it also supports those builders who do the right thing, because when we crack down on dodgy operators, we are backing in the vast majority of tradies who take pride in their work and play by the rules.

This bill also completes the transformation of the building regulator in Victoria. It formally establishes a streamlined, integrated Building and Plumbing Commission, a one-stop shop for consumers. It introduces stronger governance arrangements, enhanced transparency and strict conflict-of-interest rules. It ensures that those leading the regulator are independent, accountable and focused on the public interest, not on industry influence, because regular consumers deserve a regulator that backs them.

This bill builds on the significant reforms already delivered by this government. Through our buyer protection reforms, we have introduced world-leading measures like the first-resort domestic building warranty and the developer bond scheme, ensuring that consumers are no longer left to fend for themselves when defects arise. We have created financial safety nets that protect families from devastating costs, and we have given the regulator real power, including the ability to stop the sale of buildings with serious defects. Together, these reforms are transforming the building system in Victoria, making it fairer, stronger and more accountable.

Yet, despite the clear need for these reforms, those opposite have once again failed to stand up for working Victorians. Again and again they have talked about the need to address dodgy builders. Again and again they have acknowledged the harm being done to consumers. And again and again, when given the opportunity to act, they have blocked, delayed or opposed reform. They promised action when they were in government and failed to deliver. They call for reform in opposition and refuse to support it when it matters. They cannot have it both ways. The truth is simple: when it comes to choosing between working Victorians and industry pressure, those opposite choose the latter.

On this side of the house we are getting on with the job. We are building more homes and we are making sure they are built well. Through the Big Housing Build and our broader housing agenda, thousands of homes are being delivered across Victoria, giving more people the opportunity to secure a place to call home. We are reforming planning, we are boosting supply and we are driving down costs. But supply alone is not enough. Quality matters. Confidence matters. And that is why this bill is so important. This bill is about fairness and it is about accountability, but above all, it is about protecting working Victorians. It ensures that when people invest their life savings into a home, they can do so with confidence. It ensures that those who do the wrong thing are held accountable, and it ensures that the building system works for the people it is meant to serve. For these reasons, I commend the bill to the house.

 Will FOWLES (Ringwood) (15:47): Here we go again. When, oh when, oh when will the government address the fundamental conflict between a surveyor that is doing the work that the public demand in ensuring buildings are built to standards and marrying that against the interests of the developer? There is a structural flaw – a fundamental conflict of interest – when you have a developer paying a private surveyor to mark their homework. It is effectively marking your own homework. Until the government muscles up and addresses this fundamental flaw in the system, there simply will be no material improvement to the built outcomes in this state.

This is not the first time we have had this discussion in this place; we have had this discussion a bunch of times. It is simply not good enough to have a crack at better regulating a fundamentally flawed relationship rather than actually changing the relationship – getting rid of a relationship whereby a developer, who has got a bunch of power and a bunch of money, goes to a surveyor, who has got bunch of power and not a great deal of money, and says, ‘Here’s your money; give me a tick on my project.’ The reality is you have got this enormous pipeline – development approvals, building codes, standards, labour regulation. All of this stuff comes together – all of these rules and all of this compliance activity comes down to one critical decision point, and it is the decision about whether the building surveyor signs off that the building is built as per the permit or the building is built to code. That is the critical point in the entire process.

Once you pop out the other side of it, what you end up with is a bunch of disenfranchised new home owners – a bunch of people who have a radically different power relationship with the surveyor and a radically different power relationship with the developer than those two entities have with one another. Until the government muscles up and addresses that fundamentally flawed relationship, there will be no steps forward. That is why I support the reasoned amendment on this bill, because that is the relationship that needs to be targeted. That is the relationship we need to get right if we are going to see any improvement. I am going to talk about a case study in relation to that in a moment, but I just want to make absolutely clear, for the benefit of the chamber, that this is a situation that cannot be cured for as long as developers are paying surveyors to mark their homework.

For as long as that surveyor is financially beholden to the developer, you will never, ever, ever – and you cannot ever – get genuinely independent opinions from those surveyors. It is structurally impossible. I have said it before and I will say it again: fix that relationship and a whole bunch of things will improve in the built outcomes in Victoria. Leave it as it is, and even if you regulate it a little bit better it is just not going to work. The flaw is fundamental; the relationship is broken. Private surveyors paid for by developers ought not be performing a public function. This, at the end of the day, is a public function. If you have got any doubt about that, have a look at the amount of money the government has had to tip into cladding, which we have spoken a bit about this week. Have a look at the amount of money the government had to tip into builders falling over. At the end of the day, the final gate and the final hurdle for a developer to clear as to whether they have actually done what they say they will do and done what they have been obligated to do comes down to a building surveyor who is paid by that developer. That is a fundamental flaw, and it simply must be addressed. I wish the government had just gone that bit further in this bill.

The reality is we are here because the system is not working as it should. This bill does not cure it. It cures some things, but it is not going to cure the system as a whole. Plenty of people – my constituents – have engaged builders in good faith and have found themselves dealing with defects. I would hazard a guess there is not a single metropolitan member in this place who has not had a constituent come to them and say, ‘Our car park leaks in our brand new apartment building. We don’t know what to do.’ In some circumstances there is very little they can do, because the developer, perhaps because the project is pretty ordinary, has retained perhaps 51 per cent of the apartments in the project, and all of a sudden they can do nothing on the owners corporation committee because they get outvoted; they have got no power. When you are an owner with just one unit in, say, a 50-unit development, you are left powerless. You are entirely beholden to the work of a building surveyor who is in the pocket – structurally in the pocket – of the developer. The model is broken, make no mistake.

The Victorian Building Authority (VBA) was a flawed organisation – appalling failures of leadership, an absolutely lax approach to enforcement, reactive not proactive. But I say that the cultural failures in that organisation – the complete lack of energy in the organisation to take builders on when things had gone wrong, the fact that it took so long to get them to move on anything – were failures of leadership; they were not failures of the organisation per se. And for anyone resting on their laurels thinking a little bit of a rejig of the responsibilities of the VBA, a spunky new title – well, not that spunky, frankly; the VBA is a better set of words, perhaps, than the Building and Plumbing Commission – and getting a new set of stationery is going to make any difference, it is absolutely not. It is not unless two fundamental things change: the quality of the leadership at the regulator, which has been left sadly and badly lacking by the government’s own admission – I do not think that is in dispute – but also this fundamentally flawed relationship that sits at the heart of so many failures in built outcomes in my constituency and elsewhere across the state.

Home owners being left to navigate this complex system need to be supported by a regulator that is doing the job, a regulator who does not wait for things to escalate, a regulator who identifies problems early and a regulator that is empowered to crack down on those surveyors who are simply taking the money and running and not doing the job that they are statutorily bound to do. They should be a regulator that is compliance driven rather than complaint driven. They should be focused on outcomes, not process. What we have had with the VBA is a regulator that has failed on just about every one of those measures. There are still bad actors in the system; there are plenty of good builders too. But the fact that the burden remains with the consumers, the fact that we have pushed the burden onto the weakest participant in the system and the power imbalance is acute, is just no good. It is no good at all.

I want to talk a little bit about 3 New Street and Ringwood, where Ashini and Michele, alongside many other residents in 3 New Street, are currently fighting the builder of their apartments. An occupancy permit was issued prematurely, but there were major defects in the build, and rectification has fallen on the new occupants because the builder was phoenixed and then a building surveyor signed off on shoddy, shoddy, shoddy work.

The work we did over a long period of time to get engagement from VBA was about the most frustrating work I have had to undertake as a member in this place. They were just incredibly slow to deal with these matters and incredibly disinterested in actually helping people who are up against it. To be very clear, for many of these apartment owners, this is their only asset. To be trapped at that point in a building where you cannot sell the thing because people know the building has got problems and you cannot get it fixed because the system is stacked against you – the level of stress, the level of trauma that attaches to that outcome is absolutely extreme, and this bill just simply does not go far enough to make sure that people in those circumstances are not left carrying the can for a regulatory system that has failed, a regulator that has failed, a builder that has failed and a building surveyor that has failed, as is the case in particular with 3 New Street. The owners corporation being used as a political plaything of the developer and being used to bully other owners is just simply not good enough. We had those constituents sit in on the owners corporation review led by the former minister Marsha Thomson, and I hope that we have more significant reforms coming down the pipe to make sure that owners corporations are behaving as they should and to make sure that developers cannot use their retention of lots in an apartment development to bully buyers who through no fault of their own have ended up in a building that has substantial defects. They are the flaws in the system.

I reckon I was just warming up too, and here we are with 45 seconds to go. Let me finish here: reform is necessary, and the bill attempts to do a chunk of it and succeeds in some respects. But there is a fundamentally flawed relationship between developer and building surveyor, which is effectively the relationship between the developer and the public good of making sure that buildings are built in accordance with their permits and in accordance with the laws laid out for them. That relationship is broken. This bill does nothing to fix it. This bill ought to do something to fix it, and the government will never, ever get quality outcomes unless they fix that fundamentally flawed relationship.

 Lauren KATHAGE (Yan Yean) (15:57): Those opposite have shown us who they truly represent in this place, and it is not Victorians. They have moved the reasoned amendment by the Master Builders – I mean, by the member for Caulfield, who seems to be standing up in this place not for the people of his community but for industry bodies. That is not what we are here to do. We are meant to be here representing the people of our community. We hear from those on both sides about the people in their communities that have suffered from dodgy builders, and we have seen those opposite with their arms around them on the news at night-time if it is going to score some political points. But when the time comes to do their job in this place and represent them and put protections in place for those people, where are they? They are absent. They are not here representing the people that put them here, they are here representing industry. That is wrong, and that is what makes them so different from us.

This bill puts at its heart Victorians – house buyers, consumers – explicitly, making the primary objective of this regulation to support Victorians, to protect consumers and to keep them from the harm and the cost of a defective home. Those opposite do not seem to be interested. They are so disinterested they are repeating the lines from the previous consumer protection bills that we put in place that they voted against. They have mixed them all up in their heads. They say, ‘Consumer protection: bad. We’re going against it.’ It is the typical playbook from those opposite, and it is definitely not one that we will follow.

We are pushing ahead with this. It is not the first round of consumer protection legislation for the building industry we have put in place and I dare say it will not be the last, because we are cleaning up the joint. We are making sure that consumers come first and, when they make the biggest investment of their life, they are protected.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.